Let's just make sure that message is hammered into the head of every guy, no matter friend or foe, who shows up with one, and the whole thing will be cancelled faster than Google Wave.

So that bit about the rotten fruit seemed like a spur of the moment comment. But the prison arrangement you really had figured out to the last detail... Did I miss any prison games lately? "Theme Prision", "The Sims Behind Bars", or "GTA - Caught DLC"?

Your argument for total police surveillance of public space is flawed on two points:

1) Your comparison between yours or your neighbour's private recording, and blanket systematic surveillance is not valid. It is not valid because of the difference in scale. When you commit a crime, or a good deed, scale always matters. Kill a person, vs. a million, and you will see very different reactions. Same thing if you give a homeless person a coffee, or feed million hungry.

If we were to allow blanket police surveillance of all public space, with automatic face-detection, and what not of other technologies they deem useful, we'd end up in a 1984 / Kafka world of tyranny. Only from the false positives alone, there would be a prison population dwarfing the US' current for-profit "correctional" facilities.


2) Secondly, you seem to believe that the police can be trusted and uphold the law and code of conduct to the letter. Spend any time searching (YouTube or Google) for police brutality and mistakes, and you will find that the opposite is true. And no, this is not that case of "a few bad apples", it is a natural effect from the abuse and corruption of power.

Any power or privilege will be abused by a not insignificant number of people it is given to. It is unfortunately human nature. The police force is no different, and that is why there is thousands on thousands of videos showing the police acting like thugs all over the place. They cannot be trusted, and we must seek to limit their power, not expand it.

So coming back to the original problem of camera surveillance, the case in the article was a typical example of abuse of power by those who were entrusted with it. Give out more power, and this effect will only multiply. Nor are technological solutions to this social problem adequate or possible; they never are. Instead, we must simply avoid putting up cameras everywhere.


To summarize: All power will be abused. Therefore, we must grant only as little power as possible to any system or person in control, lest they abuse it. That's a basic property of any modern democracy, and the police force is no different.

Totally with you, and here's the quote you're looking for:

"Android is very different from the GNU/Linux operating system because it contains very little of GNU. Indeed, just about the only component in common between Android and GNU/Linux is Linux, the kernel. People who erroneously think "Linux" refers to the entire GNU/Linux combination get tied in knots by these facts, and make paradoxical statements such as "Android contains Linux, but it isn't Linux". If we avoid starting from the confusion, the situation is simple: Android contains Linux, but not GNU; thus, Android and GNU/Linux are mostly different."

Source: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/android-and-users-freedom.html

> an epidemic of people rocking in the corner and talking to themselves.

I didn't realise Google Glass was released for mainstream adoption yet. ;-)

> install a full version of Linux

Also known as "GNU/Linux" (as opposed to Android/Linux)?

Does it matter, you say? When you talk to your mom, probably not. When you discuss on geek forum, yes, it does make you come across a slightly more informed if you don't call it "half Linux", "full Linux" or "real Linux".

> I wish there was a standard for servers, so that I wouldn't have to keep reconfiguring my data center layout.

I know! The 1U vs. 1Ui is driving me nuts!! Why would anybody think that 1024 mm to the meter would make any sense? Thus a 44.45 mm 1U becomes 45.516 mm in the 1Ui unit!!


(Since this is the Internet, I guess I'll have to put in the small print: This is a joke. It's supposed to be funny).

Behind the clouds, the sky is always blue.

> What you really need to do is buy a couple drives and beat the heck out of them with *realistic* usage patterns.

No. We need to stop confusing stress testing from load testing simulations. Your "realistic" usage patterns will just be another simulation with different parameters, in the end.

The posted article is an estimate on what a stress test would give you. However, as already mentioned by others, some of the parameters are off. The write count is lower, but so is the top write speed. Let's say 250MByte/s, and 10k write count on a 32 GB disk. Using his plots, I then get a cross of the 10% line after about 14 days.

So when we have an estimate which matches what we have on our hands in terms of write count and controller speed, we can go ahead and do a stress test to verify the hypothesis. Buy a few disks from different manufactures, and let them run. Only problem is, you'll have to spend time on erasing and checking as well, so it will take at least twice as long, so maybe a bit more than a month. Still doable, though.

As for the "realistic" test. Sure, let us know in ten or twenty years when you have your results.

> it's a post-privacy society, get over it.

That's just utter bullshit. Some degree of privacy is a basic human need; in fact a right. Just because some kids are not bright enough to yet understand that exposing their whole life on the Internet is not a good idea, does not mean that the rest of society has to follow their mistakes.

As long as we live in free societies, we are still free to control what and how much information is shared. Admittedly, there might be some conveniences you will not be able to take advantage off, but that's an individual choice. However, to be able to have a choice, it is important that alternative infrastructure, systems and user applications are available. Luckily, they are: You can set up your own e-mail server, your own web hosting, chat, VOIP and so on; all based on open source. Bitcoin is still somewhat niche, but will hopefully be one amongst many alternatives to Visa/MasterCard or Paypal. And so the story continues.

As long as we don't follow in the footsteps of kids who will gobble up the latest Insta-hipster-iThing like a godsend, we'll be just fine.

But *what* are all those apps for? 41 GB; that's a lot of stuff. (Somebody mentioned a recovery partition, but even 20 GB is too much for the OS and apps).

> this person didn't know what they were doing was illegal.

I didn't get that bit. Surly, she knew after the first strike? She was informed at the first occurrence, right? Or is there just some internal counter in somebody's system, which only sends out a letter once it hits 3?

It seems that Samsung will have to take the blame for this; that is, they should have tested for this. As it stands, it should be considered a manufacturing fault on their part. So the question is now, will the unlucky owners of Samsung bricks have them replaced under warranty?

Before we go ahead with any of this, could we please not "verbify" all the nouns? In other words, feel free to implement a proxy based p2p protocol or network, as long as you don't "proxify" it.

They sure don't make the wooosh'es as they used back in the old day...