Nope... I work in a typical Big Business where the majority of the population carry around a laptop. In terms of determining the cause, it doesn't take much to determine that a drive contains bad sectors. The company that I work for uses a drive encryption software (called SafeGuard Easy). This needs to be "decrypted" prior to the recovery of data (if Windows won't boot, the only option is to decrypt and plug the drive into another PC as a secondary).
During the decryption process, it becomes apparent what the problem is. If there are just bad sectors, the software will skip them and move on (leaving bad data on that particular file). Typically, we can recover most data in this respect. When there is a head failure/crash, then the drive is toast.
Hard drives don't generally fail because the magnetic region on the platter cannot be used. It is more often crashed heads, broken motors, or bad controller boards. None of which would be helped by your scheme.
I deal with the stuff day-in and day-out. 90 percent of laptop drive failures *where I work* are caused by the heads contacting the platters when people ungracefully set their running laptop onto a hard surface. This causes bad sectors.
Aside from our new problem with the fluid bearing seizures in Seagate's laptop drives, bad sectors are the most common form of failure that I encounter. The capability to have RAID1 on a single platter would help me a lot, thank you very much.
Forgive my ignorance, but why on earth would anyone want RAID on their laptop?
I've got an $1900 bill from Ontrack Data Recovery sitting next to me that would explain the situation nicely. In the business world, not everyone is a tech-savvy geek with a broadband connection or a secure backup technique.
Let's say that you have some number crunching that will take about 7000 CPU hours. Are you going to be happier waiting a year for your desktop to solve the problem or would you pay $7000 to get the answer in one hour?
Sun is betting that there are many people/businesses that fall into the latter category.
You'd think that with IBM being the biggest OSS cheerleader that they'd port Lotus Notes. One might think that their support is just a big ad campaign.
This is what I have been predicting: Apple had a seemingly better choice with AMD's current processors (on a performance per watt basis). However, Intel have already showed their pipeline to Apple and this is what prompted Apple's decision to migrate.
Apple charges a very very large markup on their hardware, I don't think the margin on their software would be nearly as high.
Why?
People are screaming for an alternate OS to run on commodity hardware. OSS isn't quite there yet. Apple's market share would skyrocket if Dell were able to offer their customers "Dual Boot Apple OSX when your Windows partition becomes too virus infected". Even if they only charged $50 a copy, it wouldn't take a significant percentage of x86 OSX dual-boot to more than make up for their hardware revenue and margin.
Personally, I think moving Mac OS to mainstream machines with unpredictable hardware would dramatically lower the quality of the software, and I would hate to see that.
If Apple can get the stability of Microsoft's Windows XP product (joke all that you want, it is rock solid on good hardware) with their innovative interface, then what isn't to like? If you don't want to run it on cheap hardware, then I'm sure that they'll be happy to sell you their expensive stuff, too.
I just don't get it.
Actually, I do get it. Apple *is* planning on releasing their OS for commodity hardware, they just want to keep the Mac zealots in denial for as long as possible.
Ok so what of the academic ideals of spreading knowledge and learning?
You must be new to the US - welcome!
Here, we do whatever we can in the name of corporate profit. This includes screwing the students, which we have been doing since the advent of education.
So if *you* don't buy Dell, why did you recommend them?
You have to pick and choose your products, these days. The $279 2400N is a great price for a desktop (subtract $20 for no monitor), once you remove all the garbage.
So yes, I recommend Dell desktops but not printers. As a side note, I always keep a stash of Canon iP3000 printers in stock. These printers are cheap, quality and Canon makes the cartridges very easy to refill. When someone runs out of ink, I offer to refill their cartridges for $20 or explain to them how they can DIY for just a couple bucks.
Long story short - every vendor has a "catch" and a "loss leader". You just have to pick and choose the latter.
I don't. If it hasn't been pointed out a million times already, the majority of the consumers out there simply don't know any better. For example, I recently recommended to someone the $300 Dell Dimension 2400 only to find that the sales rep talked them into upgrading to a "better model" so that they could get a 19" LCD "bundled" (note that Dell won't offer things like a DVD-R or large LCD monitor with their low-end stuff - that's how they getcha).
I tried to explain that they could have just ordered the PC and monitor separately but this was obviously well over their head. They didn't care. In the end, they ended up paying over $1000 so they could do basic internet, email and photo printing.
He's the first Eric E. Schmidt on zabasearch. The issue is that he needs to get over the fact that privacy does not exist, unless you accidentally fill out false Change of Address forms every month.
I hope that these electronic books work out better than they tend to in more "civilized" countries like the US.
The irony of the situation is that in more "civilized" countries like the US, corruption takes over and results in textbooks that go through constant revision in order to keep sales up.
I tried to help my wife save some money by purchasing a used text book once. Shortly after class started, the professor admitted that she'd made a mistake on the book and that the students would need to purchase the 9th revision of the book instead of the 8th. Since I had purchased the book on the used market, I could not exchange it. For shits and giggles, I compared the 9th edition with the 8th and found only minor change - mostly just moving page numbers around and swapping the numbers on the chapter questions.
The people responsible for these financial rapes deserve nothing more than to be shot in the face.
Slashdot Mirror
This looks like a publicity stunt if I ever saw one. No, I won't provide a link, thankyouverymuch.
Do you work in a very specialized field?
Nope... I work in a typical Big Business where the majority of the population carry around a laptop. In terms of determining the cause, it doesn't take much to determine that a drive contains bad sectors. The company that I work for uses a drive encryption software (called SafeGuard Easy). This needs to be "decrypted" prior to the recovery of data (if Windows won't boot, the only option is to decrypt and plug the drive into another PC as a secondary).
During the decryption process, it becomes apparent what the problem is. If there are just bad sectors, the software will skip them and move on (leaving bad data on that particular file). Typically, we can recover most data in this respect. When there is a head failure/crash, then the drive is toast.
Hard drives don't generally fail because the magnetic region on the platter cannot be used. It is more often crashed heads, broken motors, or bad controller boards. None of which would be helped by your scheme.
I deal with the stuff day-in and day-out. 90 percent of laptop drive failures *where I work* are caused by the heads contacting the platters when people ungracefully set their running laptop onto a hard surface. This causes bad sectors.
Aside from our new problem with the fluid bearing seizures in Seagate's laptop drives, bad sectors are the most common form of failure that I encounter. The capability to have RAID1 on a single platter would help me a lot, thank you very much.
Your mileage may vary.
More weight, more things to break, less battery life...
How is this idea:
Take a single hard drive and do a RAID1 on opposite sides of the same platter. You'd have half of the storage but twice the integrity.
Forgive my ignorance, but why on earth would anyone want RAID on their laptop?
I've got an $1900 bill from Ontrack Data Recovery sitting next to me that would explain the situation nicely. In the business world, not everyone is a tech-savvy geek with a broadband connection or a secure backup technique.
Let's say that you have some number crunching that will take about 7000 CPU hours. Are you going to be happier waiting a year for your desktop to solve the problem or would you pay $7000 to get the answer in one hour?
Sun is betting that there are many people/businesses that fall into the latter category.
Hilarious
Everyone, I did some digging and found that this "CX717" is simply this.
Yeah right... until we can get 10-12 hours out of a laptop battery, we'll all have a cord. Might as well be a network cord with POE.
I'd like to know if they were serving DSL through a submersed DSLAM during the testing phase.
;)
Why? Do you have a submarine in need of broadband connectivity or something?
You'd think that with IBM being the biggest OSS cheerleader that they'd port Lotus Notes. One might think that their support is just a big ad campaign.
IntelliToast
This is what I have been predicting: Apple had a seemingly better choice with AMD's current processors (on a performance per watt basis). However, Intel have already showed their pipeline to Apple and this is what prompted Apple's decision to migrate.
Have they made one of these chips yet to control your wife?
Yep
Apple charges a very very large markup on their hardware, I don't think the margin on their software would be nearly as high.
Why?
People are screaming for an alternate OS to run on commodity hardware. OSS isn't quite there yet. Apple's market share would skyrocket if Dell were able to offer their customers "Dual Boot Apple OSX when your Windows partition becomes too virus infected". Even if they only charged $50 a copy, it wouldn't take a significant percentage of x86 OSX dual-boot to more than make up for their hardware revenue and margin.
Personally, I think moving Mac OS to mainstream machines with unpredictable hardware would dramatically lower the quality of the software, and I would hate to see that.
If Apple can get the stability of Microsoft's Windows XP product (joke all that you want, it is rock solid on good hardware) with their innovative interface, then what isn't to like? If you don't want to run it on cheap hardware, then I'm sure that they'll be happy to sell you their expensive stuff, too.
I just don't get it.
Actually, I do get it. Apple *is* planning on releasing their OS for commodity hardware, they just want to keep the Mac zealots in denial for as long as possible.
Wouldn't it benefit Apple in the long run to get more of its software into the public's hands?
I've already made comments like this only to get this response in LARGE numbers:
"But Apple is a hardware company."
Apparently, it is impossible for Apple to change into a software company.
Ok so what of the academic ideals of spreading knowledge and learning?
You must be new to the US - welcome!
Here, we do whatever we can in the name of corporate profit. This includes screwing the students, which we have been doing since the advent of education.
Just how does one compete with an open standard? Or am I missing something?
So if *you* don't buy Dell, why did you recommend them?
You have to pick and choose your products, these days. The $279 2400N is a great price for a desktop (subtract $20 for no monitor), once you remove all the garbage.
So yes, I recommend Dell desktops but not printers. As a side note, I always keep a stash of Canon iP3000 printers in stock. These printers are cheap, quality and Canon makes the cartridges very easy to refill. When someone runs out of ink, I offer to refill their cartridges for $20 or explain to them how they can DIY for just a couple bucks.
Long story short - every vendor has a "catch" and a "loss leader". You just have to pick and choose the latter.
Don't buy Dell.
I don't. If it hasn't been pointed out a million times already, the majority of the consumers out there simply don't know any better. For example, I recently recommended to someone the $300 Dell Dimension 2400 only to find that the sales rep talked them into upgrading to a "better model" so that they could get a 19" LCD "bundled" (note that Dell won't offer things like a DVD-R or large LCD monitor with their low-end stuff - that's how they getcha).
I tried to explain that they could have just ordered the PC and monitor separately but this was obviously well over their head. They didn't care. In the end, they ended up paying over $1000 so they could do basic internet, email and photo printing.
Lovely.
Inkjet printers are a scam, played on a public that doesn't know any better.
They're doing it with laser printers, too. $25 for a USB cable and $65 for toner.
The people responsible for this greed will pay one day.
ZabaSearch
He's the first Eric E. Schmidt on zabasearch. The issue is that he needs to get over the fact that privacy does not exist, unless you accidentally fill out false Change of Address forms every month.
I hope that these electronic books work out better than they tend to in more "civilized" countries like the US.
The irony of the situation is that in more "civilized" countries like the US, corruption takes over and results in textbooks that go through constant revision in order to keep sales up.
I tried to help my wife save some money by purchasing a used text book once. Shortly after class started, the professor admitted that she'd made a mistake on the book and that the students would need to purchase the 9th revision of the book instead of the 8th. Since I had purchased the book on the used market, I could not exchange it. For shits and giggles, I compared the 9th edition with the 8th and found only minor change - mostly just moving page numbers around and swapping the numbers on the chapter questions.
The people responsible for these financial rapes deserve nothing more than to be shot in the face.
I did the math for everyone... it works out to One point twenty one jiga-watts, Marty!
I, for one, welcome our English-correcting overlords.
As long as the correction is done in a kind manner, this kind of stuff does nothing but help. I've learned a few things, at least.