The best filesystem to survive a crash is a filesystem designed for an operating system that is expected to crash: NTFS.

Can you say "windfall for US Intelligence" ??

The Chinese-Communists would have to be really, really stupid to put a hardware back-door into their microprocessors. Such a hole is inevitable to be discovered and exploited by western intelligence, whether the means are covertly stealing the information or reverse-engineering. It practically guarantees that they could never trust any system with one of these chips in it. And it gets better -- even if the systems that those chips are in aren't themselves "sensitive", if they connect in any way to systems that are sensitive, they could be used as a means to compromise the sensitive systems.

You're talking about an oppressive regime that manages to keep 1.3 billion people happy enough to not revolt. You're talking about a regime that has managed to keep a $300b / year trade deficit in their favour with the United States for the past 15 years (which, admittedly, says more about us than them). You're talking about a country with one of the largest militaries on the planet, and one of the fastest growing economies on the planet. We may not like them very much, but they sure don't seem to be fsck-ups enough to make that kind of mistake.

... Now, the possibility of them installing a hardware backdoor into products that they only sell to the West? That's an entirely different matter. But there is no way they'd want to use those same systems in their own infrastructure. And that's what this new "national" microchip is about -- a common ISA for their own internal use, to remove reliance on foreigners (that would be us).

Intel designed Thunderbolt in conjunction with Apple. Which probably means Intel did most of the leg-work on it. How exactly is it "interesting" that Intel is promoting something they invented?

A lot of people seem to forget that Netscape's CEO publicly stated that their goal was to create a platform/api that applications could run on, and make the underlying OS completely irrelevant. In the Bible/Torah, David defeated Goliath. But 99.9% of the time, when the little punk challenges the big kid on the block, the punk gets creamed.

That doesn't make MS's behaviour right. But in any rational human being, it burns off your sympathy for Netscape.

Actually, this sounds like a good move on Cisco's part. Why?

1. Apple makes devices for the consumer market. They have never had good support for the enterprise, where an IT department needs to have the ability to lock down any and all devices on their network.

2. Cisco, however, has very strong ties to the enterprise market. This will give them a definite advantage in both marketing and knowing what features potential (corporate IT) clients will require.

3. Apple has proven that there is a (consumer) market sector for these types of devices. There is a chance that market will fall over to the corporate sector.

The fact is that some of the very features which would make this unattractive to the consumer market are requirements for the corporate/enterprise sector. Such as the ability to lock down the app-store, and place other restrictions and controls on the device's usage. The corporate sector is long accustomed to paying more for less, so the price isn't as big an issue as many here are making it.

At this point, I guess we will just have to see if a tablet is of any real use in the enterprise.
My suspicion is that, right now, that answer is mostly "no". Time will tell.

Simply boot from another OS. Knoppix is an excellent choice: it can read/write NTFS partitions, and provides you with a nice GUI to move/rename/delete files.

This is my method of choice for removing Windows viruses.

The final step for this virus would be to afterwards use the `fixmbr` tool.

Piece of cake. No reformatting necessary.

How about making it a crime to have a robocall from a politician that has spoofed caller ID?

I'm pretty sure when I was getting phone calls for the 000-000-0000 was not a valid phone number.... and was simply used to block anon call blocking.

Heck, I'd even do it if I had to drive to a local spot and pick them up. Why? Because I'm sick and tired of having to goto one local store (Wegmans) with their idea of sale prices - 2 for $5....

Let me order or queue what I need during the week and I'll decide when to go get it. No lists, no coupons.

Not the software, but the file format.

A former engineer at our company ran into a problem- his 'mac' produced help files would only work in version 1.0 of the context software, and the minimum upgrade was to 3.1. 3.0 was the last version that was backwards compatible with 1.0.

In short, it was a cluster f.... but he solved it brilliantly.

Looking at the header of the file... he discovered that the FIRST damn byte was off by 1 hex code. So all of the tech support calls, all of the demands for fixing this- all of these issues and being told there was NO WAY to make the earlier files compatible with the most recent ... were bullshit. He hex-edited the old files and they worked perfectly fine.

I wish he still worked for us instead of being laid off. His intelligence is missed.

You mean like how Linux distros cannot support MP3, and users have to download and install support for it themselves? Yet this hasn't been a serious obstacle for MP3 players in linux in recent years.

The same "click here to download and install a h264 codec" process could easily be added to linux installs.

You do realise that Microsoft is not the patent holder on h264?

I've tried a few dozen different methods of making backups and nothing ever really works- if you want cheap, it won't be automated or simple. If you want simple, it won't be cheap. If you want automated, you might miss something.

While 16 gb of data seems like a lot there are days I shoot 16 gb before lunch- when mentoring HS students and filming events you can blow through 16gb very quickly. Now there are some great photo applications that offer you opportunities to back up everything, but I'm just really not into those as I don't trust them.

My suggestions, which work for me-

DIM (Digital Image Mover). Download, rename, renumber, date, and CRC check your files.
(I really wish.... it had a dual copy method).

Immediately burn a DVD backup. I've gotten lax here because I started shooting more... otherwise... ...insert another 500gb to 1tb drive into an external e-sata or usb3 reader and copy all files that you just downloaded (or run DIM again) to the external device.

Duplicate that a third time.

Disconnect both copies.

When one is full, add another drive and store off site.

I have about 10 different HDs in rotation and store images on my media server as well as the internal hardware RAID-5 system. Hard drives go to my Father-in-law's place for backup.

This has been covered half a dozen times yet no one in the media gets it: 3D that is being popularized strains the eyes and messes with the brain. I've yet to see a movie that states you shouldn't drive for 2 hours after watching it to let your depth perception recover- because it has been hacked at with the method of presentation.

Everyone LOVES 3D that really pops- and to get that level of pop the eyes must be further and further strained outwards. While this is fine for the short term, immediate needs doing it for any length of time is a huge stressor.

Unfortunately I am at home and don't have any of the papers that were published in the late 80's and 90's about these issues. Sega (damn memory) had a unit that was going to be 3D capable but ended up canning it for a variety of issues- including the health of children. Obviously now adays that isn't a concern and money, as always, comes first.

I know of some military groups that prohibit their members from operating a vehicle for 8 hours after performing 2-4 hours of stereo work. They must be driven home by a buddy. That's not over-reacting in my opinion.

Crewmen of submarines must recover their 3D vision after spending so long cooped up with nothing 'far' available to be seen. They're also banned from operating vehicles while in port for some duration.

Why is it any surprise that a developing brain can be traumatized by seeing something that it wasn't wired to see?

Go ahead- screw your kids up. Mine won't be. I've got hundreds of other ways to mess them up :)

Contrary to the humorous jokes about popping balloons, mentos and coke, etc- these do have significant explosive force. When they're at full pressure they can maim. While the first google search of "dry ice bomb accident" turns up a youtube video of a small bottle, one can also see videos from Mythbusters where they used 2 liter containers.

Very quickly you can see that putting one of these inside of a mailbox can do serious damage.

These are no different than the drain bombs of my 'youth' when kids were stuffing them in mailboxes everywhere. Those did cause serious injuries- given the reaction of the lye and the shrapnel from the explosions.

Should Mom be charged? No, she shouldn't, and there should be some common sense applied. But since a 14 year old can't exactly buy dry ice (at least not at the places I fill my CO2 tanks at) then she was supplying him- and if she wasn't supervising him doing this... there is a degree of recklessness that needs to be addressed.

Maybe she doesn't understand how dangerous these things can be? I doubt the kid was wearing a face shield with gloves and an apron to protect himself incase of premature detonation.

As a society we all would pay if this child was injured. That's the overriding concern- and society would be screaming right now if the police had showed up, said "Oh, OK, keep at it" and left... and then the kid was in an accident and cost (lets say an eye) his sight.

You can't have it both ways.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_T220/T221_LCD_monitors

We've got a few. They're awesome. You can't see structure more than 2 feet away from the monitor- even with corrected vision.

Now motion performance, that's another issue...