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Comment Re:Repeat after me (and others) (Score 2) 356

RAID fails because hard disks (probably the same type and batch) running together get hit at the same rate as the matching disks do not fail with the same chance distribution. Their failure correlation is therefore to be quite high. This explains that rebuilding a RAID array after failure can be a very dangerous operation and could easily lead to total failure. Usually, doing (incremental) backups are the safer option when a single disk fails as that is not nearly as invasive as a complete RAID rebuild.

Comment Re:well... (Score 5, Informative) 148

It depends on what you call technically strong. As https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.xkcd.com%2F936%2F indicates, it is not intuitively clear which passwords are strong. Humans have a terrible instinct when it comes to entropy in data and therefore need to be guided in choosing a password. This often results in a check for length(which is a good thing), but also requirements for capitals, numbers and special characters(which is often used poorly). The result is that people will use passwords like Welcome0! which can be figured out by many people simultaneously and therefore is a weak password.

The 'technical' strength of a password is connected to its entropy. Using a password that satisfies some byzantine requirement, but contains not enough entropy is also weak in the technical sense. "Correct horse battery staple"-like passwords are strong, "Correct horse battery staple" itself is incredibly weak, thanks to mr. Monroe.

Comment Apple is being weird and annoying (Score 5, Informative) 771

This Apple being weird and special again. The reason for ditching floppies was actually quite simple, it outlived its usefulness. It was replaced by CDs, DVDs and at a later time USB-sticks. There is no actual need for floppy disks and therefore FDDs are obsolete. This is however not the case for the 3.5mm jack. Apple likes to "innovate" by removing sensible things from their electronics. Their new Macbook, for instance, has only one single usb-c port and no other ports. You can call this strategy brilliant but in practice this means that people have to buy an extra adapter to connect all their peripherals to the one single usb-c port. It's not an improvement, it's a cashgrab and an annoyance. And naturally the Apple customers are gobbling it up.

The same holds here. What's wrong with the standard 3.5mm jack? It works, it's universal(and I believe unencumbered by patents) and the peripherals are everywhere. It's a solution that works and any "better" idea on audio should at least be included side-to-side with the old adapters as this will allow an actually better standard for audio ports to form. As it is, this is a simple money and power grab from Apple by making stuff incompatible. Sure, you can buy a converter, but knowing Apple this will cost you dearly. Apple is being annoying again and the audio peripheral market will suffer as this will gain traction as Apple has clout in the electronics world.

Comment Most importantly (Score 2) 90

As somebody who likes to teach math privately to people I recommend one thing first and foremost: Intuition. In mathematics, intuition is often thrown under the carpet as distracting from playing with mathematical concepts but in order to understand mathematics, you need to understand WHY people made formulas the way they do. As a result, students often have a 'see monkey, do monkey' mentality while having no true understanding of the topic. People with even less understanding aren't even able to replicate the desired results.

In general, the less the student has a feeling for mathematics, the more you need to teach intuition first and formulas later. Math students are of course required to have a higher level of understand, but this is obvious.

Comment Re:Dumb argument (Score 2) 80

Bullshit. If you advertise X, then you should assume, right from the very beginning, that *EVERYONE* is going to use the maximum amount of X, and plan accordingly. Otherwise, it demonstrates that you are dishonest and never intended for people to actually use X -- it was just an advertising gimmick designed to draw people in for something that you never intended to deliver.

You probably know about internet overselling. In fact, the statistical truth that not everyone is going to use a service to the maximal extent of their capability is used in every area where people need to plan. You don't dedicate a persons internet line to them personally since it is quite unlikely that they use it fully all the time. You don't have as many toilets as employees at a company as not everyone will use it at the same time. If you offer storage, not everyone will use the same amount of space as the needs of people are different.

Ofcourse, that doesn't mean you shouldn't be prepared for heavier usage of your system. But to expect MS or Google to make good on all the potential storage space they offered for the total price of zero is lunacy and doesn't work in the real world.

Comment Funny (Score 4, Informative) 143

" The Allies were able to take the Axis by surprise as it was assumed the armored divisions wouldn't be able to break through this area.: ...which is funny because the French didn't expect the tanks of the Germans to be able to pass through the Ardennes. The moment they realized what the plan was, it was too late and France had no option but to surrender, even if possessing a superior force.

Comment Re:It's the end of the world as we know it! (Score 5, Insightful) 307

Trying to get companies with big internet presence to return their allocated blocks to the (ARIN)-pool would take for too much time and effort and is without any form of guarantee. Furthermore, even if they would manage to return the blocks to the pool in a couple of years, it would both be too late and too little and the demand for address space far outpaces the supply that ipv4 can offer. Realistically, ipv6 is the only long-term solution for any part of the world even including Africa as the increase of internet availability on the continent will rapidly consume their own pool. Hopefully, the African states are smart enough to push for an ipv6-enabled infrastructure.

Comment Re:Easy (Score 1) 613

From the Wikipedia article for your google search

"As a relatively new field of study, men's studies was formed largely in response to, and as a critique of, an emerging men's rights movement, and as such, has been taught in academic settings only since the 1970s. In many universities, men's studies is a correlation to women's studies or part of a larger gender studies program, and as such its faculty tends to be sympathetic to, or engaged in, advocacy of feminist politics."

Sounds like a part of women studies to me.

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