Software ethics

One of my biggest worries is catastrophic data loss. A good way to prevent this is to use some sort of RAID setup, such as RAID-5. After seeing this deal at outpost.com (300GB SATA HD for $80 each, free shipping), I picked up five, along with a hot-swap chassis for easy install/removal of drives. Yes, that's 1.5 terabytes of storage. It'll come in handy when we start shooting video....

So now I need to get these things arranged in a RAID. There are two options: software and hardware. Hardware RAID-5 is expensive, since they use specialized processors to calculate the parity at high speed. And, my PC doesn't have PCI-X or PCI-Express, which is the preferred form factor for hardware raid cards. I don't need the speed, so I want to go with a software solution.

Here's the problem. Microsoft Windows Server does RAID-5 in software. Windows XP does not. I use Windows XP. But for whatever reason, the disk software in Windows Server is the same as the software in Windows XP. The folks at Microsoft just changed a few bits to disable the feature in XP.

You can activate the feature by changing a few bits back. See this and this.

I haven't tried this yet, so I don't know if it will work. I've been thinking, however, about the ethics of the issue. I read through the XP Pro EULA, and found nothing that addresses this. The closest is the clause which says, "You may not reverse engineer, decompile, or disassemble the Software, except and only to the extent that such activity is expressly permitted by applicable law notwithstanding this limitation," but clearly, changing a few bits in a few files does not amount to reverse engineering, decompiling, or disassembly. Even so, it seems clear to me that I am deliberately enabling a feature that the software creators disabled, which smells wrong....

But this also appears to be product sabotage, an attempt by companies to price-discriminate: to charge more to those customers who have more money.

Maybe the ultimate answer is just to switch to Linux.

The United States of America

On what date was the United States formed? Options include:

• June 21, 1788, - ratification of the Constitution by the 9th state (NH)
• September 17, 1787 - completion and adoption of the Constitution by the Constitutional Convention
• March 1, 1781 - ratification of the Articles of Confederation
• November 15, 1777 - adoption of the Articles of Confederation by the Second Continental Congress
• July 4, 1776 - adoption of the Declaration of Independence by the Second Continental Congress

Abraham Lincoln seems to take the earliest date. Writing in 1863, he says "Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation...." And 1863-(4*20+7)=1776.

A second question is whether this is trivial. I've heard some assume that it is not. Richard Land (in a class at SWBTS) has argued that the USA is theistic, since one of its key founding documents (namely the Declaration of Independence) is theistic. He brings in Lincoln's Gettysburg address as an authority on this. Others argue the USA is not theistic, noting that the Constitution is a secular document. The former use 1776 for the birth of the nation; the latter seem to be committed to either September 1787 or June 1788 as the nation's official beginning. Can an argument be defended either way on this point? How is it that nations are formed, anyways?