Experts: No cure in sight for unpredictable hard drive loss

Read it all, or the moral of the story is, back up your data and you really should also do mirror backups of your operating system drive so if your drive fails it doesn’t take too much time to restore, relicense software etc.! Expect that if you keep your computer long enough the drive will fail.

See more in misterian’s computer tips.

What a farce! Who are they trying to kid. They want to be do-gooders but they played on a cruise ship for crying out loud! Cruise ships have got to be the most blatant waste of energy on earth.

I heard about this on a CBC Freestyle podcast with Zero Footprint who are offsetting their carbon by planting trees.

Here’s another one: “Recycling is Good, but Reduction is Better,” Say Barenaked Ladies

BNL on the road again | Gristmill: The environmental news blog | Grist

My wife had a laugh at a block of Ipsum Lorem and this is what they say about it.

Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry’s standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book. It has survived not only five centuries, but also the leap into electronic typesetting, remaining essentially unchanged. It was popularised in the 1960s with the release of Letraset sheets containing Lorem Ipsum passages, and more recently with desktop publishing software like Aldus PageMaker including versions of Lorem Ipsum. From: Lorem Ipsum - All the facts - Lipsum generator

Wikipedia further says:

The text is derived from Cicero’s De finibus bonorum et malorum (About the Extremes of Goods and Evils, or alternatively [About] The Purposes of Good and Evil ). The original passage began: Neque porro quisquam est qui dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet, consectetur, adipisci velit (Translation: “Neither is there anyone who loves grief itself since it is grief and thus wants to obtain it”).

I saw the new bottle of vinegar from the grocery store today and it said “Artificial Vinegar”. This may be due to Islamic interpretations of what is allowed and not allowed.

Also it is noteworthy that the Qur’an specifies intoxicants, as being Haram. An intoxicant is, by definition, a substance eaten, drunk or smoked with the sole intention of becoming intoxicated, or a substance created with that purpose in mind. This basically means alcoholic drinks and narcotic drugs.

Any food which was made with an alcoholic drink is Haram because, although the food itself probably couldn’t get you drunk, its alcoholic ingredient was made for that purpose. So make sure you check the ingredients label carefully!

In contrast, alcohol can be found in some Halal foods, such as bread, soy sauce and vinegar (even cider vinegar or wine vinegar). These sometimes contain minute amounts of alcohol as a result of a natural reaction between certain chemicals during the manufacturing process (as opposed to alcoholic drinks being deliberately added to food to add flavour), and so couldn’t be classified as Haram. From: Islam Online

Also Islam Online also says:

… What I see is that if wine changes into vinegar, it becomes pure and lawful as it has changed from its original state and this requires a new ruling as is the case with all other converted impurities regardless of whether this occurs naturally or by human interference. Wine itself is a pure substance as it was made from grapes. After becoming an intoxicant, it becomes prohibited. Once it changes and lacks the intoxicating characteristic, it regains its original ruling. …

“Artificial vinegar” is acetic acid that is made by a chemical process. “Natural vinegar ” is acetic acid that is made in a biological process using the Acetobacter aceti bacteria. If the “natural vinegar” is distilled, it is very difficult to tell the difference between it and the “artificial vinegar”.

From: The difference between artificial vinegar and natural vinegar

Click here.

BBC NEWS | Have Your Say | Taking on the Amazon: Swimmer’s diary

Slovenian marathon swimmer Martin Strel is attempting to become the first person to swim the entire length of the Amazon.

Crazy!

Here’s his website.

This is an interesting program on tech that is on BBC World. Here is the website with interesting links etc.

BBC NEWS | Programmes | Click

The snowmobile was chained to the front porch of the house, but that didn’t stop a thief in eastern Ontario early Friday morning.

Read the rest on CBC’s web site.

‘If I was advising someone to chain or cable their snowmobile to something, I would suggest something immovable like a tree or something that’s not going to be able to be dragged away.’— Ontario Provincial Police Const. Dana Mellon

At least we don’t have to worry about this in Kuwait! And at least the Canadian police give good advice.

Even in Kuwait the Shias get a hard time. And in Iraq it is much worse, but it isn’t religion, it’s about the opressed and the opressors.

…For those who follow Iraq from afar, the daily stories of sectarian slaughter are perplexing. Why are the Shi’ites and Sunnis fighting? Why now? There are several explanations for the timing of the outbreak of hostilities, each tied to a particular interpretation of how events unfolded after the fall of Saddam Hussein: flawed American postwar policies, provocation by foreign jihadis, retaliation by militias like al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army, the ineptitude of Iraqi politicians and, lately, Iranian interference. But the rage burning in people like Muslawi and Hussein has much deeper and older roots. It is the product of centuries of social, political and economic inequality, imposed by repression and prejudice and frequently reinforced by bloodshed. The hatred is not principally about religion.…

Read the full story here:
Behind the Sunni-Shi’ite Divide — Thursday, Feb. 22, 2007 — Page 1 — TIME

Dvorak Uncensored » Cows + cannabis, quell your munchies and dope needs in one stop.