Knights on a treadmill

This is interesting. They actually put people in full plate on a treadmill to measure the metabolic load. Their conclusion is that it might have been a decisive factor at Agincourt and perhaps other battles.


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-14204717

How did people use computers before computer geeks came along?

I recently had the following conversation with my brother.

Him: Can your Mac do RAID?
Me: The operating system can, but I only have one drive so I can't.
Him: Do you know anything about RAID?
Me: (thinking about the various servers that I've set up and maintained over the years) Yes.
Him: I know you don't know much about Windows 7, do you know anything about it's RAID?
Me: Yes.
Him: I'm getting an error message about RAID on my system.
Me: What does it say?
Him: I don't know.
Me: Do you have RAID configured in his system? (I was pretty sure he had)
Him: Yes. What does the message mean?
Me: It could mean one of your drives has failed. (That got his attention!)
Him: How do I find out?
Me: Read the message, it should have a number and some more information.

I feel like someone walked up to me on the street and said “I received a letter at home, what does it say?”

I don't know how he got RAID set up on his system, he either blundered through it or a friend did it. If you're going to do RAID on a home system, you really should know something about how to look up error messages.

A new American political party?! Americans Elect have 1.6 million signatures in California.

This has potential. According to the web site, “Americans Elect is the first-ever open nominating process. We’re using the Internet to give every single voter — Democrat, Republican or independent — the power to nominate a presidential ticket in 2012. The people will choose the issues. The people will choose the candidates. And in a secure, online convention next June, the people will make history by putting their choice on the ballot in every state.”

Sounds quite interesting to me. I don't think either party can really do a good job of representing people, and an online system like this could be a step in the right direction. The problem is that the system is so rigged for two and only two parties, it'll be difficult for a third party to gain actual traction.

https://secure.americanselect.org/

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/24/opinion/sunday/24friedman.html?_r=4

http://politics.slashdot.org/story/11/07/24/1322210/Internet-Based-Political-Party-Opens-Doors