Slashback: Courseware, Warranties, Subscraption

Slashback brings you word on open courseware, The Big Switch as seen by Tim O'Reilly, another update on the man-made "moon," more on the in-progress clampdown on Chinese Internet searchers, and a disheartening note about hard drive warranties. Get 'em before they disappear completely ;) Read on for the details.

But will they distribute diploma blanks as PDF files? perlmunger writes "Linux Journal highlighted this in the 'up front' section of the June 2001 issue (I knew I keep these old issues around for a reason). Apparently, MIT will (finally) be opening their Open Course Ware initiative on September 30th to the public. Looks like a great start from many departments."

Answer: it's a strong possibility. skinfitz writes "Following on from Google returning to China, New Scientist is reporting in this article that Chinese surfers searching Google are finding their Internet connection dropped for five minutes if they enter "politically sensitive" keywords, such as the Chinese president's name! Will this new technology find uses elsewhere? Is this the future of the web?"

My human transporter is still a station wagon. An anonymous reader writes with the text which by now many people have seen regarding the status of the world's most famous unavailable scooter; apparently it's not necessarily as far from available as an automated message from Amazon implied.

"Greetings from Amazon.com.

You recently received an e-mail from us regarding the Segway Human Transporter (also known as "Ginger" or "IT"). This e-mail was sent accidentally by an automated system and the information in it is incorrect.

In fact, there is no new information on Segway's availability. Consumer versions of Segway Human Transporters are currently being piloted in various communities throughout the U.S. The Segway HT is expected to be released to the general consumer market in 2003.

We apologize for the confusion. We will keep your e-mail address on our list of customers who wish to be notified about this item.

Sincerely,
Amazon.com Customer Service

Strong Opinions softsign writes "Apparently, Tim O'Reilly's recent article addressing the topic of Switchers was so popular and generated so much response that he felt compelled to respond to reader comments in his MacDevCenter column this week. It reads almost like the Apple Switch website, but there are some really insightful emails peppered with Tim's comments. Worth a read."

The moon's been asking for this for years. cscx writes "The mysterious space junk, or apparent "other moon" reported a few weeks ago, now is more likely to be an old Saturn V (from the Apollo program) rocket booster. Bad thing is, there is a 20% chance it could strike the moon sometime next year. More details at MSNBC."

We'll let you you borrow it for a while, sign here. An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft has scrapped plans for subscription-based licensing of consumer products following the end of a 12-month trial in several countries including New Zealand. The Story says people were getting confused as to why they had to pay after the 12 months had gone by."

I find your lack of confidence disturbing. Longinus writes "Ars Technica is reporting that Western Digital is going to follow Maxtor's recent decision to cut their warranty of future drives from three years to one, with an extended warranty being offered at an additional price. The article goes on to mention that Seagate is rumored to also be considering such a cut, but nothing official has been confirmed. One can only wonder if this increase in price is to due to corporate cost saving measures or the fact that hard drives are becoming less stable magnetically as they increase in storage space."

Comments

Re:Good old slashdot.

[plierhead]

Just think of listening to the super-paranoids as the price you have to pay to live in the land of the free.

The day they go quiet is when you should start to worry.

As the old saying goes

[Theodore Logan]

Chinese surfers searching Google are finding their Internet connection dropped for five minutes if they enter "politically sensitive" keywords, such as the Chinese president's name!

Information wants to be tied up and spanked.

Hard drives are comodities

[MrResistor]

Hard drives are now a comodity part with razor thin margins (that's why IBM bailed from the consumer market, remember), and waranties cost money. It should be no surprise that all the remaining manufacturers are cutting their warranty period. I very much doubt that it is a reflection on actual drive performance, but rather simply a cost cutting measure.

Honestly, when I can buy a 40G Seagate for $64, so what if it only has a one year warranty. You made backups, right? Toss it and get a new one.

Re:Hard drives are comodities

[drdink]

I still have 3Com Ethernet cards from way back (ISA), and I still have a TON of other random hardware (including other HDs).

One thing you have to consider is that your Ethernet cards have no moving parts. Your soundcards have no moving parts. Your video card has no moving parts. Your RAM has no moving parts. Your hard disks, however, move quite a lot. True it seems older hard drives seem to live longer, but you also have to take other factors into consideration such as capacity, speed, and overall quality.

Although I know very little about hard drives, it seems logical to assume that there is a direct correlation between storage capacity and drive capacity. For more space, you've got to have more platters and a higher storage density. This means you have more mechanics to deal with these finer details, which is just another place for something to go wrong.

It is rather easy to see why faster drive speeds would decrease the MTBF (Mean Time Between Failure) of a hard drive. The mechanics are moving faster, and more work has to be done to keep then spinning properly. On top of this, you get the extra friction, wear, and tear that increased speeds cause. You may be able to walk at 1 mile an hour for a few hours, but you can't run at 25mph for nearly as long.

And finally, you have drive quality. It is my opinion that as time has passed, hard drive demand has increased as well. In fact, I"m sure somebody could prove this given the proper numbers, graphs, calculators, and secretary. I would imagine that drive manufacturers, in order to meet increased demands, have substituted quality for price. And thus, drives have become much cheaper at the expensve of high MTBF.

So what is my point in this comment? I'm merely pointing out that there are many factors that need to be taken into consideration before saying, "Hey! My other hardware lives much longer than these new crappy hard drives!" I'm sure if you were in the place of the manufacturers, you'd shorten the warranty if you could get away with it. I don't necessary enjoy having shorter warranties, but I see why it is necessary. After having three IBM hard drives die on me within a yaer, it became crystal clear to me that drive manufacturers were losinga pretty penny on RMAs.

Segway isn't "IT" for commuters

[ealar dlanvuli]

These are cool toys, but the 40-60 pound weight means that they're not something you want to carry around.

However, as a longtime cyclist commuter, the 10-15 mile range is easily done on a bicycle. Better for you and the environment than a scooter. Yes, hills suck, but not as much as fighting with cars in traffic.

There are some collapsable bicycles, but I've never found these to be worthy of riding more than 1-2 miles at a stretch.

If your local transit company is forward thinking and has bike racks on the bus, then you're set. (Santa Barbara, I recall, had one bus per hour that dragged a trailer meant for bicycles, and I'd usually see it with 10 bikes on board.)

Buy yourself something theft-proof, like a Schwinn, which is still great quality. My Schwinn mountain bike is my city commuter, outfitted with street slicks, fenders, a rack, and hasn't been touched or mauled once in 12 years. I've ridden it through snow, rain, below-zero weather, and it saved me a bundle and kept my weight down.

Everyone comments that riding a bike in cold weather is cold, but it isn't as cold as you think I frequently had to ride slowly so as to not break a sweat. Your legs are very big muscles, and they generate a lot of heat once you get going. I'd be cold at the start of my 3 mile commute, then I'd be warm after 4 blocks, and perspiring for the last mile.

Snow was no problem with street slicks, but ice is. Fresh, untracked snow is easy to ride in, but once the cars start packing it, your tire wants to follow the random crossing tire tracks, and it gets squirrely.

If you're going to commute, get a good, reflective vest, a strong headlight, two tail lights (and clip a third one on you), and get another headlight for your helmet. Shining that head-mounted light into left-turning drivers, who are looking for a break in traffic and not anything else, are stopped cold by a bright light hitting them in the face.

Finally, always carry a cell phone. It depends upon the area, but some areas have motorists that enjoy scaring cyclists. I've had cars cross four lanes of traffic, coming toward me, just to try to scare me. Or they'll speed up past me, dynamite the brakes, and cut me off in a right-hand turn. Ride defensively, live to be old.

Above all, skip recumbant bicycles. Neato, but when you're sitting down that low, you can't see as well, and that little orange flag on a stick isn't going to protect you from motorists. Quite frankly, it is better to be thrown over the hood of the car that cuts you off, than to be whacked in the chest by the grill because you were riding a recumbant.

Re:These WHAT!?!

[Graff]

the government never informed the public that they were launching sizable masses of radioactive matter into space

I'd hardly call the amount of radioactive matter launched to be massive. A few ounces of radioactive material provides a considerable amount of power. Even if a rocket carrying one of these power supplies was to blow up in the worst possible place in our atmosphere, the amount of radiation which would rain down upon us is sure to be far less than the amount you'd get from standing in the summer sun for a few hours.

Generally, you are exposed to far more radiation from "natural" sources than you will ever receive from "man-made" sources. For example, if you were to sit on the fence of Three Mile Island from the minute of its accident for a period of one year you would have gotten less than a typical chest x-ray worth of radiation. However, if you live in a region where natural radon gas seeps into your house then you can get the same dose in a matter of a few weeks. Cinder blocks which make up your house are slightly radioactive, and coal-fired power plants produce many times the radiation per watt as that of a typical nuclear power plant. (Coal typically has a lot of radioactive elements bound up in it, which are released when it burns.)

In short, don't worry so much about radiation. It's a natural part of life, just use sunblock, seal your basement, and get the power companies to replace coal power plants with nuclear ones. The last item will also have the benefit of saving a ton in power costs.

The Dao of the bicycle commute

[demo9orgon]

From the quality and quantity of the comments in this thread, I can tell most people who have read it and replied are not cyclists. Probably drive SUV's too. :-D

I'm going to roll a reply to a previous comment about someone being afraid to ride. What anyone who commutes by bicycle has to do is simply understand natural law...not the crap that "the man" has beat us over the head with, or the things we've learned from Warner Bros. cartoons. Natural law implies that when a 1/4 hp., sub 300lb. vehicle is occupying the desired space of a semi-hairless primate(bored, anxious, distracted) behind the wheel of a 2+ton moving block of metal and plastic that the union of these two systems will result in some really nifty physics...often to the physical detriment of the previous occupant, and the slightly higher premiums of the second. Simply put, always consider yourself invisble to the vehicles unless you make eye-contact and recieve non-verbal acknowledgement from the motorist. Having done that, the cyclist has only to understand natural law and human stupidity to enjoy their commute.

And with that out of the way, onto the good stuff.

I have been commuting by bicycle since 1988, and I only have a car because my kids are still too young and stupid and my wife has a bad knee, otherwise the whole whining lot of them would be on bikes (everyone in the family has a bike).

Bravo to you sir for giving your previous nag a new home. My recommendation is a multi-vectored approach to getting a good bicycle. You have to consider the bike shops in your area, and look for a franchise, like Cycle Spectrum (but not necessarily them, because other bike-shop franchises exist, I just don't remember them now). There's a good chance that both regular shops and esp. franchises have what they consider a less stylish, less trendy bikes taking up space they would rather fill with faux shocks and bad alloys and other candy to attract the unwary. These bikes are usually going for about $300, which in sales terms is an impulse purchase for someone who wants something useful.If you can find a simple hybrid--a style that no longer sells like hotcakes--make sure it's nothing hard to maintain like shocks. Look for grip-shift,with quick-release hubs front and rear, and get yourself a blackburn mtn rack. Most of the time a shop-keeper will feel your love for the bike and in a synergistic desire to sweeten the deal will almost impulsively add it as a perk. That rack will hold two good u-locks (that's one of the best kept secrets in the business--enjoy), which are invaluable if you have to tether the beastie outside the workplace. However, if you really love your horse, you'll whine-bitch-plead and maybe even argue intelligently to bring it into the building with you. If you love it, bring it inside.

If your commute takes you through suburban areas filled with bored kids or goatheads, you need to invest in a bit of SLIME. It's green, it costs a bit, but unlike the wannabe competitors products(cough-mucous-cough), slime will not let you down unless the laws of physics require it to. You also need high thread-count nylon tires. Slicks or invert treads have less rubber and are reinforced with a lot of nylon threads. When shopping for tires, take one down and open it up and see how dense the threads are. You should also invest in 4.5mil thick thorn-proof tubes. Schwinn, and Bontrager and some other companies import and repackage/resell these. Combined with the slime and good tires there's a chance you will only have to walk a little before reinflating the tire. I've often pulled some really evil stuff (nails, glass, industrial staples, plant thorns) out, spun the wheel for a minute and still had enough pressure to make it home.

Another point to consider when buying a good bike is not so much the up-front cost of the bike (top-ramen is your friend), but the kind of service and warranty a shop will provide you. For a franchise, sometimes this is free tune-ups and labor for the life of the beastie. Granted, the shop you bought the bike from will change hands like a 30yr mortgage, you'll still have your bike taken care of. Usually what happens with the cheap kit is that within a week after you've purchased it, everyting flexes and stretches a bit...it's supposed to. However, Walmart, or whatever-mart isn't responsible for those changes. A bike shop is.

Another thing to consider is the way you approach the gearing. The more you move through your gears, the faster you wear your drive train. There's a simple way to look at wear-and-tear here: If you like to pedal like mad (and think you're a porsche) and go through your gears, making more than three or four gear changes until you're cruising, then don't expect to stay in tune. You're much better off being in the biggest chainring (front gear) during the warm months, and at least starting off in the middle chainring when it's colder, and then figuring out the best place to start with the cog. YMMV depending on the commute. I have my bike tuned only once every few years...I've had it five years and I put over 4500+ miles are year on it just commuting year round. I start out in 17th gear and go up to 19th, only to the highest gears two gears when I'm spinning fast to get in to work because I'm late (or because I'm chasing a pack of spandex goddesses for a quick double-wammy: endorphins and a pheromone fix-heheheh)

I wish you happy hunting--don't buy at the first shop you go into! (been there, done that)p