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Comment Re:First my beloved Viper fighter, now this (Score 1) 820

Wow, after reading the recall, this is SUPER stupid.

Personally, I don't think the government needs to be our nanny. But I at least understand the motivation of trying to keep things like these away from 2-3 year old because they like, yanno, eat them and it causes problems (even though there's only 2 documented cases).

The recall is this: Between March 2009 through March 2010, buckballs were sold labeled 13+. The federal law requires powerful magnets to be 14+. This was corrected in March 2010 when the magnets were labeled "keep away from all children".

So this recall protects all of those THIRTEEN year old children out there who might accidentally eat a buckyball because they didn't read the packaging. I'm sure that's, like, super common. Must. happen. a. lot.

Comment Re:No more hours of downtime (Score 0, Offtopic) 219

I use RAID 1 for backups all the time. I shutdown the system, pull a drive, swap it out, and then restart the system. While system is up, replace second drive with a new drive and reimage over.

Total downtime: 5 minutes or so. Degraded performance for a few hours during rebuild.

Basically, if you use RAID 1 like tapes, where each HD is a tape, it can be an extremely economical and reliable way to backup data. You know your data's being backed up because you're actually running off that data. You can't have a situation where the tape drive fails to write data and then suddenly when you have a disaster, you find out that you have 6 months of blank tapes (I've had that happen).

At $100 per tape (actually HD+case), it's very cheap per 2TB of backups.

Comment Re:They are expensive things and last (Score 2) 281

This is absolutely true, but only on pressurized aircraft. It's the stress/release of the metal which causes metal fatigue and eventual failure of the airframe.

I expect (but don't know) that the 727 they used for the show had exceeded its "safe" pressurization cycles and was destined for the scrapyard anyway--so it only had scrap value anyway.

However, the DC3 that dblll mentioned is NOT a pressurized aircraft--so it need not worry about cycles at all. It's only about flight hours and wear and tear. As such, there's still many DC3's in operation today--some even commercially.

Comment Re:Sad Little People (Score 5, Informative) 616

I'm sorry. He signed the bill into law. Had he truly been opposed to it, he could have vetoed it. Sure, his veto could have been overruled, but at least he'd be officially on the record that he didn't support it.

Also, Obama specifically requested the removal of language that said the NDAA would not apply to US citizens or lawful residents. See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DNDHbT44cY

I'm sorry--I think there's a big difference between "swiftboat veterans" for "truth" and "Obama supported the NDAA and specifically requested some of the draconian language in the bill"

Comment Re:GNU/Linux on a homebrew microcoded ARM processo (Score 2) 361

So how exactly is a processor running a program to implement another instruction set architecture, with the main memory used by the implemented ISA being accessed by special operations, and with the program and its internal data existing in a separate block of memory, different from, say, a (vertical) microcode engine, running microcode to implement another instruction set architecture, with the main memory used by the implemented ISA being accessed by special microcode operations, and with the microprogram and its internal data existing in a separate block of memory?

Each would be granted a separate patent?

Comment Re:Questions (Score 1) 328

Thanks for actually posting facts. It's refreshing, for a change. You must be new here....

Anecdotal: I no longer fly due to TSA regulations. I either drive or take a train. Yes, it's tremendously inconvenient. Yes, I hate it. No, I don't think there's a lot of people like me...

Comment Re:Take your time, let software catch up. (Score 1) 149

...okay, I don't even know what to say to that. I have no idea what it's like on your planet, but around here we're only human. No wonder developers aren't up to your standards....

Totally agree. I was initially inclined to say (s)he's trolling, but (s)he's clearly quite learned in computers. Maybe (s)he expects that all people are just that smart... Expecting that people get parallel programs right on the first try, given their complexity is not reasonable, at least where I work (myself included). In fact, I was just working with a developer today to fix a reader/writer issue triggered by parallelism both in code and in writing to the DB. We had to sit down and think out the use cases for about an hour before we had a good working solution.

Parallel programming is hard. It's necessary, but hard, at least to us "normal" people. :)

Comment Re:In other words, we should give up. (Score 1) 2247

The same ones that invented the internet, lasers, microchips, GPSs, and microwave ovens, went to the moon, built the largest highway system in the world, created our clean water infrastructure, and electrified most of a continent.

How about the state governments do those things? Pretty sure the state governments can figure out how to build roads, clean water, and manage electrical grids. The only item on the list that I see as problematic would be "went to the moon".

I'm very supportive of minimizing the federal government. That doesn't mean I don't want government services at all--we have state and local governments, after all...

Comment Hotswap SATA Raid Array (Score 1) 499

I personally use a RAID enclosure from Raidon with two drives in a mirrored configuration. Something like the GR3630-2S-SB2:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816142002

(I've used Accordance RAID systems in the past, before my current Raidon).

Then I buy an additional HD tray and rotate the 3 drives occasionally to an offsite backup. Basically the cost is about $345 total, $75*3 drives+$120 for the unit, and I get 3 copies of the data. Additional offsite backups run $105 ($75 drive+$30 tray).

I've found this the easiest to understand (for end users) and a very cheap and reliable storage method. I've had the nightmare of backing up to 8 different tapes, only to go to restore and find out that 6 tapes are empty, 1 is bad, and 1 has data from 6 months back. Because you're actually running your OS off of the drives, you don't get into that situation. The main key is to make sure that you pull drives when the system is off (so that all files are written to disk), and that you insert drives when the system is ON (so that the raid array knows the drive is replaced and doesn't corrupt your data). NEVER INSERT A DRIVE WHILE THE SYSTEM IS OFF.

I have files from over 15 years ago on my main desktop computer, and the only files I'm missing are from my original 286 before I started this backup method.

This solution can be retrofitted on any desktop computer. All you need to do is install an eSata card (if you don't have an eSata port) and then purchase additional drives (SAME model number OR larger capacity as the current drive in the computer). Simply stick the current HD into the raid array FIRST, then put the new empty drives in SECOND, and it'll automatically mirror. Set the computer to boot from eSata and you're all set.

If you ever want to upgrade capacity, simply buy 3 larger drives and it will automatically mirror those drives to a larger capacity for you.

Comment Re:Version 6 Update 26 the last of Version 6? (Score 4, Interesting) 204

Or how about this: I'm a developer on an enterprise application suite that exercises critical bugs in Java 6 Update 18-24 (we haven't yet tested 25 and 26). Oracle introduced a regression in 6u18 that they fixed in 6u21, but in 6u20 or 6u21 they introduced yet another regression. Both regressions cause a complete crash of the JDK that, on busy production systems, causes a complete crash, usually 1+ times a day.

Therefore, we can only recommend 6u17 as the stable version of the software, because 6u18+ isn't. I would strongly prefer that you not "beat the ever living shit out of me" for Oracle not being able to create a stable JVM for an enterprise product.

We'd get an Oracle support agreement to get these problems resolved, but you wouldn't BELIEVE how much money they want for such support. And even if we did pay Oracle a BOATLOAD of money, there's no guarantee that they'd even fix our issues--just that they would listen. on busy production systems, causes a complete crash, usually 1+ times a day.

Java7 doesn't appear to be much better for stability. I just got this email today:
Hello Apache Lucene & Apache Solr users, Hello users of other Java-based Apache projects,

Oracle released Java 7 today. Unfortunately it contains hotspot compiler optimizations, which miscompile some loops. This can affect code of several Apache projects. Sometimes JVMs only crash, but in several cases, results calculated can be incorrect, leading to bugs in applications (see Hotspot bugs 7070134 [1], 7044738 [2], 7068051 [3]).

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