The Earth Is Pebble-Dashed …

 General, Politics, Science  1 Response »
Feb 162013
 

So today in addition to being subject to a near miss – the cosmic equivalent of being given a close shave by a Samurai with his (or her) Katana – we also had an unannounced visitation by an asteroid that crash-landed in Russia causing a considerable amount of property damage, and more seriously some injuries.

Now this doesn’t happen every day, but in the lifetime of the Earth it does happen pretty frequently. As is evident from our nearest neighbour which looks as though it has been bombarded in some sort of celestial war. And indeed, the evidence can be seen on Earth if you look close enough; and that list just includes the largest impacts – events such as Russia today simply don’t show up.

Now there is not a great deal we can do about this as individuals, so as individuals we may as well forget about it – the chances of being killed by a meteorite are pretty remote but as it turns out only slightly less likely than being killed by a terrorist!

As a species however, we have reached the point where we can start doing something about it. If that is, we want to invest the resources into doing so. Admittedly we have started looking but simply knowing we’re all going to be killed by a dinosaur-killer isn’t enough – we should be able to do something about it. Perhaps there isn’t much we can do about a dinosaur-killer.

But we should be able to do something about smaller dangers. If we want to.

If we told the military that they will have to change the kinds of really expensive toys they get, we can probably start some form of meteor defence programme without having a dramatic effect on the economy. After all, ultimately a large meteor is as dangerous as an all-out nuclear war.

The Horse Meat Saga & Government Regulation

 Politics  No Responses »
Feb 132013
 

One of the humorous coincidences arising from the ever increasing horse meat saga, is that this would happen during the Tories reign of mis-rule. You see we often get treated to the Tories bang on about excessive government regulation and red tape, and how business could be far more effective without it.

And of course with a special venomous attack on the European bureaucrats.

Which is all very well, but the biggest lesson that can be learnt from the whole sorry saga of how horse meat got passed off as meat of another kind, is that we need government regulation to protect us from crooks pretending to be businesscritters. And honest businesscritters need that protection even more than the rest of us.

We have learnt how crooks have infiltrated horse meat into the market for cheap processed meat because it is so much cheaper than beef. This has two effects :-

  1. The crooks make money … lots of money.
  2. Honest businesscritters lose out. If it goes on long enough there won’t be any honest ones left!

There are those who say “well horse isn’t too bad … it seems to taste pretty good”, which is missing the problem(s). Not only should we be able to see what is in a product by looking at the ingredients list, but if crooks get away with putting safe horse meat into burgers, will cheaper crooks get the idea to put unsafe horse meat in ? Or rat? Or worse?

It is worth remembering this current saga when the Tories start banging on about government regulation – regulation is usually there for a reason, and the reason far too often is due to an event like this where unscrupulous crooks abused the public in order to make a bit more cash.

 

Good News! Pope Benedict To Resign!

 General  No Responses »
Feb 112013
 

Given the probable circumstances (it isn’t totally clear just yet), it seems strange to claim that it is good news that the pope is to resign. After all, it is hardly good news that anyone is having trouble with their health.

Traditionally a pope stays in office for life no matter how their health might affect their ability to do their job. And whether or not you are a catholic, you have to admit it’s an important job that needs a competent person in control. Not only does the organisation suffer from having an unhealthy head, but the person in that job suffers too – who wants to work when you’re unwell?

Which means it is good news that he is resigning – leave the job for someone else to pick up. And enjoy a well earned retirement.

 

FreeBSD: Increasing The Size Of Disks In A ZFS Pool

 Computing, Working Notes  No Responses »
Feb 112013
 

One of the obvious things to do with a ZFS storage pool is to increase the size of the disks in it – after all disks get bigger and cheaper over time. Not that it is a very difficult thing to do, but it is always worth doing a quick search to find out what others have done before setting forth. And if nobody blogs their own experience, there’s nothing for anybody to find!

So I started off with four 2Tbyte drives configured as two vdevs each of which was a mirror. And I had two 3Tbyte disks to swap in. So I was going to be swapping one of the vdevs (consisting of two 2Tbyte drives) with the 3Tbyte drives.

In the details below, I have a storage pool called zroot and the two disks being replaced are gpt/disk3 and gpt/disk2. As you will notice, I am growing the storage pool I boot off; however the disks I am using do not contain a boot partition with the boot code.

The first job was to swap out one of the 2Tbyte drives. This was done by :-

  1. Take disk to be swapped out offline: zpool offline zroot gpt/disk3
  2. Shut down the server and take the selected drive out. Swap over the disk caddy onto a new 3Tbyte drive, and swap that back in.
  3. Power on the server.
  4. Create an EFI partition table: gpart create -s gpt ada3
  5. Optionally create a swap partition: gpart add -t freebsd-swap -s 4G -l swap3 ada3
  6. Create a ZFS partion: gpart add -t freebsd-zfs -l disk3 ada3
  7. Replace the device: zpool replace zroot gpt/disk3

Now is the time to wait for the resilvering process to complete. Once that has finished, the steps above can be repeated for the other drive in the vdev. Once the resilvering for that replacement has finished, you may want to check the size of the pool.

If the size has not increased, you may need to do: zpool online -e zroot gpt/disk2 gpt/disk3.

It’s All About The Horse Meat!

 General  No Responses »
Feb 082013
 

The news is swamped at the moment with the story about horse meat being found in various cheap meat products that were labelled as containing beef. Interestingly this has crowded out the news that pork has also been found in Halal meat products – which could be more of a concern to a certain segment of the British population than unexpected horses turning up.

To summarise :-

  1. If you’ve been tucking into cheap meat-based meals then you have probably had a bit of horse. That’s not good, but don’t get too excited – a horse isn’t too much cuter than a cow. Besides, did you really believe that the ultra-cheap products you were buying only contained premium quality beef? It’s a surprise that the contaminant wasn’t found to be rat!
  2. It isn’t just horse meat. Those who don’t eat it may be surprised, but horse meat is eaten quite widely in Europe. European regulation very carefully distinguishes between horse meat intended for human consumption, and horses carcases originating from pets or race horses who have received certain drugs as pain killers.
  3. Horses can be given bute (a pain killer), but only if they are not intended for human consumption. Bute was previously approved for use by people as a pain killer, but approval was withdrawn after it was shown after prolonged use to have certain adverse health effects. Europe goes a long way to avoid allowing human consumption of horse meat contaminated with bute, so it is unlikely in the extreme that any food in the UK contained any. Even if it did contain bute, it is still unlikely to have a significant adverse effect.
  4. If you’ve been eating meat products contaminated with pork, it is worth remembering that god (if he or she exists) is likely to point the blame for that squarely where it belongs – with those who labelled the product incorrectly.

There is a serious issue here. Food products should only contain what is listed on the ingredients list, and companies who cheat should be punished in some form. It’s a curious coincidence that we happen to have a government packed full of Tories who insist that government regulation is a bad thing, when government regulation is the only thing that protects us :-

  1. It’s government regulation enforcers who found this stuff out.
  2. It’s only government regulation that makes the sellers feel guilty rather than shrugging and asking “What did you expect for a pound?”.
  3. It’s only European regulation that means that the horse meat you’ve mistakenly eaten is almost certainly safe to eat.

But it isn’t necessarily Findus or Tesco at fault here. And when you come down to it, that horse meat in the freezer was pretty tasty yesterday before you knew, so shouldn’t it be just as tasty today?

And if you object to eating horses, please remember that whilst being ground up and sold as a beef burger is hardly the end we would want, being ground up, sold as a beef burger and then being thrown away is even worse!

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