Salon.com Arts & Entertainment | Was Hitler human?
It seems to me that demonizing and dehumanizing someone like Hitler is a coping mechanism that allows us, as humans, to go on. How could we go on otherwise, if a person could do what he could? How can we go on if we didn’t stop him?
The danger is that by demonizing someone like Hitler, we help blind ourselves to people like him that come after. We deprive ourselves of the understanding we need to recognize that growing evil in someone.
I have grand plans to flesh out my home network
with, among other things, a box to serve as my main fileserver in order to
hold backups. These plans are stalled by a lack of space and a desire to
save money.
Nevertheless, I am very anxious about the integrity of
my data. I don’t want to loose anything and I dread the thought having to
reinstall an OS and all my applications by hand on one of my existing desktops.
As an interim solution, I was thinking of buying a firewire drive enclosure
and a big IDE drive to go in it, adding a firewire drive to one of my computers
and use it as a source of extra storage & network & local backup.
I realize though that for the same price, I could probably get a cheap used
low end PC and add a big drive. It would be bigger, it wouldn’t be as fast
and it wouldn’t have the dual drives I want in a server, but it would probably
be good enough.
Still, the idea of a firewire drive is compelling. They make enclosures with both Firewire and USB2 support. Such a thing could almost give you a completely portable computing environment, just plug
it into any machine and boot from it. Older machines might require a boot CD with the right drivers/loader, but that wouldn’t be so bad.
Symmantec is on my list! Their anti-virus software breaks Networking on Windows 2000 when it is uninstalled. This must be a known issue, since I found other references to it on the web, and yet they haven’t released an update, even though they update their AntiVirus software continuously.
The long story is that I dowloaded and installed a trial copy of Norton AntiVirus a while back. Once the trial expired, I deferred the decision on whether to purchase it and uninstalled it to get rid of all the annoying popups letting me know that my trial is over.
Upon rebooting my machine, I found that I was unable to access anything over my network connection. My computer has been a bit twitchy about starting its network connections properly the first time, so I disabled and reenabled the connection to no avail. I tried various other things, like removing the network interface from the Windows configuration and rebooting so that it would re-create it, but still nothing.
I tried to force the computer to lease an IP address from the DHCP server on my network, and I got an error so I checked the event log for more errors. There I found that the DHCP service wasn’t started because a service it depended on called SYMTDI wasn’t starting due to a missing file.
Fortunately, I have another computer that Symantec didn’t mess up, so I was able to do a search on SYMTDI on Google. Near the top of the list was a page about someone else with similar problems, and their solution.
So, thanks to Google for finding relevant results, and thanks to Moshe Yudkowsky, for taking the time after fixing his own computer to create a webpage about his own experience with this problem, and how he solved it.
No thanks to Symantec for not fixing this problem (which seems likely to afflict anyone uninstalling this product) in one of their regular updates.
“Don’t be put off by the awkwardly phrased manifesto, download it, and try it out.”
— Nicholas Riley, Tuesday, April 23, 2002
I couldn’t have put it better myself.
ZOË is a personal web application, written in Java, that runs on your desktop, connects to your mailserver, and provides a browser based interface for searching and browsing an up-to-date index of your mail.
I don’t think I love it, but it embodies some interesting ideas in the form of running code.
I wish Google would re-index this page.
auto repair
I have a theory about auto repair. Up until now, I pretty much bought in to the idea that cars (engines, mostly) have gotten so complex and so computerized that there isn’t much a mechanic can do, other than rely on the computer diagnostic codes and replace expensive modules.
I have my car in the shop right now because I had an episode a few days ago where the engine slipped into a lurching idle and then was weak and lumpy at speed (like one cylinder wasn’t up to snuff). After talking to one of the guys at the shop (I don’t even know what he does, I think he is probably more a salesperson than a mechanic) about what they are going to do to it, I had an epiphany.
I don’t really buy their rationale about what they have to replace. It boils down to “thats what the computer says is wrong ( a faulty idle speed motor ), and besides your explanation of the symptoms reinforces that, even though I didn’t understand all the symptoms before reaching this conclusion. But, if that doesn’t do it, I am sure this other part will complete the repair (a neutral safety switch, which sounds totally unrelated ).”
Unfortunately, the problem has proven to be intermittant, so I’m not sure what options I have.
But, here is my epiphany:
The real “problem” with auto repair today is the result of a gradual cycle of evolution dominated by two interrelated factors.
1. Computer Diagnostics have made some diagnoses easier to make.
2. The diagnostic skill of mechanics has dropped.
It doesn’t hurt that both the auto industry and the auto repair industry have a vested interest in this state of affairs since it:
1. Decreaces labor costs by reducing the skill level required of mechanics.
2. Increaces the average cost of repairs, thereby increacing revenue.