I have had Linux From Scratch bookmarked for a couple of years now. Sadly I can never find the time to actually do it. In a world where every boy and his dog thinks that Linux starts and ends with Unbuntu, I feel if I want to know Linux, I have to start with rolling my own kernel and then building from there.

Most younglings wouldn't get it; they just want Stuff To Work, Right Now. Who do they think creates this Stuff in the first place?!

I'm also hindered by the fact that I am Windows Guru. No, a real one. I _know_ Windows, right now to the nuts and bolts like decompiling DLLs to work out why they crash. I'm a rare breed in that arena too, in fact the desktop Linux fanboi's are now all starting to sound a lot like the idiot 20-something 'Windows Admins' with spiky hair and loud suits that I have to suffer. :(

Grumble, Grumble, I'm back off to my cave.

-Jar.

Nobody with half an ounce of common sense is claiming you shouldn't care about both.

The point is that the "health risks" investigation carries the risk that scanners will be authoritatively determined to carry zero risk by an esteemed medical investigation body (chaired by the college roommate's dog's babysitter who is John Pistole's cousin, but don't let that bother you), and thus the entire case against scanners will be shot down in the press when there is still a real-but-difficult-to-quantify objection against the things on privacy grounds.

That is the problem.

There is no problem with disagreeing with a law and even fighting it - as long as you're prepared to put up with the consequences of disobeying it.

Is he breaking the law?

No.

Maybe, but that's a subjective judgment. Tax law is not subjective. There is a very good reason for that.

It pays proper corporation tax. Proper corporation tax is what is legally required. If you don't like the amount of tax Google is paying, close the fucking tax loopholes that allow it to get away with less.

As a private citizen who does not have the financial means to do a double Irish, blind trust, or whatever-the-hell-else legal mechanisms I could use to legally optimize my taxes, does it gall me that Google is paying such low taxes? Of course it does. I find the whole system loathsome and unfair. Do I want to see the laws allowing them to do this changed? Absolutely.

Do I want to see them subjected to arbitrarily made up rules that are contrary to what the written law says? Fuck no. If someone does not understand why this would be a bad idea, it's not really worth arguing.

Hey, I'm fine with it, because it means that I'm no longer a pirate. All my movies, music, games, everything, will be paid already.

Right?

WTF? PATRICK Moore, not ROGER Moore.

You frikkin idiots. Slither back to 4Chan where you belong. :(

-Jar

Ok - Instead of whinging about it, let's all form a working group, and create a /. type site that has all the best features that /. USED to have.

I'd definitely contribute if such an effort existed.

-Jar

...can someone please remind me how much of my money is being wasted on this shit?

But think about it this way - a big part of the reason for sharing such information and making it commonly accessible is to enable the automation of pattern-finding.

This is tough to do with patient records scattered through fifty thousand different hospital databases. With those 130,000 cases online, you're going to start seeing commonalities in various reactions to treatments, statistics, etc. which in turn will make it much easier for researchers to begin understanding what combinations of cures/treatments may or may not work - leaving the "weird" ones that don't fit into any patterns to the Jimmy Lins.

That'd be hilarious. I can already imagine the business justification: "we need to install a heater so we can power the cooler because we heat too much when it's cold outside."

Actually, I live in Switzerland (and have worked all over Europe in the past decade and a half).

This is very common. You set up an LLC/GmbH/SARL/whatever in a place that has advantageous tax rates. You pay the tax that you legally owe on time worked in the country where your job is, you set up your offices and residence elsewhere as needed, deduct the maximum legally allowable for business expenses, etc. etc. etc.

It's usually pretty cleanly defined. Tax authorities may not like it, but they are as obliged to follow the law as you or I (I once took a massive deduction because I commuted to work by car, and simply added up the distance with the rates published on their own website. They did not like it, but I was able to point them to _their own rules_, and that was that...)

However, this implies that you wouldn't be able to receive _any_ stimuli.

I don't think it's too far-fetched to assume that, if we're soon to be able to reliably "read" brain signals from people who're so totally trapped, we'll also soon see true direct machine-to-mind communication. I.e. being able to inject stimuli directly into the parts of the mind that process basic awareness -- the holy grail of virtual reality.

That, of course, means that, as Scott Adams said, "the holodeck will be humanity's last invention".

I have a legacy 32bit XP install with 4Gb ram, which obviously XP can only see 3.2Gb - are you saying I can RAM disk the 'lost' 800Mb? if so - got a link that shows me how?

Thanks,

-Jar

Kinda. XP 64bit RTM is patched to XP 32Bit SP1. So effectively XP 64bit SP2 is equal to XP 32bit SP3, patch level wise. They did the same with Server 2003 also iirc.

-Jar

Heads up though.... it's gone in Windows 8 (of course) - it's been replaced by Client Hyper V. Yes, a cut down Hyper-V service for running XP (or whatever) as a VM. Plus you also lose that nice seamless windows thing it could do.

Me, I just installed VirtualBox. It's the best VM software out there. And it's free.

-Jar