I'm well aware that they can run for longer than 3 years, telling me about your specific drives doesn't mean much. Drive quality is highly variable, some of them are good, some of them aren't. The ones I've purchased, which were always at the sweet spot of price/GB at the time, have all stopped working in one way or another within a fairly short period of time.
The post i responded to was a crack about SSDs failing after 5 years because they ran out of write cycles. I've seen them do exactly what i mentioned BEFORE the three year point, and i don't trust them beyond that point anymore.
What makes you think spinning drives are durable? They're already heavily reliant on ECC to reproduce digital data from an analog medium, you think they're going to continue to be reliable as the areal density increases? I don't.
I've never seen a consumer hard drive last even 3 years, some of them start clicking within 6 months, others spit out bad data after 12 months making them essentially useless even though they're still spinning (and therefor not "defective" for warranty purposes).
Right, but isn't the end result of the way they do things right now, an increase in the time between disclosure and patching of critical security vulnerabilities?
I'm asking why companies insist on patching 20-30 things all at the same time, surely it is easier to test for regressions when you're only including a single patch? Why can't you patch, test, release, and move on to the next problem?
Isn't this what MS does with their micro-patch KB fixes?
Why are companies so unwilling to micro-patch their software? If Mozilla has a fix NOW, why are they waiting another ~2 weeks to push it out with the next minor upgrade? Just to avoid making users upgrade too often?
The iPhone has enterprise tools available for anti-theft, too. It can encrypt all data by default and remotely wipe the device, and even end users can get the GPS coordinates of the device if they have MobileMe.
Their control of the App Store is abusing and ridiculous, but i don't see a lack of anti-theft features here.
They originally wanted a 15 year exclusive spectrum license, and as you can see from their website, even now after their original plan was totally rejected, they're entirely committed to filtering things to make it "family friendly" if they get approval as a licensee.
I don't remember the name of the company but suffice it to say, there is a company who has been riding the back of the FCC for years, trying to get them to approve some kind of free wireless broadband plan just like is being described here.
The old plan was to have the government collect some revenue from the company in exchange for offering exclusive use of the spectrum. The company was planning to filter the connection, specifically to block porn, because they had some significant ties to the moral morons in the "family" groups.
I don't recall how they were planning to pay for the whole thing, but i seem to remember they had for-pay plans that might have subsidized the free (censored) plans.
I'm not worried about it, i'm worried that there are too many stupid people willing to change their behavior when they should be changing their government.
You mentioned clicks, as did the post you replied to.
Yes, i'm sorry i wasn't more clear.
I was originally responding to the idea that you could automate clicks to ensure the site gets paid by the advertiser, while also blocking ads from appearing on the screen. That would be click fraud from the perspective of the advertiser and may actually hurt the site long term because thousands of people "click" and the advertiser sees absolutely no value in return; they may stop paying for advertising on the site.
In response to what YOU said though:,
If the user automates the "click" to make certain that his/her browsing experience isn't impaired due to not clicking ad links then that isn't fraud
....so far as i know, in this case clicking ads never made any difference, users weren't being prevented from seeing content until they clicked something. They were being prevented from seeing content because they blocked the ads from ever appearing.
Also, what if I create a browser plugin that pre-renders the prefetched data so that any possible "next page" from the page I'm viewing right now is already pre-rendered and just has to be shown? AFAIK that's still not fraud since the intent wasn't to commit fraud and the user would not be limited by any contract between the site owner and the ad publishing company.
/Mikael
When i say "fraud", I'm not talking about violating a contract with the user or breaking the law. From the point of view of the advertiser, anything that artificially increases their costs without receiving anything in return is fraud. You aren't going to get in trouble, but if the advertiser thinks they are being taken advantage of, the site may lose their contract with that advertiser which again, would hurt rather than help.
The situation you describe, where the browser just pre-renders content including ads, is unlikely to make any of them care because its just one additional impression, which is worth a fraction of a penny, but actually clicking ads will make them care because clicks cost them hundreds to thousands of times more than impressions.
The project was App Engine Server Monitor http://xercestech.com/app-engine-server-monitor.geek, once in a while urlfetch would return false negatives, servers were reported as down when they were still up. I looked into a caching issue and some other things but ultimately it still happens sometimes. It could just be a bug they've fixed as it became infrequent in the last month or so.
You can insulate yourself from App Engine lock-in by developing your app for Django, which is then portable to a standard server if App Engine turns out to be a problem.
I did recently drop AE for one of my projects because their urlfetch service was returning odd results, and database operations were failing multiple times per day.
Second the linode recommendation. The staff are responsive and even proactive if there is a potential issue with their servers, and the management system is simple without being restrictive. We recently started using our own kernel, because you can.
They score highly in performance benchmarks as well, which I can verify from over a year of managing 6 linodes, they're really fast.
Slashdot Mirror
In standard ATX cases.
I'm well aware that they can run for longer than 3 years, telling me about your specific drives doesn't mean much. Drive quality is highly variable, some of them are good, some of them aren't. The ones I've purchased, which were always at the sweet spot of price/GB at the time, have all stopped working in one way or another within a fairly short period of time.
The post i responded to was a crack about SSDs failing after 5 years because they ran out of write cycles. I've seen them do exactly what i mentioned BEFORE the three year point, and i don't trust them beyond that point anymore.
These were all Seagate and WD drives from retailers
What makes you think spinning drives are durable? They're already heavily reliant on ECC to reproduce digital data from an analog medium, you think they're going to continue to be reliable as the areal density increases? I don't.
I've never seen a consumer hard drive last even 3 years, some of them start clicking within 6 months, others spit out bad data after 12 months making them essentially useless even though they're still spinning (and therefor not "defective" for warranty purposes).
Right, but isn't the end result of the way they do things right now, an increase in the time between disclosure and patching of critical security vulnerabilities?
We ought to just lock up anyone who looks at a child anywhere at any time, who knows what they're thinking when they see that child?
And apparently some people even MAKE THEIR OWN children, we need to put a stop to this immediately.
The "technicality" being the completely illegitimate way the warrant that started the case, was obtained?
Yes, i know.
I'm asking why companies insist on patching 20-30 things all at the same time, surely it is easier to test for regressions when you're only including a single patch? Why can't you patch, test, release, and move on to the next problem?
Isn't this what MS does with their micro-patch KB fixes?
Why are companies so unwilling to micro-patch their software? If Mozilla has a fix NOW, why are they waiting another ~2 weeks to push it out with the next minor upgrade? Just to avoid making users upgrade too often?
Mommy and Daddy are fighting
Do the fish look like aliens, or do aliens look like fish?
You know you really don't have to disclose that sort of thing just to comment on slashdot ;)
The iPhone has enterprise tools available for anti-theft, too. It can encrypt all data by default and remotely wipe the device, and even end users can get the GPS coordinates of the device if they have MobileMe.
Their control of the App Store is abusing and ridiculous, but i don't see a lack of anti-theft features here.
Here is the company http://www.m2znetworks.com/
They originally wanted a 15 year exclusive spectrum license, and as you can see from their website, even now after their original plan was totally rejected, they're entirely committed to filtering things to make it "family friendly" if they get approval as a licensee.
I don't remember the name of the company but suffice it to say, there is a company who has been riding the back of the FCC for years, trying to get them to approve some kind of free wireless broadband plan just like is being described here.
The old plan was to have the government collect some revenue from the company in exchange for offering exclusive use of the spectrum. The company was planning to filter the connection, specifically to block porn, because they had some significant ties to the moral morons in the "family" groups.
I don't recall how they were planning to pay for the whole thing, but i seem to remember they had for-pay plans that might have subsidized the free (censored) plans.
I'm not worried about it, i'm worried that there are too many stupid people willing to change their behavior when they should be changing their government.
You mentioned clicks, as did the post you replied to.
Yes, i'm sorry i wasn't more clear.
I was originally responding to the idea that you could automate clicks to ensure the site gets paid by the advertiser, while also blocking ads from appearing on the screen. That would be click fraud from the perspective of the advertiser and may actually hurt the site long term because thousands of people "click" and the advertiser sees absolutely no value in return; they may stop paying for advertising on the site.
In response to what YOU said though:,
If the user automates the "click" to make certain that his/her browsing experience isn't impaired due to not clicking ad links then that isn't fraud
....so far as i know, in this case clicking ads never made any difference, users weren't being prevented from seeing content until they clicked something. They were being prevented from seeing content because they blocked the ads from ever appearing.
Also, what if I create a browser plugin that pre-renders the prefetched data so that any possible "next page" from the page I'm viewing right now is already pre-rendered and just has to be shown? AFAIK that's still not fraud since the intent wasn't to commit fraud and the user would not be limited by any contract between the site owner and the ad publishing company.
/Mikael
When i say "fraud", I'm not talking about violating a contract with the user or breaking the law. From the point of view of the advertiser, anything that artificially increases their costs without receiving anything in return is fraud. You aren't going to get in trouble, but if the advertiser thinks they are being taken advantage of, the site may lose their contract with that advertiser which again, would hurt rather than help.
The situation you describe, where the browser just pre-renders content including ads, is unlikely to make any of them care because its just one additional impression, which is worth a fraction of a penny, but actually clicking ads will make them care because clicks cost them hundreds to thousands of times more than impressions.
Except no one in this case was ever even talking about clicks, Ars technica gets paid per view.
Even so, browsers preload FILES, they don't pre-run the javascript in the ad code.
Not seeing an ad removes around $0.003-0.009 revenue per person. Clicking an ad can bring in $20+ per click.
Automating that click would be fraud.
...what is she going to charge?
I agree, they're actually closer to ewoks. Not nearly as good at mounting rebel attacks, though.
I've said it before, i'll say it again.
Always use protection when VPS'ing.
their urlfetch service was returning odd results,
That would be interesting to know about.
The project was App Engine Server Monitor http://xercestech.com/app-engine-server-monitor.geek, once in a while urlfetch would return false negatives, servers were reported as down when they were still up. I looked into a caching issue and some other things but ultimately it still happens sometimes. It could just be a bug they've fixed as it became infrequent in the last month or so.
You can insulate yourself from App Engine lock-in by developing your app for Django, which is then portable to a standard server if App Engine turns out to be a problem.
I did recently drop AE for one of my projects because their urlfetch service was returning odd results, and database operations were failing multiple times per day.
Second the linode recommendation. The staff are responsive and even proactive if there is a potential issue with their servers, and the management system is simple without being restrictive. We recently started using our own kernel, because you can.
They score highly in performance benchmarks as well, which I can verify from over a year of managing 6 linodes, they're really fast.
http://journal.uggedal.com/vps-performance-comparison