When is the last time you've been in a public school? I used to work in the office of a public middle school, and I'll tell you...you can tell geeky hormonal 8th grade Boy NOT to surf pornographic websites on the unfiltered library Internet access 24 times a day, but he'll still keep going to bondage.net (yep, he was a kinky little bastard).
I attended classes in my local public schools up until the end of 7th grade. During 7th grade, several of my instructors decided not to follow my IEP, so the school district ended up paying about 16,000 USD a year (I think this a high estimate) for me to attend private school for 5 years (8-12th grades). I can't say anything about my peers (at the time, or now) but I've never had a desire to veiw pornography while in school (or at a public library for that matter), I have in fact, had the desire to *not* view pornogoraphy while there were others around me. It always seemed a little wierd to me.....
Anyway, thats why you have the computers set up so that there is a staff member watching what the group is doing at all times, to punish those who cannot handle it responsibly. Thus, looking at pornograph on school computers = detention. If they doesn't get it after a few times, they diserve to lose a few hours of personal time every day.....
No, I was simply trying to sidestep the issue, because the terms are not fully defined. I can't say: "It is always wrong for an adult to engage in sexual intercourse with a child." unless we agree on the definitions of 'adult' and 'child.'
Currently the distinction between 'adult' and 'child' is arbitrarily set at 18 (and/or 21) by law, when it physiologically occurs during puberty. This seems to me like the concept in of a 'fence' around something as in Kashrut, where to prevent "Boiling a kid in it's mother's milk" the common practice became not eating any meat with any dairy, thus preventing the non-observance of that commandment. So since puberty (in girls between 9-14, in boys 10-17) occurs on average well before the age of 18 (assuming bell shaped distribution) then, as I see it, the relevant issue is whether the participants in the pornographic depictions are pre-pubecent or post-pubecent: The latter is at the least illegal, while the former is at the least both morally reheprehensible, and illegal.
Again, I feel obligated to bring up the example of Tracy Lords, who began acting in pornographic films at about 16, which brings up another issue: Should 'adults' who engage in sex-acts with minors who they believe to be, and have represented themselves as 'adults' be punished to the same degree as if they knew that they were engaging in sex acts with a minor?
The last time I looked at our county's sex offender registry, public urination had not put anyone on the list. They were on the list because they were repeat offenders with a profoundly disturbing history of violence.
You obviously havn't looked.
There are references all over the place to a man named "Juan Matamoros" who allegidally was convicted for public urination in MA when he was 21 (according to several sites I have seen he is, or was when the sites were published, 49)
The ENTIRE REASONING behind 'innocent until proven guilty' is that it is preferable (not necessaraly better) to let many guilty men go unpunished rather than unjustly punish even one innocent man. The problem with the 'sex offender' tag, is that it associates all 'sex offences' with specific offenses, such as rape/rape&murder of an adult/minor. This is a perversion of justice, and it is unconstitutional (Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution). It is like equating petting a kitten to sacrificing it in a horrific Satanic ritual, and people see the label resulting from the former and assume the latter. The result is that people get punished more severely than the crime warrants.
I would say that public urination deserves, at most a mandatory apoloigy to those that witnessed the event, a fine of not more than $500 USD, and not more than two days in jail or 15 hours of community service. Not eternal branding as a 'sex offender,' which forever puts restrictions on where the 'offender' can reside, where he can work, and who will socialize with him once they find out the label.
I was trying to sidestep that issue, as it was well beyond the scope of my post; I do concur that adults engaging in sex acts with children is, in general, wrong. It depends however, on your definition of 'child.' When is someone old enough to consent? When does someone go from being a 'child' to being an 'adult?'
Currently (in the US, at least) people stop being 'children' at 18, and become full 'adults' at 21. This is purely arbitrary. So since you used the example of 'caveman times,' I will use it too:
In the days of the cavemen, female humans would be engaging in reproductive behavior from the age of puberty, all the way up until they died (unless they were unlucky), and any other behavior would have been counter-productive. If they didn't start having children as soon as they could (puberty, 11-14) they wouldn't have been able to have as many before they died. They must have defined 'child' as someone who hadn't been through puberty yet.
So the question is: Is someone still, technically a 'child' once they can help produce children?
This is where this issue really lies; in whether someone is old enough to copulate once they are post-pubescent. I mean, look at Tracy Lords! Wait, you can't... She started in porn when she was 16, and according to wikipedia, starred in at least 18 adult films before turing 18...
I'm not trying to say its right to fuck little kids; I'm just trying to say that we need to more clearly define the terms we're using (child) before we start using them in this manner (child porn).
If you are a Labour party senator you have bought valuable votes to tuck away for the next election
The problem here is that they are 'buying votes' as you put it, with taxpayer money. I have absolutely no problem with politicians paying for their campaigns out of their own pockets, or with funds they raised through donations, but I have a HUGE problem with them using money forcibly taken from people through taxation for this purpose.
Schools shouldn't be required to provide unmoderated internet access anymore than school libraries should be required to stock "Big Juggs" magazine in the name of "Free Speech".
I think schools (and public libraries) should be required to provide unfettered access to the internet, just not necessaraly in a classroom setting, where students should be focusing on their learning, not on their profile(s) on some social networking site(s).
Perhaps in the case of schools, they should be permitted to filter access to the internet only durring class hours so that students can have unfiltered access to the internet both before and after classes. I'm not saying they should have unsupervised access, just that it shouldn't be the computer doing the supervision.
The problem with using whitelists (while a good idea in principal) is that they are only effective if there is an efficient means of auditing sites (adding new sites to the whitelist, and making sure those on the whitelist do not become objectionable). The blacklist is a much sipler solution (although not without issue) based around the idea that sites that become objectionable rarely stop being objectionable (barring those sites that become objectionable through malicious intervention); thus the blacklist is better for general filtering because things that go on the blacklist generally don't have to come off of it. Example: Goatse.cxian sites should be in everyone's list of sites not to allow, but it is much easier to blacklist Goatse mirrors as they appear (as barring reclimation of hacked {for lack of a better word} sites), most are likely to remain Goatse mirrors), than to constantly check every site on the whitelist to ensure that they havn't become such extreme shock sites.
In breif, the whitelist is inefficient because it requires every site added to it to be verified as free of objectionable content forever, while the blacklist is more "set it and forget it." This isn't to say that blacklists are free from defects; they aren't. It is simply to say that the amount of effort required to establish and maintain a blacklist is much lower than for a whitelist, and, since the government (read: taxpayers) is(are) paying for it, they should go with the more cost-effective option.
The main problem with this legislation is that it is based on a slippery slope fallicy; The fact that you can tell the difference between group sex among consenting adult and forced sex between adults and children means that you can tell the top of the slope from the bottom.
The issue with 'child pornography' is whether you define the veiwing/possesion/dissemination of it to be a lesser/equal offense to creating it. Clearly, the act of creating it is counter to our current collective sociatial morality, but the problem with our current laws is that they equate possesion/dissemination with creation. The problem here, is that the laws are written so broadly, that they can be used against minors as in this case http://www.usatoday.com/tech/webguide/internetlife/2004-03-29-child-self-porn_x.htm where the minor charged with possesion and dissemination of 'child pornography' (along with child abuse) was the minor depicted in the aforementioned pornography.
Add to this the problem of the label 'sex offender,' and you have a recipie for disaster. The biggest problem with the label 'sex offender' is that it is so broad, encompasing everything from raping and murdering an adult, to molesting (a) child(ren), to public urination. Add to this that politicians make laws abridging the freedoms of these so called 'sex offenders' all whilst waving the 'protect the children' banner. The best example of this are laws requiring 'sex offenders' from handing out candy on Halloween. The issue here is that the 'sex offender' label does not differentiate between granny-rapists and child-rapists, thus unnecessarally abridging the freedoms of those who have never sexually exploited children.
I have little problem with laws that punish certian offenders equally and equitibly, but I feel that current laws restricting 'sex offenders' are so broad, that they associate such completely different crimes (public urination has as much to do with intercourse as my use of a car to get to a bank has with a bank robber's use of a car for his getaway) with one another thus causing it to fall into the realm of "cruel and unusual punishment" as people automatically assume that 'sex offenders' have sexually exploited another human (usually a minor) resulting in those so labled having difficulty living 'normal' lives.
That's funny, when I search for "Sacred Byte", I get twelve responses, and four of them are in another language. Is your gaming clan from Korea, Japan, or Russia?
I never said that SacredByte is my given name. It is a pseudonym I have chosen to use--I arrived at it by combining words at random. I got "Sacred" From a clothing manufacturer (Sacred Earth), and well, "Byte" should be obvious. As to whether I was the first to use the name "SacredByte" I do not know or care; All that I care is that I came by it independantly of anyone else using it....
Additionally, searching for various forms of my full name, I found that I get three with my first & last, over 10,000 with my two middle, none with my two middle & last, and exactally one with my full given name.
I do. Even still, when I google my name (first & last in quotes) I still get three results. Two of them are from the gaming clan of which I am a member, and the other is the amateur radio club of which I am also a member.
The simplest way to obfuscate your identity online is to eigther give an entirely fake name, or a partially fake name. For example, use your middle name as your first name, and your mother's maiden name as your last (which works espially well if they're both fairly common names). For me, using this technique, If put in quotes and google'd nets over 10,000 results (as opposed to three with my true first & last name)
I don't have time to post a full reply, but from what I've heard Dell's PERC5 cards SUCK.
I've heard that Dell takes a perfectly good card, and removed just about every usefull feature, which requires that you use the drivers provided by Dell, instead of those provided by the card maker....
Ingnorance is the closest thing to stupidity that is correctable.
Stupidity cannot be cured with money, or through education, or by legislation. Stupidity is not a sin, the victim can't help being stupid. But stupidity is the only universal capital crime; the sentence is death, there is no appeal, and execution is carried out automatically and with out pity.
-Lazarus Long (Time enough for love, P.246-247)
Between apathy, stupidity, and ignorance, apathy is worst by far; The stupid man cannot correct his condition, the ignorant man can, and the apathetic man chooses not to. I fear that the politicians in New Jersey fall in to the last catagory: They don't care about the effects of the laws they write just as long as they stay in office.
As a general rule, when someone says that there ought to be a law for/against something, there usually oughtn't.
As for your reference to the 15 year old prostitute, I refer you to Traci Lords.....
What I was trying to get across with my correction was that to most consumers, while they have a 'price range' in the sense you suggest, that below the upper limit of that range, the judge based on factors OTHER than price; So because I have need of mass storage, I rate a device with storage capacity higher by an order of magnitude higher than a device with marginally faster IO speed. I recognize that not all people have the same constraints I do, but I feel confident saying that most people would make the same choice. Some people however, always go for the cheapest solution, and they often pay the price (read: they buy low quailty items); This is why when I buy this kind of hardware, I buy from manufacturers I trust not to produce lemons (the exception to this rule being Dell, b/c their gold business tech support/service is so good).
I don't think the enthusiast market is going to go for this--not because of the monitary cost, but because most people who spend that much money on their computers often have all their expansion slots full of graphics/sound/physics cards--unless they start making enthusiast motherboards with more than 7 expansion slots.
Workstations are where I can see a device like this being usefull: Setting it up to hold the OS's swap to speed up things like CAD software, or game level design software, or DTP software. I know the owner of a print-shop local to me, and the owner there understands this; If he skimps on computer hardware, he has to pay an employee to waste time waiting for the hardware. He sees that over time, buying better equipment in the first place pays for itself over time (spending around 1500 USD on a workstation instead of 500 USD), and because the employee isn't waiting on the hardware/software as much, he is more productive--meaning that not only does he not pay the employee for wasted time, his business can be more productive as a whole.
The market as I see it for this type of product is for workstations as an alternative to having the OS's swap file on the HDD, but only if they come out with smaller versions, say around 16GB....
There are many buyers who are not like you. The issue is that to corporate many buyers, both $50 and $0 are "free".
Fixed it for you...
The reason I would choose a slower 500GB drive for 0 USD over a faster 64GB drive for 50 USD is that I place capacity over speed. With the 64GB drive, while I would (in theory) have improved disk access times, which would result in better performance in software (read: Games) The reduced load times and fractionally higher FPS would be outweighed by the fact that I would have to constantly uninstall software in order to install other software. I would much rather have a drive that could fit all my software at once. Currently, I have a 60GB hard drive in my laptop, a 160GB in my desktop, and a 200GB USB external. They all run at 7200 rpm, and they all have less than 10% free space.
RAID 6 isn't an official RAID level; It is just the common name for RAID 5 extended to cope with multiple disk loss. And, since you say we should take these people at their word over the possible performance, it is only fair to do the same to current solutions: Compair them both based on their maximium theoretical throughput.
RAID 2, in theory, should have the best mix of performance and reliability, but it get it's redundancy from ECC (which most current HDD's do on their own) instead of parity. Another issue is that it require all the drives to spin syncronously - something that most current drives don't support. Admitidly I know very little other than what I've read on the subject, most of which is contradictory; some say it is cheap, while others say it is costly. But anyway, in theory it should be quite fast.
Finally, I understand where you're coming from saying going through all the red tape makes the $50 USD difference negligible, but price alone isn't the issue: Other issues are actual, real world performance, and capacity.
You're missing my point, and casting wild aspersions to boot.
My point was simply: I doubt these will become popular as longterm/mass storage devices. You also assumed my mention of RAID was to say "Just put in a RAID-0, and it'll solve everything." This is nowhere near what I meant to imply. I was using the example of RAID (big, fast, and cheap) to show that you can combine a number of smaller, slower, cheaper disks into one large, fast volume. It is similar to what Cray did on one of his early supercomputers: He went with the lowest bidder, and ended up having to rig part togther to combat inconsistancies; his technique worked. The idea behind RAID is that if you can rig toghther several smaller, slower, cheaper drives, you can end up with performance to rival much more expensive single disks.
I'm not losing sight of the forest for the trees on this one; I'm simply coming at it from a different perspective. This thing may have its uses, but it is NOT as a replacement to HDD's but rather as a fast, temp cache. And if I had a choice between say, one of the new 64GB SATA flash drives for $50 USD, or a 500GB 7200rpm Seagate SATA HDD for free, I'd go for the Seagate. And not soley because of the price. If I have a choice between a very small, fast drive that I had to pay for, and a much larger drive that wasn't much slower, the combination of high storage capacity and low price would win. I would rather have all my games installed on my hard drive and still have free space, then have to constantly scrape for free space just to have a marginal speed improvement.
Your last point is a red hering; You blindly take their word for it (As far as I can tell; please point me to evidince if I'm wrong here) as to the read/write speeds this thing can achieve...
As for the RAID level I'd choose? RAID 2. One of the fastest, and most robust RAID levels (even though no-one does it.... hmmm...)
Thats the reason this isn't likely to be widely sucessful: Hard-drives can be had for under 0.30 USD per GB. Lets not forget what R.A.I.D. means: Redundant Array of Inexpensive Drives. 'Redundant array' being important, but 'Inexpensive' being crucial. The purpose of a R.A.I.D. is to achieve performance of expensive things like this but without the expense.
The difference between the U.S. patent system and most patent systems of other countries is that the U.S. patent system is based around the idea of "First to invent" rather than "First to patent."
Its like awarding the first post to the first person who thinks about posting rather than the first person who actually submits a post. The advantage of this system is that it prevents the "Lobachevsky"(1) issue by providing a way to get rid of bogus patents by proving prior art. Thus, all I would have to do to get awarded first post is prove that I was the first to think up/to [a] post.
1: From a Tom Lehrer song; Google "I have a friend in Minsk"
Actually, if what another poster says is true, in that this is just a veiled attempt to make the technologies companies want to sell poplular, then FDE is a good thing. This is because a company can charge MUCH more to recover data from an encrypted disk than from a non-encrypted disk.
I'm not sure I agree with your proposal, but I definately don't agree with the storage capacity you mention. The issue is that developing technology takes time. What you propose is like planning a new highway for today's needs without realizing that by the time you actually complete construction you still don't have enough capacity.
What you need to do is say "how much will I need in five years?" and then build that. That said, if the purpose is long-term archival backup of hard-drives, anything smaller than 500GB will be nearly useless in five years. Anything much less would be like backing up your RAID array on floppy disks. Eight inch floppy disks.
9. Green storage initiatives will cause companies to seek nondisruptive/partial hardware upgrades.
This assumes that the 'environmental cost' of continuing to operate obscelete technology is less than the 'environment cost' of upgrading to more efficient technology. This is not always the case; Imagine adding capacity to a PDP-11 to 'keep it modern.' The cost of powering the equipment more than makes up for any possible environmental ills.
So basically what they are saying is that next year people are going to start upgrading their computers a little bit at a time instead of chucking out the window every time Intel, AMD, Nvidia, Dell, HP, Apple, etc. come out with something new. It seems like a good idea, so much so that; in fact, most sane people already do it.
10. De-duplication, thin provisioning and virtual tape libraries will be in demand because of power saving efforts in the data center.
The issue here is that they make the false assumption that skimping on backups is a good thing. Due to certian high-profile corporate scandals, many companies MUST keep certian records either for a specific term, or indefinately. The problem with TFA's assumption is that they assume that the 'saving' money by not having multiple backups in multiple locations couldn't come back to bite the company in the ass big-time (huge fines).
The reason companies keep multiple off-site backups is simple: The cost of keeping multiple off-site backups is LESS THAN the cost of losing the data.
Slashdot Mirror
Anyway, thats why you have the computers set up so that there is a staff member watching what the group is doing at all times, to punish those who cannot handle it responsibly. Thus, looking at pornograph on school computers = detention. If they doesn't get it after a few times, they diserve to lose a few hours of personal time every day.....
Currently the distinction between 'adult' and 'child' is arbitrarily set at 18 (and/or 21) by law, when it physiologically occurs during puberty. This seems to me like the concept in of a 'fence' around something as in Kashrut, where to prevent "Boiling a kid in it's mother's milk" the common practice became not eating any meat with any dairy, thus preventing the non-observance of that commandment. So since puberty (in girls between 9-14, in boys 10-17) occurs on average well before the age of 18 (assuming bell shaped distribution) then, as I see it, the relevant issue is whether the participants in the pornographic depictions are pre-pubecent or post-pubecent: The latter is at the least illegal, while the former is at the least both morally reheprehensible, and illegal.
Again, I feel obligated to bring up the example of Tracy Lords, who began acting in pornographic films at about 16, which brings up another issue: Should 'adults' who engage in sex-acts with minors who they believe to be, and have represented themselves as 'adults' be punished to the same degree as if they knew that they were engaging in sex acts with a minor?
and as to I would remind you that morality is relative to speed http://xkcd.com/103/
I was trying to sidestep that issue, as it was well beyond the scope of my post; I do concur that adults engaging in sex acts with children is, in general, wrong. It depends however, on your definition of 'child.' When is someone old enough to consent? When does someone go from being a 'child' to being an 'adult?' Currently (in the US, at least) people stop being 'children' at 18, and become full 'adults' at 21. This is purely arbitrary. So since you used the example of 'caveman times,' I will use it too: In the days of the cavemen, female humans would be engaging in reproductive behavior from the age of puberty, all the way up until they died (unless they were unlucky), and any other behavior would have been counter-productive. If they didn't start having children as soon as they could (puberty, 11-14) they wouldn't have been able to have as many before they died. They must have defined 'child' as someone who hadn't been through puberty yet. So the question is: Is someone still, technically a 'child' once they can help produce children? This is where this issue really lies; in whether someone is old enough to copulate once they are post-pubescent. I mean, look at Tracy Lords! Wait, you can't... She started in porn when she was 16, and according to wikipedia, starred in at least 18 adult films before turing 18... I'm not trying to say its right to fuck little kids; I'm just trying to say that we need to more clearly define the terms we're using (child) before we start using them in this manner (child porn).
The problem here is that they are 'buying votes' as you put it, with taxpayer money. I have absolutely no problem with politicians paying for their campaigns out of their own pockets, or with funds they raised through donations, but I have a HUGE problem with them using money forcibly taken from people through taxation for this purpose.
I think schools (and public libraries) should be required to provide unfettered access to the internet, just not necessaraly in a classroom setting, where students should be focusing on their learning, not on their profile(s) on some social networking site(s).
Perhaps in the case of schools, they should be permitted to filter access to the internet only durring class hours so that students can have unfiltered access to the internet both before and after classes. I'm not saying they should have unsupervised access, just that it shouldn't be the computer doing the supervision.
The problem with using whitelists (while a good idea in principal) is that they are only effective if there is an efficient means of auditing sites (adding new sites to the whitelist, and making sure those on the whitelist do not become objectionable). The blacklist is a much sipler solution (although not without issue) based around the idea that sites that become objectionable rarely stop being objectionable (barring those sites that become objectionable through malicious intervention); thus the blacklist is better for general filtering because things that go on the blacklist generally don't have to come off of it. Example: Goatse.cxian sites should be in everyone's list of sites not to allow, but it is much easier to blacklist Goatse mirrors as they appear (as barring reclimation of hacked {for lack of a better word} sites), most are likely to remain Goatse mirrors), than to constantly check every site on the whitelist to ensure that they havn't become such extreme shock sites.
In breif, the whitelist is inefficient because it requires every site added to it to be verified as free of objectionable content forever, while the blacklist is more "set it and forget it." This isn't to say that blacklists are free from defects; they aren't. It is simply to say that the amount of effort required to establish and maintain a blacklist is much lower than for a whitelist, and, since the government (read: taxpayers) is(are) paying for it, they should go with the more cost-effective option.
The main problem with this legislation is that it is based on a slippery slope fallicy; The fact that you can tell the difference between group sex among consenting adult and forced sex between adults and children means that you can tell the top of the slope from the bottom.
The issue with 'child pornography' is whether you define the veiwing/possesion/dissemination of it to be a lesser/equal offense to creating it. Clearly, the act of creating it is counter to our current collective sociatial morality, but the problem with our current laws is that they equate possesion/dissemination with creation. The problem here, is that the laws are written so broadly, that they can be used against minors as in this case http://www.usatoday.com/tech/webguide/internetlife/2004-03-29-child-self-porn_x.htm where the minor charged with possesion and dissemination of 'child pornography' (along with child abuse) was the minor depicted in the aforementioned pornography.
Add to this the problem of the label 'sex offender,' and you have a recipie for disaster. The biggest problem with the label 'sex offender' is that it is so broad, encompasing everything from raping and murdering an adult, to molesting (a) child(ren), to public urination. Add to this that politicians make laws abridging the freedoms of these so called 'sex offenders' all whilst waving the 'protect the children' banner. The best example of this are laws requiring 'sex offenders' from handing out candy on Halloween. The issue here is that the 'sex offender' label does not differentiate between granny-rapists and child-rapists, thus unnecessarally abridging the freedoms of those who have never sexually exploited children.
I have little problem with laws that punish certian offenders equally and equitibly, but I feel that current laws restricting 'sex offenders' are so broad, that they associate such completely different crimes (public urination has as much to do with intercourse as my use of a car to get to a bank has with a bank robber's use of a car for his getaway) with one another thus causing it to fall into the realm of "cruel and unusual punishment" as people automatically assume that 'sex offenders' have sexually exploited another human (usually a minor) resulting in those so labled having difficulty living 'normal' lives.
I never said that SacredByte is my given name. It is a pseudonym I have chosen to use--I arrived at it by combining words at random. I got "Sacred" From a clothing manufacturer (Sacred Earth), and well, "Byte" should be obvious. As to whether I was the first to use the name "SacredByte" I do not know or care; All that I care is that I came by it independantly of anyone else using it....
Additionally, searching for various forms of my full name, I found that I get three with my first & last, over 10,000 with my two middle, none with my two middle & last, and exactally one with my full given name.
I do. Even still, when I google my name (first & last in quotes) I still get three results. Two of them are from the gaming clan of which I am a member, and the other is the amateur radio club of which I am also a member.
The simplest way to obfuscate your identity online is to eigther give an entirely fake name, or a partially fake name. For example, use your middle name as your first name, and your mother's maiden name as your last (which works espially well if they're both fairly common names). For me, using this technique, If put in quotes and google'd nets over 10,000 results (as opposed to three with my true first & last name)
I don't have time to post a full reply, but from what I've heard Dell's PERC5 cards SUCK. I've heard that Dell takes a perfectly good card, and removed just about every usefull feature, which requires that you use the drivers provided by Dell, instead of those provided by the card maker....
What I was trying to get across with my correction was that to most consumers, while they have a 'price range' in the sense you suggest, that below the upper limit of that range, the judge based on factors OTHER than price; So because I have need of mass storage, I rate a device with storage capacity higher by an order of magnitude higher than a device with marginally faster IO speed. I recognize that not all people have the same constraints I do, but I feel confident saying that most people would make the same choice. Some people however, always go for the cheapest solution, and they often pay the price (read: they buy low quailty items); This is why when I buy this kind of hardware, I buy from manufacturers I trust not to produce lemons (the exception to this rule being Dell, b/c their gold business tech support/service is so good).
I don't think the enthusiast market is going to go for this--not because of the monitary cost, but because most people who spend that much money on their computers often have all their expansion slots full of graphics/sound/physics cards--unless they start making enthusiast motherboards with more than 7 expansion slots.
Workstations are where I can see a device like this being usefull: Setting it up to hold the OS's swap to speed up things like CAD software, or game level design software, or DTP software. I know the owner of a print-shop local to me, and the owner there understands this; If he skimps on computer hardware, he has to pay an employee to waste time waiting for the hardware. He sees that over time, buying better equipment in the first place pays for itself over time (spending around 1500 USD on a workstation instead of 500 USD), and because the employee isn't waiting on the hardware/software as much, he is more productive--meaning that not only does he not pay the employee for wasted time, his business can be more productive as a whole.
The market as I see it for this type of product is for workstations as an alternative to having the OS's swap file on the HDD, but only if they come out with smaller versions, say around 16GB....
The reason I would choose a slower 500GB drive for 0 USD over a faster 64GB drive for 50 USD is that I place capacity over speed. With the 64GB drive, while I would (in theory) have improved disk access times, which would result in better performance in software (read: Games) The reduced load times and fractionally higher FPS would be outweighed by the fact that I would have to constantly uninstall software in order to install other software. I would much rather have a drive that could fit all my software at once. Currently, I have a 60GB hard drive in my laptop, a 160GB in my desktop, and a 200GB USB external. They all run at 7200 rpm, and they all have less than 10% free space.
RAID 6 isn't an official RAID level; It is just the common name for RAID 5 extended to cope with multiple disk loss. And, since you say we should take these people at their word over the possible performance, it is only fair to do the same to current solutions: Compair them both based on their maximium theoretical throughput.
RAID 2, in theory, should have the best mix of performance and reliability, but it get it's redundancy from ECC (which most current HDD's do on their own) instead of parity. Another issue is that it require all the drives to spin syncronously - something that most current drives don't support. Admitidly I know very little other than what I've read on the subject, most of which is contradictory; some say it is cheap, while others say it is costly. But anyway, in theory it should be quite fast.
Finally, I understand where you're coming from saying going through all the red tape makes the $50 USD difference negligible, but price alone isn't the issue: Other issues are actual, real world performance, and capacity.
Not to mention small game animals - esp. poisonious snakes...
You're missing my point, and casting wild aspersions to boot. My point was simply: I doubt these will become popular as longterm/mass storage devices. You also assumed my mention of RAID was to say "Just put in a RAID-0, and it'll solve everything." This is nowhere near what I meant to imply. I was using the example of RAID (big, fast, and cheap) to show that you can combine a number of smaller, slower, cheaper disks into one large, fast volume. It is similar to what Cray did on one of his early supercomputers: He went with the lowest bidder, and ended up having to rig part togther to combat inconsistancies; his technique worked. The idea behind RAID is that if you can rig toghther several smaller, slower, cheaper drives, you can end up with performance to rival much more expensive single disks. I'm not losing sight of the forest for the trees on this one; I'm simply coming at it from a different perspective. This thing may have its uses, but it is NOT as a replacement to HDD's but rather as a fast, temp cache. And if I had a choice between say, one of the new 64GB SATA flash drives for $50 USD, or a 500GB 7200rpm Seagate SATA HDD for free, I'd go for the Seagate. And not soley because of the price. If I have a choice between a very small, fast drive that I had to pay for, and a much larger drive that wasn't much slower, the combination of high storage capacity and low price would win. I would rather have all my games installed on my hard drive and still have free space, then have to constantly scrape for free space just to have a marginal speed improvement. Your last point is a red hering; You blindly take their word for it (As far as I can tell; please point me to evidince if I'm wrong here) as to the read/write speeds this thing can achieve... As for the RAID level I'd choose? RAID 2. One of the fastest, and most robust RAID levels (even though no-one does it.... hmmm...)
Thats the reason this isn't likely to be widely sucessful: Hard-drives can be had for under 0.30 USD per GB. Lets not forget what R.A.I.D. means: Redundant Array of Inexpensive Drives. 'Redundant array' being important, but 'Inexpensive' being crucial. The purpose of a R.A.I.D. is to achieve performance of expensive things like this but without the expense.
The difference between the U.S. patent system and most patent systems of other countries is that the U.S. patent system is based around the idea of "First to invent" rather than "First to patent." Its like awarding the first post to the first person who thinks about posting rather than the first person who actually submits a post. The advantage of this system is that it prevents the "Lobachevsky"(1) issue by providing a way to get rid of bogus patents by proving prior art. Thus, all I would have to do to get awarded first post is prove that I was the first to think up/to [a] post. 1: From a Tom Lehrer song; Google "I have a friend in Minsk"
Actually, if what another poster says is true, in that this is just a veiled attempt to make the technologies companies want to sell poplular, then FDE is a good thing. This is because a company can charge MUCH more to recover data from an encrypted disk than from a non-encrypted disk.
People who reply as AC like you did deserve to be sent to the punitentiary for a nice, long stay.
I guess it depends on who you use to deliver them; Optical media is extremely easily damaged.
Thats a sticky subject.
I'm not sure I agree with your proposal, but I definately don't agree with the storage capacity you mention. The issue is that developing technology takes time. What you propose is like planning a new highway for today's needs without realizing that by the time you actually complete construction you still don't have enough capacity.
What you need to do is say "how much will I need in five years?" and then build that. That said, if the purpose is long-term archival backup of hard-drives, anything smaller than 500GB will be nearly useless in five years. Anything much less would be like backing up your RAID array on floppy disks. Eight inch floppy disks.