The developers of the NTFS support for Linux do have a fsck implemented. It does a pretty good job. However, since they've done a black-box re-implementation, they rightfully aren't willing to 100% guarantee they have everything correct. Hence, although it has been almost a decade since I've had trouble with Linux NTFS support causing a problem, the recommendation is still to run the native Windows chkdsk after the Linux one finds a problem, just in case.

So, it isn't that you can't use a pure Linux toolchain to work with NTFS, it's just that the Windows toolchain is a little bit better. All in all, that isn't surprising.

The overall unemployment rate among PhDs in computer science is shockingly low. Per the current Taulbee Survey (see pdf here), unemployment among fresh CS PhD graduates from surveyed institutions (266 North American ones; likely comprising the whole top 100 institutions plus 166 others) is .8%. .8% is well below the frictional unemployment rate; a PhD in CS is almost as good as a civil-service union government job in guaranteeing employment for life.

So ask yourself, what are you totally screwing up. Some previous posters have suggested that perhaps you're shooting way too low (intro programming job) for your talents. This could be the case. It could be that your degree is from a less-than-reputable institution (you didn't say, so we can't comment). You may just be messing up the basics of interviewing --- my PhD prepared me for an academic interview, but not so much for a straight industry job. Asking help from your institution's career services department on interviewing skills could help.

Regardless, there are very well collected statistics that reflect that a CS PhD is a strong benefit to gaining employment; don't blame the PhD.

You seem to have gotten my point backwards

When Joe DiMaggio comes on the radio, and tells you to smoke Winston cigarettes, because they're invigorating and healthful, you should ignore him. When a former playboy bunny goes on television and tells you that vaccines cause autism, you should ignore her. When Rush Limbaugh goes on air and tells you climate change is a conspiracy made up by secret hidden commies working together with Al-Qaeda, you should ignore him.

And when the chair of the divinity department at Harvard tells you climate change is real, you should ignore him too.

If the faculty at a Harvard want to get the administration to not invest in Chevron, that's all well and fine. They want to write a letter, that's all well and fine. But writing a news article about it just because it was Harvard faculty? It deserves a news article just as much as if it was the faculty at the University of Pheonix: not at all. This sort of trash is why the tobacco companies got away with it for so long, why there's an anti-vax movement, and why climate change denial is still around.

Not to be cynical..

OK, that's a lie. Cynical mode is *on*.

How many of these 100 faculty (or is it 93?) are actually qualified to have an opinion about this? How many are involved in hard science (physics, chemistry, engineering)? And how many are in fields that deal in arguments and sophistry above all else?

How many of the signers are in fields that would have been duped by the Sokal Affair and how many have done a good job of curating their facts? How many of those 100 are proprietors of horse-caca? You tell me 100 Harvard faculty want to get out of coal/petroleum... which of them do I care about more than if you told me 100 ballet dancers wanted the same?

FYI, a major value-add the server vendors give is validation, burn-in, and firmware tweaks. So that "same" model of Seagate drive sold by HP might be rock solid, while the IBM version of the WD drive might be absolute junk.

Short version is that everyone ships a crap batch occasionally, and direct from the manufacturer has the worst odds.

IIRC Backblaze's workload is write once read maybe once (I mean, they are a backup company). So it's quite likely that they are massively under the specs for throughput.

The truly interesting thing about this study is that they name names; previous work in the area (lke Bianca Schroeder's FAST 07 paper, http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~bianca/... or Google's FAST 07 paper, http://research.google.com/arc..., or NetApp's FAST 08 paper http://www.usenix.org/event/fa...) doesn't give away vendor names. The Backblaze results broadly agree with the previous results.

but that's a fair accusation, because I don't really.

80-90% of things can be shipped off to software where it's delightfully easy to trace/probe/debug things, and you have a functional unit which is infinitely malleable. What you can't do in software most realistically ends up in an FPGA, where really you're just debugging your VHDL/Verilog, and the simulator is your new best friend for 80-90% of the cases. When the simulator is a lying piece of junk, 80-90% of the time all you need is a good logic analyzer...

But there's still that ~1% of the time where software and/or digital logic just didn't behave right. Something analog is either necessary (e.g. maybe you're doing something actually useful, like driving a motor, rather than just flipping bits), or analog is making your life miserable.

Even professionally, I've found a 2-channel 50 MHz analog scope to be a godsend in some cases; of course, I like my 4-channel 1GHz digital scope more :) If you end up interacting with anything real and physical, or if you you move beyond merely debugging black boxes and into building your own stuff, even a crappy scope can give you information you simply can't get any other way. Who cares if it is uncalibrated and wildly inaccurate if a surplus scope will still show you the shape of what is going on, with all of the noise and ringing and transient under-(and over-)voltages and double bounces and cross-talk and odd harmonics and wtf why was that capacitor in the wrong bin this RC constant is borked and yep that part's dead and oh shit bad solder job and all the other crap that makes me happy I get to spend most of my time in nice clean software?

If you're just putzing around, sure, a DMM will do ya. But if you're actually building something new (even something simple), you need a scope.

Except that HP did innovate; HP developed core standards essential IP for everything DVD+R and on. You can't build a BluRay burner without using HP's innovations. HP didn't decide to go it alone and build a whole optical drive ecosystem by themselves, but instead licensed their innovations to others.

Of course, since the IP is standards essential, it is 99% certain to be licensed on fixed-fee-per-unit FRAND terms. So if a monopolist or a cartel decide to sell fewer units at a higher price, the people who actually did the hard development work get shafted. Nevermind that the HP is also one of the biggest sellers of optical drives to end users.

So, yeah, if you can't innovate, go ahead and litigate. But if you do innovate, give a fair license, and then get cheated, well, I'd advise litigation in that case as well.

..but HP?

Is the new printer lineup Lovecraftian? Has Meg Whitman been conducting dark rituals? Is Itanium powered by the souls of the innocent?

Wouldn't MS be more appropriate? I'm pretty sure IE is *actually* powered by the souls of the innocent, and there certainly is something evil about the entire OS lineup.

It isn't that unreasonable to be upset at what the article is about; there are abuses of the OPT visa, and those abuses ought be fixed.

At the same time, it is important to understand what letting foreign students and giving them a shot at employment does. A lot of the US's economic lead comes from the fact that we basically imported the best of Europe's population just prior to and after WWII. The current programs extend this: essentially steal the best and most talented people from around the world by providing them with good opportunities.

I did my graduate work at a large & relatively prestigious state school; I was the only US citizen in my research group. Everyone else was an immigrant. Except for one person who got lucky and won the green card lottery (literally a lottery) while still a student, every single one of them used the OPT visa at some point. They've all gone on to make valuable contributions to the US, as research scientists, faculty, and founders of a start up. The US is better off for them immigrating, and becoming permanent residents.

So you should be angry when there are abuses of these sorts of visa programs. If there's too much abuse, these programs will be cut back, or even cancelled, and we'll stop getting the benefit of stealing the world's most talented people.

Lots of people who really are 'the best and brightest" take OPT; when used correctly it is a "bridge" visa to something more permanent. E.g. a student graduates, takes 90 days (or less) to find a job, starts at an employer under OPT, the employer starts the H-1B application process, and within 6-9 months the students qualifies for H-1B. This is especially useful for people who graduate after the current year's H-1B allotment has run out; they can't possibly successfully apply until the next year, so the extra time OPT provides is critical. Then, from H-1B status, you can apply for a green card, which while it may take a few years depending on your country of origin.

OPT is also one of the visas used for foreign students to do summer internships. It is fairly common for graduate students in the tech industry to do at least one summer internship, which can be done either with an OPT visa or a CPT visa; however, the time limits between the two are somewhat linked, & CPT visa time can eat into one's eligible time for an OPT visa. This is probably the rationale for the extensions.

However, it does seem like the schools listed are abusing the extensions; any employer with a competent HR department can get H-1B approval in a short enough time that the standard 17 month OPT is sufficient. Using the 29 month extended time indicates that the students likely aren't "good enough" to bother with the expense of the H-1B process. I think that many of those taking the extensions aren't good enough to easily qualify for permanent status, but 29 months is better than nothing.

It's a business-class laptop with a 15.6" screen, 1920 x 1080 resolution available, decent battery (75 Wh standard), option for an extra detachable extension battery (the BB09 adds an additional 100 Wh), keyboard "feel" reminds me of my IBM model M (although shorter travel), and it has a full numeric keypad.

20.04(a)(2) is referring to what the attack caused to her. A beating at age 16, no matter how bad, cannot cause cerebral palsy. That she started disabled is relevant to 20.04(c)(3), meaning she meets the prerequisite to be covered under 20.04, but the attack only caused further bodily injury, which is 20.04(a)(3).

As an aside, that brings up an interesting possibility (completely unrelated to the judge here). Suppose Alice beat Bob so badly that Bob became disabled; would the clause in 20.04(c)(3) be relevant? That would probably not be what the legislature intended, but a creative prosecutor and permissive judge could twist it to be so, maybe.

Yes, she was disabled, per 22.04(c)(3). That makes the offence covered by 22.04, and therefore we can potentially consider the 2 longer SOL terms (longer as in not the default 3 year). However, being disabled does not in and of itself make it a 10 year SOL. The 10 year SOL requires a 1st degree felony (the most serious level); all other offenses under 22.04 are covered by the 5 year SOL.

22.04(e) makes the standard for a 1st degree felony be that it was serious injury (it references only those offenses under 22.04(a) and 22.04(a-1) which have the serious modifier). The standard for serious injury is really high, aka sent to the hospital & crippled for life; it wasn't a serious injury. (e) is the only part of 22.04 that makes anything a 1st degree felony; no other part of 22.04 makes anything higher than a 2nd degree felony. 22.04(f) makes what he did a 3rd degree felony; that is less serious than 1st degree. The longer stature of limitations requires it be 1st degree under 22.04. No serious injury implies not 1st degree under 22.04, implies 5 years is the longest SOL.

I notice you did reference some sections of Texas family statute, and you implied that they had bearings on the penalty. I looked, but those just seemed to be definitions; if you still consider them relevant could you re-cite, including year?

Another possibility is that you believe that the offense is indeed covered by 22.04(a)(1) or 22.04(a)(2), rather than 22.04(a)(3). (a)(2) seems most likely, since the legislature does not seem to have crisply defined serious mental injury. However, in comparison to the difference between bodily injury and serious bodily injury, a "serious mental deficiency, impairment, or injury" would have to be pretty bad, and claiming there was one would seem to be quite a stretch.

Another possibility is that you looking at a different version of the SOL statute; I'm looking at the summary of it that you linked too at http://www.dallascriminaldefenselawyerblog.com/2008/09/statute-of-limitations-texas-l.html under the presumption it is what you're using.

Finally, it could be a different version of the Texas penal code; I'm using http://www.statutes.legis.state.tx.us/docs/pe/htm/pe.22.htm which seems to be updated for at least as far as 2009. Note that the (a) subheadings are included immediately under the main section heading; bad formatting on the part of whoever assembled the statutes.

Khyber has posted that the statute of limitations is not up multiple times, and done so in highly rated comments. While what the judge did was wrong, the statute of limitations does seem to be up under a careful reading of the statutes. Khyber is pointing out the 10 year limitation for injury to a disabled individual, but is ignoring the specific requirements.

From the statute of limitations link Khyber posted, we have a 10 year and a 5 year term for injury to a disabled individual:

So, it is only 10 years if is a felony of the first degree under 22.04. Any other felony (under 22.04) would have a 5 year statute of limitations. From the part of section of 22.04 that talks about what sort of felony various things are:

So it is only a felony of the first degree if it is 22.04(a)(1) or (a)(2) (section (a-1) is about caregivers in institutions, and so doesn't apply). What does 22.04(a) say?

The difference between (a)(1), (a)(2), and (a)(3) is "serious". Many jurisdictions would use "grievous", but its the same thing: a pretty nasty injury. What specifically does Texas mean, though? For that, we look to Chapter 1 of the penal code, specifically 1.07, "Definitions":

Nobody is alleging that the beating required a trip to the hospital, medical care, permanent disfigurement, or anything else that would indicate it was serious bodily injury, rather than bodily injury. This is, at worst, an offence under 22.04(a)(3). It could also be an offence under 22.01(a)(1) (that is, assault), which is a class A misdemeanor. There are a lot of ways to upgrade your assault listed, but none of them to first degree, and regardless the statute of limitations boost requires that it be specifically for an offence in 22.04. None of the boosts seem to apply, anyway. 22.01(b)(2), dealing with family relationships, has the requirement of a previous conviction under subsection (A), or that there be choking, per subsection (B). 22.01(b-1) could also apply, but it requires all 3 conditions of family, previous conviction, and choking (the legislature having specifically included the and as the last bit of 22.01(b-1)(2)).

And that is probably enough detail for now...

In short, statutes of limitations are typically very short. If someone beat you to within an inch of your life and crippled you forever, unless you were a protected class, the limit is only 3 years in Texas. It is a pity this didn't come out 2 years ago. But since there wasn't serious bodily injury, it looks like only a 3rd degree felony, and the limit is only 5 years.