It actually did need more than just streamlining, e.g. it needed to use multiple processors if available. But systemd seems "a bridge too far". OTOH, I prever grub over either lilo or grub2. Grub gave me enough control and was easy enough to understand for the simple features I wanted to use. Grub2 is inintelligible, and all the readable files say "warning: This file will be automatically overwritten". And lilo didn't give me any control over what what happening.

I'm not deep into systems administration, and I don't want to be. OTOH, I do want to configure my own system to do what *I* want. And what I want is often not what the designers of the software expect, even though it's well within the range of things handled by the software. So I dislike systems that are either too automagic or too inflexible. Systemd is, from all reports, too automagic, and simultaneously too inflexible. So I'm seriously thinking about switching to Gentoo or Slackware. Or even one of the BSDs, though I don't know enough to even guess which one. (I have a desktop orientation, not a server or minimalist orientation, but I need to do some server style jobs. Most Linux systems will handle this easily, but I think that some BSD systmes are too heavily oriented towards server setups.)

Personally, I elect not to watch it so as not to encourage more of it; and I do welcome YouTube et al removing the video, etc on the same grounds.

Now, if you want to make an argument for putting a PSA in front of the video, then you don't do it with a charity like the Red Cross. You do with several PSAs - one for the UN, and one for the viewer's country's Military enrollment, and across the world one for enrollment in the US Armed Forces. And you make sure all the PSAs are at least equal in length to the video with a big message of "hey, this is what the world will come to if you don't defend your freedoms".

This avoids the whole "profit" motive, etc that you would have with a charity as well. (And make no mistake, the Red Cross is a charity; a non-profit NGO.)

American of me? Yes. But in this kind of war, that kind of message will be the only way to really fight back - make it against their interest to post the videos to start with but providing more advertising for their enemy than for them, which is what the video is really about (a call to arms for the extremous).

But, as I said - personally I would just take it all down. But if you're going to do it, do it right.

No reason why that same kind of attack would not work on Windows or iOS either.

The Yellowstone Supervolcano wouldn't split the Earth apart at its seams any more than any of the other reasonable scenarios would. Even the collision that created the moon didn't do that. It might, however, kill off most people in the North American continent. And solve global warming at the same time.

The thing is, there's no real way to predict when, or if, it will go off again. There's some magma filling chambers under it, which has some people worried, but nobody knows whether or not its really significant.

No, most life on earth will survive any reasonable global warming scenario. Civilization surviving is much less certain. So while it wouldn't directly kill us, it might result, indirectly, in 90% of humanity dying. Not, repeat, *not* 90% of life on Earth...unless it resulted in all-out warfare between the mega-powers. All-out nuclear warfare could do that, I suppose.

6 is a bit strong for a foreshock, isn't it? I'm not quite sure.

Clearly it means the stress has shifted to another part of the fault, but is there any reason to believe that the next stress point will be as energetic? The fault I really worry about is the Hayward fault.

Local ground conditions are extremely important in fault shaking transmission. It sounds like it was a lot stronger where you were that is was where I live in Oakland, though perhaps other places in Oakland felt more of a shock.

I think the last time the New Madrid fault went the estimate of the strength was over 9. You might not be there to enjoy the new beachfront.

OTOH, that fault doesn't go very often. You might be lucky for the rest of this century. But the longer it waits, the stronger the quake. (I'm hoping that slips along parallel faults nearby have defused the Hayward fault, but nobody know for sure.) The New Madrid is one that doesn't have that kind of pressure relief available. And it tends to lock in place while pressure builds up, before giving an explosive release. But it only seems to release every few centuries.

I think they're overstating it, but...different locations, even close together, can feel very different. I didn't quite sleep through it, but close. I wasn't even sure it was an earthquake. Still, I'd have guessed that it was around 3 at my location...and that's a factor of 10 difference.

OTOH, we also didn't get any damage from Loma Prieta, where other places nearby did, O my did they. So it depends a lot on your subsurface.

No, not really.

I wish that wasn't a good point. I know that there are many things that are considered human rights violations in many countries that are common in the US. But do remember that EVERY country lies to it's citizens so that they will think that its better than it is. And there is no real agreement as to what is a human rights violation.

In that case I have to agree with you. That doesn't make the general argument valid, though. You are arguing that because a known generic with known characteristics is safe, an unknown drug should also be allowed. I've got to disagree.

OTOH, you can point to a multitude of cases where the system of regulations was abused. And in many cases I'll say, yes, that was clearly abuse. But your original statement vastly oversimplifies the case.

FWIW, many drugs have been re-licensed by removing a compbination of some drug with asprin, and replacing it with the same drug combined with acetiminophin. That means the new drug doesn't work as well for me, as I don't get much relief from acetiminophin, but the older formulation is no longer available. I consider THAT abuse of the system, even though they can cite new studies that qualify the new formulation. I'm rather convinced that they made the change purely to maintain the non-generic status of their drug. This, to me, is clearly abuse of the system, even though the new formulation may be as effective for many people.

So I'm not defending the current system, which I consider quite abused. (I also have my doubts about ANY system where the people that approve drugs as safe, or disapprove them as unsafe, will be the people who benefit by selling them.)

Even if it did, the "fair use" arguement is always a gamble. There's a good chance you'll lose, even if you think it's clearly fair use, because there's not good definition of what it means, so the judge has to decide how he feels.

If they find "slow, heavy, neutrinos", then I'll believe them. Now I just think it makes sense to look.

FWIW, you may need to look in a mirror. (I'm assuming that you are the same poster with a similar message above.) Some people may chose which service to use or which company to buy from based on price. Not everyone is such a person. I used to prefer Apple to MS, switched to MS reluctantly when it made it easier to use it with work, and then switched back to Apple over an MS license change. Then Apple tried to sneak in an equivalent license change on a security patch. Then I switched to Linux. Cost didn't enter into it. Convenience pointed in the other direction. (At the time Linux didn't have a decent word processor, and I had to use the Netscape HTML editor as the best available alternative for a couple of years. [Yes, I could have used Lyx, but word processing wasn't the job, it was a sideline to the job. Besides, Lyx [or TEX?] didn't understand what a paragraph was, or how to wrap a line. I didn't need something fancy, I needed something easy to use, with a bold, italic, and underline. A table of contents and an index would have been really appreciated, but they weren't available in something that was easy.) Commercial software that I bought during that time always died quickly as Linux kept changing, but when the source code was available it could usually be recompiled. I sure didn't make the change for either convenince or to save money...though over the years it's ended up giving me both.