The best and the brightest ....

Let’s pray for our government officials. Panalangin din po natin ang mga namumuno na best and brightest.

I do not claim that the photos are that of officials of the government. The photos can be easily found in the Internet and are just symbolisms. They are symbols of somebody who is part of the best and the brightest in the government.

Photo credits:
http://thesplendorofthechurch.com
http://www.manilaspeak.com
http://kisa2000.yolasite.com 
http://www.twitter.com

Another one bites the dust....RIP Extratorrent!

Be smart, back up!

Smart, mtbf, mttf, afr, argh*. These are just a few of the acronyms that pertain to hard disk failure. A systems manager might be forgiven for not knowing what these really mean, but ignoring the tell-tale signs is not smart and will lead to a shorter mean time between failures (mtbf) and mean time to failures (mttf).

Manufacturers made a smart acronym for self-monitoring, analysis and reporting technology. Smart (the technology) enables the monitoring of important parameters, and, thus, early detection of a coming hard disk failure. The smart systems manager heeds the warnings.

The mtbf indicates the expected operating time between two consecutive failures in hours. The mtbf considers the life cycle of a device that fails repeatedly, is repaired and returned to service again.  The mttf indicates the expected operating time until the failure of a device expressed in hours. Mtbf and mttf are almost synonymous in usage. Sometimes mtbf refers to mean time before failure. Afr (annualized failure rate) on the other hand, is the percentage failure share of a certain amount of hard disks, which is extrapolated to one year based on expectation values.

Manufacturers advertise server-type hard disks to have an mtbf of more than 1.2 million hours. One year is 8,760 hours, so are server-type hard disks expected to last 138 years (just a little more than 137 actually, but I love the number 138)? Not really, statistics and experience do not support that. Specially in servers not housed in climate controlled environments, and much more so in servers that has warned you via smart, and much, much more so, if there was a recent crash in the same array.

So why do manufacturers claim mtbfs that big? Do they claim that their hard disks can operate for 138 years? No. Conversely, they may claim that 138 hard drives could be operated for a year and only one failure could be expected. Much more realistic, isn't it?

The most expensive hardware and the most redundant raid configuration won't mean a thing if you lose precious data. So be smart, back up, heed the signs, and own up if you lose data. The hard disks wouldn't say “I told you so!” even if they actually did.

*argh - (not an acronym) expression of frustration, annoyance, dismay, embarrassment and anger

SYAWTA - still yet another women's tennis album - French Open 2016

The truth hurts but it shall set you free

I don't know why there is much anguish from Duterte supporters over the political advertisement paid for by Sen. Trillanes. Their camp hates the ad so much that they got a TRO against its showing. They say kids were used in the ads, that kids have nothing to do with politics, that the use of children in the ad is unethical and immoral.

The Taguig RTC may TRO local TV but there is no TROing Youtube. Find it there before they ask Youtube to take it down too.

Wtf? Duterte might ask. There is also an ad by Pride ACS that uses kids and it continues to run to this day. And no one gives a hoot. It is kind of unethical and immoral too, using the criteria given by Duterturds.


Duterte appears in the Trillanes ad. So it is exposure for him. Trillanes is even paying for Duterte's exposure on TV. What ingrates?!@#$%.

The kids in the ad were not exploited. Hindi naman sila pinalangoy sa dagat ng basura. They were made to ask valid questions. After all, the elections are for their sake most of all.

Are the Duterte acts in the video surreptitiously taken? No! There is no violation of privacy here.

Are the Duterte deeds in the video spliced to take it out of context? Spliced for brevity, maybe. Taken out of context, no! If the full videos are shown, even more of the same context will be known.

Did Duterte apologize for the deeds/things he said in the video? No! He is even proud of them.

So why the fuss? Why stop the ad?

The truth is the truth hurts. The truth embarrasses them. Their idol is an embarrassment.  

First the Duterturds deny that their idol is not presidential. Then they got angry at non-Duterturds and the ad. Soon they will be bargaining and depressed before they accept it. 

We may have to speak slowly or spell it to them, but we have to try. We have to set them free.