The Mariadb server is started by systemd. Apparently whoever wrote the systemd service file for it didn’t expect that it would ever crash or exit, because they didn’t put a “Restart=on-failure” line in the service file. I’ve now tried adding one, along with “RestartSec=5″.

I saved the URL and accepted the agreement, hoping that I’d be able to download the PDF after acceptance, but it still tells me that I don’t have access.

“… a disaster of biblical proportions… real wrath of God type stuff…  Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies!  Rivers and seas boiling!  Forty years of darkness!  Earthquakes!  Volcanoes!  The dead rising from the grave!  Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria!”
— Ghostbusters

Google stores only the most recent automatic update or location selection you manually entered on our servers.

does NOT say, to wit, whether the data might be stored on servers other than “our servers”.

If DHS wants to track your location via your cell phone, they don’t really need Google’s help doing that. On the other hand, if a private company is already collecting data on people’s movements, that must look like a mighty tempting target…

Bush has not earned our respect, but rather our derision.

Muntazer al-Zaidi may be charged with attempted murder of a foreign president, and could face fifteen years in prison.  While it is reasonable to charge a person who throws shoes at another with some minor crime (e.g., misdemeanor assault or the equivalent), surely no one in their right mind would claim that it is attempted murder.  Mr. Zaidi was hospitalized after having been struck in the head with the butt of a rifle and having his arm broken, which surely is a more than sufficient penalty.

If a student gets a 20 percent in a class for the first marking period, he or she would need a 100 percent during the second marking period just to squeak through the semester.  [...]  We want to create situations where students can recover and not give up. [...]  It’s not grade inflation.

In other words, instead of giving that hypothetical student with 20% and 100% scores for the two grading periods a cumulative grade of 60% (“D”), the student would get a cumulative grade of 75% (“C”).  How can this possibly be considered not to be grade inflation?  Effectively this devalues the grades of all students in the district; potential employers or college admissions personnel who are familiar with the policy would have to assume that a student given a “C” grade may have actually done substandard work.

Ms. Pugh’s demonstrated level of understanding of mathematics is such that she is not qualified to be an assistant manager in a fast food restaurant, much less an employee of a school district.

[Bensalem School District] Superintendent James Lombardo said he’s in favor of implementing the idea, partly as a fairness issue. He noted that a failing grade carries far more mathematical weight than any other grade if the “E” or “F” has a range of zero to 59 percent.

“I guess I laud the Pittsburgh district for recognizing some of the foibles of our numerical system,”

It is now a “foible” that school work scored below 50% is seriously substandard?

If it is a fairness issue, how is it fair that some “D” students will be given “C” grades instead?

Paul Ciszek replied:

Imagine a foreign country called Dumfukistan. This country is inhabited by religious fanatics who believe that the world will end any day now. This is reflected in many of their policies, as their government has no problem with borrowing a billion dollars a day with no intention of ever paying it back (indeed, insists that “deficits don’t matter), sees no point in maintaining any infrastructure, and behaves abroad as if they don’t expect to ever have to deal with the consequences of their actions. The people are so backward that they use their own medieval unit system, not shared by anyone else, that doesn’t even have units for things like voltage or current. Their science education is so piss-poor that most of their adult population is unaware that the Earth orbits around the sun, thinks the universe is only a few thousand years old, and even the majority of their college educated individuals cannot tell you (correctly) why summer is warmer than winter.

Now, if you found yourself holding a few million Dumfukistan quatloos, would you consider them a sound financial instrument and hold on to them, or would you try to convert them to something else while you still could?

For Super Lotto Plus, the odds of getting any payout are approximately 1 in 23. However, almost half of those payouts are only one dollar, the cost of the play, so they only break even, which can hardly be considered a win.

Based on figures from the California Lottery web site, in March 2008 there were a total of 1,991,983 Super Lotto Plus payouts, which means that approximately 45.8 million plays were purchased. Of those, 1,194,156 paid out only the one dollar purchase price, 400,024 paid $2, 381,692 paid $8-12, and 16,111 paid $43 or more. That means only a total of 797,827 plays were cash positive, so fewer than a million Californians could be said to have won the Supper Lotto Plus in March. Perhaps the Lottery could be forgiven for exaggerating the number of winners by 25%, but in fact the real number of winners is probably much lower, because many people buy more than one play, and of course 22/23 of those plays lose one dollar.

It is likely that almost all of the persons receiving the payouts of $43 or more actually won, i.e, were cash-positive for their lottery “investments” for the month. Perhaps even the majority of people receiving $8-12 payouts are cash-positive. But it’s likely that very few of the $2 payouts went to people that were cash positive. If we assume (very conservatively) that half of the recipients of $2 payouts were cash-positive, then at most only 597,815 players were cash-positive for the month. That means that the Lottery is overstating the number of winners by at least 67%.