BTRFS and ZFS both do checksumming and can detect bit-rot. If you create a RAID array with them (using their native RAID capabilities) they can automatically correct it too. Using rsync and unison I once found a file with a nice track of modified bytes in it -- spinning rust makes a great cosmic ray or nuclear recoil detector. Or maybe the cosmic ray hit the RAM and it got written to disk. So, use ECC RAM.

But "bit-rot" occurs far less frequently than this: I find is that on a semi-regular basis my entire filesystem gets trashed (about once every year or three). This happened to me just last week...my RAID1 BTRFS partitions (both of them) got trashed because one of my memory modules went bad. In the past I've had power supplies go bad causing this, or brown outs, and in other cases I never identified the cause. I've seen this happen across ext3, jfs, xfs, and btrfs so it's (probably) not the file system's fault. In such cases, fsck will often make the problem worse. (Use LVM and its "snapshot" feature to perform fsck on a snapshot without destroying the original). You'd think these advanced filesystems would have a way to rewind to a working copy (for instance in BTRFS -- mount a previous "generation") but this seems to not be the case.

Anyway, btrfs guys, your recovery tools could be a lot better. The COW enables some pretty fancy recovery techniques that you guys don't seem to be doing yet. If you've got a great btrfs or zfs recovery technique, please reply and tell us.

Brilliant. Every time I've been forced to not pick up poop, it was because I didn't have a bag, not because I wanted to (and where possible I always go back and get it later). I've had my dog shit three times on one walk. I'm really tired of hearing "solutions" to problems created by psychopaths. This "solution" using poop and DNA utterly lacks empathy towards dog owners, and that's what psychopaths do. There are better ways.

You've obviously never owned a dog. Sometimes your dog shits twice and you only have one bag. Sometimes you're rushing to work. Sometimes you can't find the shit.

Don't be a dick. This (and your) response is that of a psychopath.

Because a dick measuring contest is the best way to resolve disputes. Everyone is being a dick here. Take the high road, don't be a dick.

Wow, what a wonderful way to improve the already adversarial relationship between property managers and tenants. No thanks, I'll live elsewhere. If it were my building, I'd quietly have maintenance clean up any poop they found, and verbally remind tenants if they catch them in the act.

It will not take "a generation" to make the shift. It will take a systematic change in the hiring and funding priorities of universities, labs, and grant agencies. A faculty candidate who has chosen to publish only in open access journals (with no articles in Science or Nature or other "prestigious" journals) needs to be able to win the job over another candidate with publications in "prestigious" journals. Likewise, a researcher must be able to win a grant over other researchers under the same circumstances.

Currently, choosing to publish in open-access journals is arguably career suicide.

Patent enforcement should be purely economic. How much money did the infringing party make off using the patent, how much did the patent holder invest to create the patent, and therefore how much do they owe to the patent holder? Restitution should consist entirely of monetary awards.

The patent holder is often not the most capable or appropriate entity to utilize the patent. Enforcing bans like this is anti-competitive and doesn't help anyone. The patent holder would be better off receiving money from a more competent implementation of its patent, than banning all competitors and forcing everyone to use their incompetent device.

The solution to low-frequency brute force attempts is Denyhosts. It just blocks any host with repeated failed login attempts. I've been using it for longer than I can remember, probably longer than this "Hail Mary" botnet has been in existence. I'm not sure why this author seems to have never heard of it.

Not to be a stick in the mud...but how is this better than the more commonly available CMOS cameras on all our cell phones? It doesn't seem to have the resolution to identify spectral transition lines (and thereby identify chemical compounds). Could you combine it with a laser or two to identify specific compounds? Since air is transparent in 400nm-700nm, it can't tell you the atmosphere is breathable...unless you ionized it first and made it glow.

What would you use this for?

And credit card transaction fees are 2-3% while bitcoin is zero. That's a tremendous viscosity on the economy, it's just hidden from the purchaser since the vendor pays. Again. Bitcoin wins.

BTC also has several usability problems, like the long time to clear a transaction (with 6 recommended confirmations, it's between 15 and 30 minutes.)

Keep in mind that ACH transactions take upwards of 4 days to clear while your money is in limbo, and wire transaction fees are exorbitant (generally $50 or more). So bitcoin wins. Of course, this is a US problem...the rest of the world has faster and cheaper transactions.

If this fingerprint scanner works as poorly and as slowly as the fingerprint scanner on my Thinkpad, there's no way in hell anyone would want this on a gun.

If on the other hand you want to make sure no one can ever fire the gun, this sounds great.

I'd rather fight about the details of implementation and bureaucracy than continue to allow content producers to completely block some uses, sue people over others, and charge exorbitant fees to those they don't like.

I'm thinking that with compulsory licensing (as I describe it), new business models would be enabled because they don't have to ask permission. It would just be their responsibility to pay the negotiated fee. (and they don't have to do any negotiation at all since it's set on a large scale -- renegotiated periodically by content owner and distributor stake-holders and not set by fiat by one or the other). There would be no "licensing deals", and e.g. movie studios wouldn't be able to discriminate against iTunes, Netflix, Amazon, or TPB.

Payment would mostly be by the honor system, using copyright registrations to figure out who to pay (imagine every file having a "copyright holder" hash in it somewhere that identifies who to pay). I'm sure content owners would use a trade organization (MPAA) to track down non-payers, but they wouldn't be able to sue for more than e.g. 3*(license fee) so no more grandmas with $100,000 bills for 2 songs, and it only would make sense for them to go after large distributors.

Imagine an app that takes a hash of each media file you have, looks it up in a central copyright database, and tells you how much it would cost to copy it all onto your friend's laptop, and it would all be legal. I don't want *enforced* drm-style payment, just decent and legal accounting...there are always exceptions and I don't want to re-buy all my music when my HDD crashes, nor do I want anyone's software to tell me whether what I'm doing is legal or not.

Who said it was a tax? Or that the government was involved? All I meant by "compulsory licensing" is that the owner of content would be legally obligated to grant possession and distribution to any entity that asks, for a fixed fee that is negotiated on a large scale (rather than a negotiated punitive damage in court). I'm imagining this would be privately administered, except that there has to be a law to get it started. E.g. imagine that everything on TPB was explicitly legal, and that TPB was tasked with collecting $1.50 for each movie...

This is a good reason to have content production and distribution handled by different entities. Content producers are paranoid and afraid that everyone will abscond with their special little flower, while content distributors are overly liberal in distributing to as wide an audience as possible. It makes sense for these two groups to fight it out to decide what the best compromise of protection vs. distribution is.

Personally, I want compulsory licensing. Posessing or obtaining content would always be legal, and the question becomes who you're supposed to pay and how much (a non-discriminatory licensing fee). It turns the question into an economic one, instead of a criminal one. An entity distributing content without collecting the licensing fee could be sued, but only for an amount proportional to the licensing fees.