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Comment Re:Small setup (Score 1) 287

For me, I just like wired ethernet better. Overall, simpler to configure, use, secure, and manage, and you can't beat gigabit links for bandwidth/$. I have 802.11n, but pretty much all it does is allow the laptops, tablets, and phones onto the network. The MythTV frontends, desktop machines, and home automation/telemetry bits are all hard-wired. I also keep all my data on a central fileserver in the basement, so having gigabit links from the desktop machines (and laptops when I plug them in) really makes working with large datasets significantly faster.

As for my setup, it's really rather unimpressive from any datacenter standpoint.

Upstairs closet:
  - Wireless AP (802.11n) and NAT box (TP Link WDR4300 running OpenWRT)
  - Cable modem
  - Managed 24-port gigabit switch (serves 3rd and 2nd floor ports, dual fiber links to downstairs switch)
  - UPS

Basement closet:
  - Managed 24-port gigabit switch (serves basement, and 1st floor ports, dual fiber links to upstairs switch, dual fiber to backup fileserver in detached garage)
  - House fileserver
  - MythTV/home automation/voip/webserver box
  - Tuners (HDHomeRun and DirecTV gear + HD-PVRs),
  - ISY-99 Insteon gateway
  - UPS

Comment What's your suggestion for intelligence work? (Score 1) 504

I presume you wouldn't say it was "wrong" of the United States to crack the German and Japanese codes in WWII...

...so when US adversaries (and lets just caveat this by saying people YOU, personally, agree are legitimate US adversaries) don't use their own "codes", but instead share the same systems, networks, services, devices, cloud providers, operating systems, encryption schemes, and so on, that Americans and much of the rest of the world uses, would you suggest that they should be off limits?

This isn't so much a law enforcement question as a question of how to do SIGINT in the modern digital world, but given the above, and given that intelligence requires secrecy in order to be effective, how would you suggest the United States go after legitimate targets? Or should we not be able to, because that power "might" be able to be abused -- as can any/all government powers, by definition?

This simplistic view that the only purpose of the government in a free and democratic society must be to somehow subjugate, spy on, and violate the rights of its citizens is insane, while actual totalitarian and non-free states, to say nothing of myriad terrorist and other groups, press their advantage. And why wouldn't they? The US and its ever-imperfect system of law is not the great villain in the world.

Take a step back and get some perspective. And this is not a rhetorical question: if someone can tell me their solution for how we should be able to target technologies that are fundamentally shared with innocent Americans and foreigners everywhere while still keeping such sources, methods, capabilities, and techniques secret, I'm all ears. And if you believe the second a technology is shared it should become magically off-limits because power might be abused, you are insane -- or, more to the point, you believe you have some moral high ground which, ironically, would actually result in severe disadvantages for the system of free society you would claim to support.

Comment Re:Assault? (Score 1) 221

Yeah, it's not like Americans spent some $15,000,000,000.00 during Bush's second term to help fight AIDs in Africa, dropping the death rate by some ten percent and saving millions of lives or anything with the President's Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief (although, it seems like the funding may have been cut by the following presidency).

Or... any of the countless foundations that spend billions of dollars conducting charitable work in Africa, such as some of those sponsored by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Comment Re:Grim (Score 1) 221

Burundi, Lesotho, and Malawi, Togo
The Spanish Sahara is gone,
Niger, Nigeria, Chad, and Liberia
Egypt, Benin, and Gabon.
Tanzania, Somalia, Kenya, and Mali
Sierra Leone, and Algiers,
Dahomey, Namibia, Senegal, Libya
Cameroon, Congo, Zaire.
Ethiopia, Guinea-Bissau, Madagascar
Rwanda, Mahore, and Cayman,
Hong Kong, Abu Dhabi, Qatar, Yugoslavia...
Crete, Mauritania
Then Transylvania,
Monaco, Liechtenstein
Malta, and Palestine,
Fiji, Australia, Sudan

Comment Re:Not answered in review (Score 2) 216

You *do* know IOS has a search, right? Makes it kind of difficult to fail to find an app you're actually looking for.

As for the rest, different strokes, etc. I have no objection if you choose not to use such a feature (for that matter, perhaps the OS could contain a switch to turn it off for those who are unable to manage more than a single level of folders.

As for not being useful, you're not qualified to say what's useful to me.

Comment Re:No, no. Let's not go there. Please. (Score 1) 937

Missed this, sorry:

Perhaps they have never even thought about the topic at all (no thoughts == no knowledge). Nor do they form their identity through comparison with others.

These are not the issue, though. If they hold a belief in a god or gods, they are theist. If they don't, they are atheist. You can change from one to the other, in fact many times, but at any point in time, you *are* one or the other.

That's all the theism / atheism issue addresses. Belief in a god or gods -- or not. Has nothing to do with why, how, which or one's idea of identity. It's a state of being, like being alive, or not, or being able to hear, or not.

Comment Re:Simple set of pipelined utilties! (Score 1) 385

I don't think people understand the Unix philosophy. They think it's about limiting yourself to pipelines, but it's not. It's about writing simple robust programs that interact through a common, relatively high level interface, such as a pipeline. But that interface doesn't have to be a pipeline. It could be HTTP Requests and Responses.

The idea of increasing concurrency in a web application through small, asynchronous event handlers has a distinctly Unix flavor. After all the event handlers tend to run top to bottom and typically produce an output stream from an input stream (although it may simply modify one or the other or do something orthogonal to either like logging). The use of a standardized, high level interface allows you to keep the modules weakly coupled, and that's the real point of the Unix philosophy.

Comment Re:No, no. Let's not go there. Please. (Score 1) 937

Is there a difference between knowledge and belief

Yes. Always.

Knowledge is based, either directly or through a proxy, upon known facts that are some combination of repeatable, consensually experiential, and testable. Sound travels at a particular speed in our atmosphere. This is knowledge.

Beliefs are based upon faith, and cannot be proven, although they can be described and so passed along. Animals cross the rainbow bridge when they die. This is belief.

Either one can be mischaracterized as the other, but examining the issue at hand for the required elements of knowledge will very quickly determine just what it is you're dealing with. Likewise, conviction isn't the issue.

The thing to remember is that just because you have an idea in your head, that doesn't qualify it as knowledge.

Comment Not answered in review (Score 1) 216

Did they enable nested folders yet? The current single level folders are limiting and create unnecessary clutter.

For instance, it'd be nice to have one games folder, inside which might be a folder for board games, one for shooters, one for tower defense, etc.

One that would be of interest to me would be arranged around photography. One main folder, then one for editors, one for astrophoto conditions and apps, one for auroral conditions and apps, one for IR work, one for special effects, etc., one for a DB of my lenses and cameras, one with my portfolio, one with links to photography websites, etc.

Folders within folders is a very natural way to arrange things in a hierarchy; I have never understood Apple's resistance to giving its customers tools they can use to make using IOS easier. In the case of nested folders, you don't *have* to use the feature if you don't want to, anyway... but if you need it, you probably *really* need it.

So here's hoping.

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