Sounds like returning to the norm, from a foreigner's perspective.

"The incarceration rate in the United States of America is the highest in the world."

Something like EIGHT TIMES what it is in Europe, from what this page says:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U...

Land of the free, indeed...

I have just put in a Blade / VM configuration at a school (don't ask what they were running before, you don't want to know).

Our DR plan is that we have an identical rack at another location with blades / storage / VM's / etc. on hot-standby

Our DDR (double-disaster recovery!) plan is to restore the VM's we have to somewhere else, e.g. cloud provider, if something prevents us operating on that plan.

The worries I have are that storage is integrated into the blade server (a SPOF on its own, but at least we have multiple blade servers mirroring that data), and that we are relying on a single network to join them.

The DDR plan is literally there for "we can't get on site" scenarios, and involves spinning up copies of instances on an entirely separate network, including external numbering. It's not a big deal for us, we are merely a tiny school, but if even we're thinking of that and seeing those SPOF's, you'd think someone writing their article into Slashdot would see that too.

All the hardware in the world is useless if that fibre going into the IT office breaks, or a "single" RAID card falls over (or the RAID even degrades, affecting performance). It seems pretty obvious. Two of everything, minimum. And thus two ways to get to everything, minimum.

If you can't count two or more of everything, then you can't (in theory) safely smash one of anything and continue. Whether that's a blade server, power cord, network switch, wall socket, building generator, or whatever, it's the same. And it's blindingly obvious why that is.

Put all your eggs in one basket.
Then make sure you have copies of that basket.

If you're really worried, put half the eggs in one basket and half in another.

We need an article for this?

Hyper-V High Availability Cluster. It's right there in Windows Server. Other OS's have similar capabilities.

Virtualise everything (there are a lot more advantages than mere consolidation - you have to LOVE the boot-time on a VM server as it doesn't have to mess about in the BIOS or spin up the disks from their BIOS-compatible modes, etc.), then make sure you replicate that to your failover sites / hardware.

In the UK:

The age of legal responsibility can be as low as 10. James Bulger's killers, for example. Held personally liable for their actions. This is the "old enough to know" law.

Contract-signing is 16. So a "contract" with Facebook is null and void as they never bothered to check they were over 16. Facebook should terminate the account as soon as they are made aware of it as they are providing service on a void contract.

Financial responsibility, parental responsibility to ensure they are in education, employment or training, and an awful lot of other responsibilities to a child last until they are 18.

In the US, it's a bit different. Hilariously, in the UK, you can legally be married, have sex, have children, drive a car, smoke, drink and sign a contract (hopefully not all at the same time) while still being under parental responsibility because you're not 18.

I live in a country with guaranteed minimum wage.

If the guy sweeping the street doesn't get tips, I don't see why the waitress he sweeps past every morning should. They both received a guaranteed minimum. If that's not enough, there's a reason to campaign for minimum wage rises. Not to tip, charity-like, out of sympathy.

If you're going to tip on the basis of hard work, or sympathy for their plight, tip nurses, tip doctors, tip policemen (you can't, but that's another matter), tip firefighters, tip sewer workers, tip the guy that sweeps the streets cleaner than any other. Don't tip because you feel sorry they are in such a bad job with an employer who doesn't appreciate them.

You say yourself: "tips are often used to allow employers to underpay people"

If you didn't tip, they'd have to pay a proper wage.

In comparison, a spike through the head is probably MORE common and almost certainly more deadly. Should we be avoiding anything spiky at all whatsoever? No. Just be careful around spiky things.

Of you have to ask others if it's time to panic, then it's not.

P.S. Even if others say it IS time to panic, expand your definition of "others" carefully. I have been variously told that I have swine flu, that eggs are killer-bacteria in a shell, that bird flu is going to wipe us all out, the seas are rising, the sky is falling, etc. etc. etc.

If you have to ask, it's not important. If you have to choose who you ask to get the answer you want, it's even less important.

One instruction does not necessarily cause a problem. However, errors build and multiply. Anyone serious about their calculations also calculates the potential error as they go. If an answer doesn't have a "+/- X%" attached to it, then it should have.

As such, for most uses a tiny few decimal places out right past the decimal point aren't a factor in a single calculation. But the error will build if you're not careful. Might not make much difference to the length of a matchstick in a matchstick factory, but will surely hurt when you're laying the foundations for your skyscraper that ends up weighing 10% more than you thought.

As such, fsin is fine for games, 3D visualistions, home calculations, etc. But that small error will build with every transform, every manipulation of the data, etc. and if that matters to you, then it's going to hurt. Floating-point, especially, is something to be handled with care. It affects currency formats (believe it or not) and calculations with an inherent error already. Integer calculations? Most of those are perfectly safe. But floating-point errors build up. It might not make much of a difference at first, but with 2 BILLION instructions per second on each chip, you're talking one hell of a mess on anything that needs to be accurate (which is where mistakes tend to matter most).

A gesture of goodwill is done without expectation.

This isn't.

A recognition of service is performed after the service.

This isn't.

A bribe is performed beforehand with expectation of some return.

This is a bribe. Only in the emotional stakes, maybe, but still a bribe.

P.S. Ran my own business for 12+ years. Currently in IT management. Handling people is not about sucking up to them constantly, nor bribing them into efficiency. It's about expecting normal service, rewarding exceptional service, and thinking about the customer. If my staff gave preference to someone (at other's expense) just because they had bribed them with cookies (or flirting, or carrying something for them), with the expectation clear - I'd be having words. If, however, they receive said cookies for having done a great job, they'd get an entirely different kind of word. But it would be nothing compared to the amount of "cookies" they'd receive for coming and telling me that things need to change, that a customer is in discomfort, or for going above-and-beyond without expectation of reward in the first place.

Sorry, I don't bribe in order to receive good service from people whom I'm paying money for that service in that first place. Provide of don't. That your job is bad isn't my problem. I won't make it any worse, so long as you do it. But I'm not going to bribe service from you.

And it's "under-appreciated" for a reason. They serve drinks. And do a little safety panto. Sure, they probably have to do training to get there, but I have to do training to say I can safely climb a stepladder at work these days - it means nothing.

P.S. Tips are optional. And voluntary. Always have been, always will be. But I know some of us on here live in a country where not paying the tip is actually PENALISED with attempts at humiliating you. Try it on me. Just try it.

If I choose to reward good service, it's done AFTER the service has been performed for me, if the service was exceptional, and on the condition that it was never expected (Bellboys holding their hands out?! Get outta here!).

Yep.

And speak clearly (sorry, it's not racist to suggest they do the announcements in clearly-understood language of the country they've landed in, are going to and - if possible - English).

And they should also be required to STOP the damn announcements about food, adverts, drinks, perfumes etc. that go on and on and on throughout the flight so I can concentrate and distinguish the safety announcement from actual non-important stuff.

That said, I stopped listening to safety announcements 15 years ago. They do nothing, on ships or planes. People still make the same mistakes. You want people to unbuckle the seatbelt first go? Make it like a car seat-belt. You want the lifejacket to work immediately with an incompetent user? Make it foolproof. Don't buy stuff that requires a ten-minute demo for me to understand it, counter to the entirety of the rest of my life's pursuits (nobody had to show me how to put on a car seat belt since I was a baby).

You want me to listen to you? Shut everything else up. Including yourself when I'm trying to sleep. The alternative is that I turn YOU off by plugging headphones in, falling asleep or just plain ignoring you.

I will pay an extra 20GBP per flight if I can be seated in a quiet section with people who've also paid the 20GBP and where we use the call-buttons if we actually WANT something, and other times we don't get disturbed. Hell, I'd pay 20GBP AND listen to your in-flight briefing if it would shut you up for the rest of the journey.

In the UK the biggest denomination in public operation is actually just GBP50. And even that - try giving it to a taxicab driver at 3am and see what he says - most small shops will refuse them precisely because they are the main target of fraud.

I was once given lots of £50's by a relative. It was an absolute pain trying to use them for day-to-day expenses. Some of the large supermarkets will take them but they'll scan them and test them and all sorts before they'll accept them. And a lot of places just won't accept them (sure, you can cause a fuss - but who wants to argue everywhere they go to shop?).

It was just easier to put them in the bank and draw out the equivalent in 20's while I was there.

The one good thing about the modern age is electronic money. I can't remember the last time I had to carry cash (coin or note). And without electronic money can you imagine trying to do Internet shopping etc.

Hell, last time I ordered a pizza, I did so online precisely because I couldn't be bothered to go withdraw some cash just to pay the guy.

It does make money-laundering harder. It does make mistakes easier to make (but there are processes for that, and I've never had a bad experience cancelling a payment even when the company on the other end was entirely unco-operative). And, yes, it does put a lot of your life in the hands of the banks. But I can't really see a future for cash. And certainly not cash in those denominations.

I don't have a tap-to-pay card, however. The problem needing to be solved is how do I pay for JUST a pack of mints with my card? That's tricky in terms of equipment, commission, hassle (entering codes, etc.) and security (I don't trust tap-to-pay yet).

To be honest, last I hear most counterfeiting in the UK is actually on 1GBP coins. Because they are made of cheap metal, they tend to be easier to forge than expensive security features like holograms, etc. The only "solution" is to follow what happened with the 2GBP coin, and that's to make it bi-metallic - which is the next plan from the Bank of England.

P.S. Slashdot really need to sort their systems out. Can't put in a proper bloody pound sign.

British Proverb:

The person who says he can do it, and takes the money, usually then passes the project off to someone else who already knows it's absolutely impossible, and gets sacked for not delivering.

If you think you can do better, please do.

Most spam is handled fairly well these days. When our spam filter on the email falls over, email just traverses and I get complaints from users that they got a SINGLE spam. That tells me how well it operates day-to-day... they just don't see any.

It's annoying though... "can't we stop that", "but it was a RUDE spam!", "how did they get my address", etc. You can explain any number of times but the only way to shut them up is to turn off the spam filter and show them what's happening day in, day out, against our servers. Or my inbox - which has a lot of heavily-advertised email addresses.

Literally, we get dozens or hundreds of thousands of spam emails a day. The fact that people barely notice we have even one is testament to anti-spam. GMail, in this regard, are fabulous and I've worked in schools where the email basically IS GMail (Google Apps for Education, or Google Apps for Business). It's basically a free alternative to Exchange for many schools.

And, damn, does it filter a load of the junk, even if you don't put on the options to limit the domains, etc.

And if you operate a mail server you'll find out how hard it is to send email to GMail. My personal domain has SPF, DKIM, reverse DNS, etc. and still it's a faff where sometimes GMail thinks I'm spamming my own GMail account from my own domain-forwarding. To be honest, 99% of the time, it's right- spam slips through my email filters, gets forwarded to my GMail, and GMail still makes a fuss even though it's certified, secured, etc. as from my domain by that point.

It's hard to do better than GMail. Think you can do it? Go try. You'll struggle to do it for yourself, let alone for millions of people whose idea of spam varies wildly.

Same.

Some bloke in Ireland must have had a very awkward phone call from a local department store, and there's a guy with the same name who keeps trying to hire cars over there too.

He must think every car hire place is shit because I never confirm his bookings for him...