You cannot buy the same performance class of drives in SATA as you can with SCSI. Some people call this a market segmentation scheme, I call it catering to the market. People who demand top class drive performance typically also want the other benefits of SCSI as well. Whether those benefits are needed for your requirements, well, depends on your requirements.
SCSI can (depending on which particular SCSI) provide you with more devices per controller without sacrificing (any noticeable) performance. If you need to shove a ton of drives into one server, this will add up quickly. Since you are talking about RAID 0+1, depending on how much storage you are shooting for, this may be a strong factor (but you may be able to skin by on the 4-6 SATA ports you'll find on most mobo's).
SCSI is more mature. So drivers are likely to be more robust, more efficient, and more stable than those you'll find in your garden variety SATA.
You'll typically find that under heavy load, SCSI performs better. Again, this is mostly due to so called "market segmentation" schemes, but that is why you pay more. If your users are going to be mostly dealing with the usual, periodic saving of word processing documents, spreadsheets, and a couple of light media files - you probably don't need to handle really heavy loads. The RAID controller will eat the peaks of write demand in cache (if you get a decent RAID controller - see later), and you should have fairly smooth performance. Then again, if your users are constantly running large installers (development test environment) or working with large remote files - you should really go SCSI.
All that said: I think you would be served best by investing in a better RAID controller rather than investing in top of the line drives. The RAID controllers they integrate on to most motherboards are crap (for what you are trying to do, desktop use - meh). You want something with a ton of cache, and good management soft/firmware. If you buy a real server class motherboard, you may get a better onboard RAID, but however you go about this - pay the most attention to this detail. Unless you really need low latency for high demand, random access applications, top end drives probably won't give you much over the usual network latencies.
If you decide to go with this kind of setup, try to make sure you use a fan with low vibration (well balanced, low speed). The last thing you need with a hard drive is more vibration. The drive head is only flying a few hundred molecules above the drive surface.
It may not amount to much as the vibration needs to be of the right frequency to be really bad. But it is probably better to err on the side of caution with drive lifetimes already being as bad as they are.
I personally use a 120mm fan that is mounted on rubber pegs, perpendicular to the hard drives, but not mounted to the drives themselves. This way, less vibration is transferred to the drives.
I found most of your post interesting, but flawed in one simple way: you seem unwilling to admit that the creators of works have rights to control its distribution. As a software developer, who has contributed to GPLed projects and proprietary products, I find this position unacceptable.
In the case of GPL'ed projects, I *chose* to freely distribute patches without "compensation" per se. For proprietary products, I *chose* to work on them because I would be compensated. Copyright law exists in order to allow the provisions of the GPL to have teeth, as well as the rights of creators of content to not be unfairly exploited. In the absence of copyright law, there is little motivation to acheive great software projects, great musical works, or great cinematic works. This is due to the fact that without legal control over the distribution, there is no reason for anyone to pay you anything for any work you do to create said work, nor for them to respect the terms of distribution (eg: the GPL).
In the market you seem to envision, where there is no copyright, creators of non-physical products cannot be paid for the products themselves. There is no motivation to create quality products, as the only way to make money is to support crappy free products (that are crappy by design, because if they worked, there would be no need for support). What you tacitly support is a service economy based on never giving people what they want: stuff that just works. I doubt that you really feel that way, and must not have thought this through to a reasonable conclusion that doesn't involve Utopia.
What you failed to address, and actively at that as those points were excised from the quoting, is that people worked on those projects. Products (music, software, movies) are sold because they were created to make money. So, receiving these goods against the terms of their distribution is, essentially, theft. It may not technically be theft, but that is a semantic quibble that is pointless. If you copy something against the terms of its distribution, have you received something that you were supposed to have paid for? YES. Did you pay for it? NO. You broke the barter because it is excessively easy not to get caught. This barter is the legal barter that the government made with the content creator that they will be afforded a protection from this kind of action in order to encourage the production of artistic, scientific, useful works. In any actual economic system that involves the exchange of goods and valuables, there must be rules by which economic exchange can take place, otherwise anarchy rules, and everyone exists in a constant prisoner's dilemma, or you are in a harmonic socialism. I'll pass on the argument about that.
So, yes, people can use iTunes. Most don't use iTunes or similar services. Not because they are scared of the mild DRM (iTunes is very lax in that respect), but because they are unwilling to pay $1 for something they can get for free. It doesn't matter how cheap it is, as long as I can receive the same quality for free.
Now. I do not agree with the direction of the extension of copyright law. I do not believe in harsher penalties than those for mere theft in the case of individual infrigement. I do believe in the government vigorously enforcing the law.
You also actively avoided the point of "being provided entertainment/products for free is not a basic, inalienable right" in your moral arguments. In order for your arguments to hold, this bridge must be crossed at some point, or else the argument does not hold water under scrutiny. This is because all these products were created under the contract that the creators would be compensated. In order to morally trump the law, you would have to argue that you have a human right that copyright violates (unreasonably long terms, perhaps - but not basic, limited copyright). I seriously doubt that anyone could successfully argue that. However, in the case of the battle for civil rights, basic, human rights were being denied from people, hence why civil disobedience was a morally justified action.
Every one of your refutations is fundamentally asinine.
Demonstration follows.
(1) I don't personally
believe in copying
CDs illegally-- but I think we should avoid using unkind words like
"piracy" to describe those that do -- instead, we should describe it as
an "infringement", much like a parking infringement.
The above idea is presented as if it's prima
facie absurd, without bothering to explain why it might
be absurd, Since no justifications or reasons are supplied, we must set
this argument aside. Next.
(2) I don't believe in the
record companies
emotively abusing the word "theft," but I do believe in emotively
abusing words like "information," "sharing," and "Copyright Enforcement
Militia."
"What's good for the goose...," etc.,
etc. People who indulge in
histrionics ("piracy", indeed) to make their point should expect to
receive the same in return. It's certainly not the fairest way to
conduct a meaningful, enlightening debate. But I don't see intellectual
property adherents abandoning their rhetoric any time soon, so we're
kinda stuck here. Next.
Irrelevant. This is a rather brilliant quip of sarcasm which
you seem unwilling to comprehend. You see, it is quite common for
people to construct meaningless arguments about semantics (which, you
yourself are guilty of in your post), in order to further an opinion
that they cannot enforce with actual logical argument (I'm not
discussing whether such a position is defensible, just that the person
utilizing the tactic lacks the ability for cogent debate). What
term you use to describe the subject is irrelevant in the discussion of
the relative morality of the subject matter, so long as what is meant
by the term is understood. Quibbling over the term is merely
rhetoric, meant to manipulate the audience to feel sympathy for the
author.
(3) I believe that piracy is driven by "overpriced
CDs" even though CDs have dropped in price over the years.
Inaccurate. Retail price of CDs has
remained almost flat for the
last twenty or so years (unless you're talking in Constant Dollars, in
which case the price has fallen). However, manufacturing
costs over the same time period have fallen precipitously (today, less
than USD$1.00 per CD, silkscreened, in a jewel case with liner).
Traditionally, this means a corresponding reduction in consumer
pricing. This hasn't happened in the music space. No justification for
this has been presented. Did everything else suddenly get more
expensive?
Since the music labels refuse to afford
consumers the cost
benefits of advancing technology, the consumers have opted to take
matters into their own hands. See Smith, Adam; and Hand, Invisible.
The figures of this have been discussed elsewhere. I will not
repeat them, as the truth of this statement is irrelevant. The
cost of discretionary goods does not justify their unlawful
appropriation. You cannot make a moral argument that consists
merely of:
1. CDs cost more than I am willing to pay for them
2. ???
------------
Conclusion: I am morally justified in ignoring the law and making
copies of music that I do not have the legal rights to copy.
A moral argument must, at a minimum, contain: a factual premise, a
moral premise, and a conclusion that falls naturally and logically from
the premises. There is no moral premise in the argument that CDs
cost too much, therefore I am entitled to use whatever means that I
please to obtain the music. Now, the only moral premise I can see
that would fit this is: I am morally obliged to use whatever means I
wish to obtain things that I do not require for survival (or something
along that line). I find it hard to believe that anyone would
find this moral premise acceptable, therefore they disguise their moral
justifications with a baseless, question begging
Replying here since there are multiple replies with the same mistake.
To the nay-sayers talking about heat dissipation and styrofoam:
1. What do you think the mounting kit is for? It is for getting the drive off the foam. I (like most people) have a fan in the front of my case. conveniently located directly in front of where my two hard drives are (stacked on top of each other in an old 3.5 inch drive rack). They run significantly cooler, ON TOP OF THE FOAM than when they stood attached to the case directly with no active cooling in front of them.
2. Styrofoam burns at hundreds of degrees. I don't think that your hard drive will ever generate that amount of heat. You'd have to short your powersupply with a thick copper wire and disable the safety mechanisms to generate enough power to burn styrofoam.
The noisest part of all my computers i the hard drive, not the CPU fan.
How to reduce drive noise: 1. Take your hard drive off the mounts. 2. Find a 3.5" drive mounting kit and a piece of foam (styrofoam, or packing foam). 3. Mount drive on mounting kit, place on top of foam in the bottom of your case. 4. For completeness, ground the mounting kit to your case.
This will knock out a very large portion of your drive noise that is getting transmitted to the body of your case. It is a little Rube Goldberg, but it is very effective.
The concern, I believe, is mostly about people watching movies.
I know when I was travelling over the holiday - I had to ask my wife to put on headphones to watch a DVD on our laptop. I found myself having to really fight to pay attention to the road instead of the DVD. 14 hours of driving is really boring - and it is really hard not to give in to distraction.
A laptop will give you the best power economy, but the quick fix is the LCD monitor + good power management. Dropping the standard monitor will save you about 100 Watts (give or take, based on your exact size of monitor). So, you are down to 150 watts without buying anything else. So the extra $1000 you save will buy you another solar panel that is useful for all appliances, and useful when you replace your computer for a newer model.
So you can spend your $1500 just a laptop which gets you down to 60-80 Watts... or the same money and have another 250 Watts of power generation and a 17inch LCD.
The noise you are hearing is almost certainly coming from your computer's speakers. What you are probably hearing is power supply noise. On the laptop, you are probably screwed (no space to fix it). On the ITX machine, you might be able to locate the power lines running to your sound card and isolate them a little better (get an EE friend to look at it).
Mute your sound out to see if the sound persists through that.
You might also try turning down the passthrough volume on some of your other sound inputs, like your CD passthrough. I know I had bad bleed through of powersupply noise on one of my systems through that input (same goes for any other sound input).
As dabadab said, Nyquist primarily only applies to sinusoids.
Also germane is that the reason that we use higher sampling frequencies than 44kHz isn't to help reproduce those oddly shaped waveforms, as to do so is irrelevant.
The important thing is that the uniqueness of the waveform under Nyquist's sampling theorem is based on infinite resolution. Since resolution is obviously not infinite - Nyquist need not apply. So, to make up for this lack of resolution, we increase sampling rates in order to provide more accurate reproduction through more points. Ultimately this waveform is probably passed through a low-pass filter anyway, so any higher frequency components are removed - but a better formed input wave gives us a more accurate high end.
One would expect the SCSI drives to consistently wallop similarly configured IDE drives (same buffer, spindle, size, #heads and every other physical characteristic you can think of) based solely on one observation: Tagged Command Queuing.
TCQ allows a drive to execute commands out of order to optimize the access pattern. This can have a HUGE impact on performance. Relatively few drives support TCQ on ATA, and very few chipsets support it as well. This is mostly because people who buy ATA aren't *real* performance freaks. They want high streaming performance (like hdparm -tT), but don't know to care about random access performance as it may not be relevant to them.
Server/database access patterns are far more random than typical desktop usage, and this is where SCSI wipes the floor with ATA.
Some have pointed out that RAID enclosures are moving towards IDE drives. This is due to the fact that the integrators are using optimizing logic in the controller to handle emulating TCQ. So you can have a stone-dumb drive in there and it doesn't matter as long as the physicals are there.
SCSI drives also typically come with caching algorithms which are intended to try to increase cache hits by using more intelligent cache allocation and predictive reading.
Combine that with better, more intelligent controllers, command detachment, and infinitely better bus sharing - and SCSI cannot be compared to ATA in high demand situations.
As the title says... I guess old age is a preventable cause of death. Why else would the average life expectency go down when preventable causes are excluded from the calc?
[dons flame-resistant gear]
I'm guessing traffic accidents caused by poor driving are to blame (if the statistic is correct).
Preventable: retire licenses of people who are too frail/dissociated to be able to drive properly (ie: react to situations, not back over kids playing at the edge of their driveway or plow through markets).
I'm sorry, but not everyone remains sharp into old age. I have a lucid 80+ year old grandmother who is perfectly capable of navigating on her own, and did so for the last 7 years of my grandfather's life when he became too encumbered by Parkinson's. My wife's grandmother is younger, but I'm terrified for my life when I'm in the car with her driving. When someone becomes mentally or physically incapable of handling real world driving - they shouldn't be on the road.
In the next year we'll see the first solid state hard drives (Some that will run fast or faster than the processor) and faster RAM that would run the same speed as the processor.
Cache on a processor would be redundant if you can access the RAM at the same speeds. AMD is aware of this and are working to make compatible products.
No.... we won't. What you are describing is insane. Come on: 3.2GHz x 32 bits? Access/transfer times over a full scale bus with a latency in picoseconds? Um... no.
There is a reason no one has done that yet - made system RAM the same speed as the CPU - and it ain't economics: it is physics. Nature does not take bribes.
Look, it isn't that it is too expensive to make fast RAM. And it isn't the distance - it is the capacitance. The problem with fast RAM is getting that signal off chip to the CPU. And the wires that connect the RAM and CPU are orders of magnitude higher capacitance than the wires on chip. That is a fundamental problem which you won't overcome without a fundamental change in how you move the data around.
Solid state drive/memory that runs at compatible speeds as the processor will probably reduce the need for what we call ram these days and operating systems could just use the drive for it's RAM.
Um.. no. Never will that be the case except in situations where using an archaicly small amount of processing power is adequate. Storage technology, as it is formulated now, cannot approach the speed of access, communication, and storage that even a low grade CPU would use for cache.
Maybe - MAYBE when we are using diamond wafers, high-temperature-superconductor-nanotube-quantum-d ot wires, and other buzzwords.
...and take it into the voting booth in November, 2004.
Agreed. And remember, Congress voted 357-66 in the house, and 98-1 in the senate. Which means, despite the rhetoric of Democratic presidential candidates - at least 69% of Democratic representatives (and 96% of Democratic senators) voted for it as well. So be sure to print off this sheet as well (pre-emptive google cache: here)
Give all these assholes the boot: vote against the incumbent!
"You also become a distribution source for illegal downloading of movies, music and more, which makes you just as responsible if you had downloaded the movie yourself."
Not according to the law.
No, you are guilty of contributory infringement. Having a filesharing program running, and sharing copyrighted files from it - you are knowingly distributing copyrighted materials. By the law, you do not have that right, only the copyright holder does, unless they have specifically given you that right.
It is in no way comparable to loaning someone your car, because the primary use of loaning your car is legal. If you knowingly give people access to resources that you are aware they are using to commit a crime, you are generally guilty of a crime as well.
The key word there is knowingly. You pay someone to kill someone: you have broken the law. You give them a gun knowing that they are going to use it to murder someone, you have broken the law. You give them the keys to your neighbor's house, knowing that they will use them to rob their house - you have broken the law. If you loan them your car knowing that they will use it to rob a bank, you are not only incredibly stupid, but also guilty of a crime.
You'd have to be pretty naive to think that people aren't going to use your filesharing of "J-Lo and Ben Affleck Cavort Around, Pay Us Money" to download it illegally, and stupidity is not generally a legal defense. In otherwords, you are knowingly facillitating the commission of a crime, and would be extraordinarily hard-pressed to argue otherwise (unless you were distributing licensed, or free media - in which case the **AA isn't your problem).
In the least, all these actions are "Aiding and Abetting" or criminal negligence. In the worst, they are conspiracy. Filesharing of copyrighted works is no different, although of considerably less gravity then the above crimes.
Please people, a little sanity here. The **AA are overblowing things, but distributing copyrighted works with normal, restricted distribution rights is illegal. Period.
1. Going after downloaders on P2P is not really easy (or possible, for that matter) without large scale tapping.
2. Your possession of those MP3's might be arguably legal. Assuming the copies were from vinyl, there would be little that could be argued against it. But if they were CDs, an argument could be made that the CD is a distinct work. You might not buy that argument, but it is an argument.
However, the unchecked distribution is essentially complicitory infringement. Similar to not checking ID's on liquor/porn sales - you can't assume that the person can be legally given the goods.* The onus can be legally on the distributor as well.
* note: I do not consider these crimes to be morally equivalent, don't insert usual argument about theft != infringement, or point out differences in the analogy in an intellectually dishonest way to discredit the argument. It is an analogy and will, by its very nature, be incomplete. Idiotic, rhetorical picking of nits will be sent to/dev/null. Regardless of how you feel about information freedom, copyrights are the teeth in many of the licenses that we hold dear that enable our intellectual and informational freedom. Copyrights are the law, and these companies are doing what they should do, have every right to do, and what most rational beings have been asking them to: going after law breakers.
1) Socialism could be improved here. Higher taxes are a small loss compared to the gains in education, health benefits, and social security. Capitalism is beginning to corrupt.
The only place socialism* isn't corrupt is in Civ II. And we have been spending more, controlling for inflation, on education year after year. Our test scores have not shown growth. In fact, they have been receding, but that is probably attributable to the fact that dumber people are taking the SAT's as college is becoming more of a requirement for many jobs nowadays. However, I don't mind borrowing some ideas from socialism, like health care. But I can certainly see that making it work as a growth industry will be far more difficult once competition is a thing of the past. Because, lets face it, the only way for the government to not get screwed by an independant health care industry is to own it completely. Once you take the profit out of health care, it will be relegated to the basement of science like basic dynamics has been. There will be little investment in new techniques because there will be fewer ways to profit from them.
Yes, capitalism sucks. But everything else sucks worse, so live with it. Until we are immortal, have free energy, live in Star Trek, etc - you'll just have to live with making concessions that make the world work best. Even if "best" doesn't include complete equality of economic power.
(* don't argue about socialism vs. communism, please. it is sarcasm, laugh a little).
That being said, voting for someone based solely on their stance on one issue (regardless of the issue) is insane. So I look at the totality of the candidates, rather than the fact that they support wasting more money on computers for schools (my opinion is that there is almost no place for computers in schools. There is a place for better instruction, which a computer will never compare to), and more crappily trained teachers. You can bitch about class size all you want, but if the students could be more effective at teaching than the freak show getting paid, then there needs to be actual thought and investigation into better means rather than just throwing money at the schools and call it "good."
Social security, however, you are right on. That problem can't be fixed without money. It is all about money.
I feel it is necessary to clear up some rather unfounded beliefs that a large number of people on slashdot seem to be perpetrating:
1. Not all stimulants have concentration enhancing effects. In fact, other than perscription drugs, the only commonly consumed substance that is conclusively linked with enhanced concentration performance is cocaine. And I do NOT recommend that for anyone, let alone anyone with ADHD.
2. Caffeine does NOT enhance concentration in a healthy, well rested brain. Period. It can help you ignore your fatigue. Period. Go off caffeine for a year, and use some decent day planning skills (get a good night's sleep), and you'll realize that caffeine doesn't do anything good for you (once you are over the withdrawl).
3. A drug that simply enhances the presence of any neurotransmitter, or raises the levels of precursors is in general useless. Period. Pouring gasoline (petrol) on top of your car's engine does nothing to enhance its performance. So these stupid herbal supplements that have "precursors" are almost certainly snake-oil, or canned spinach (Popeye syndrome). Only drugs that help enable natural production and transmission are useful. So these moronic studies that link increased [insert neurotransmitter] levels when you take [insert snake-oil/bogus drug] are fundamentally meaningless, and used SOLELY to sell you drugs.
Now, onto ADHD:
So you've been diagnosed, and you feel like you can concentrate more with ritalin. Of course you can. The question isn't are you "sharper" with ritalin, but are you functional without it in the presence of stimulation? Can you play a video game/watch a movie for 2 hours? If so, there is almost NO CHANCE IN HELL that you have ADHD, you just need to learn discipline.
Now, this isn't just the aloof ramblings of some asshole who doesn't believe in ADHD. However, I know that it is fundamentally overdiagnosed, and misunderstood. I know a lot of people who are "ADHD" and only one of them do I have any inclination to believe it.
Rational arguments can be made against preemptive multitasking for particular applications, or single task oriented machines (if you have a tick every 10ms for scheduling, 100 times a second you are dumping the cache and TLB, potentially for no good reason - and to a reasonable hit in performance). However, the average computer users' patterns of usage have shifted away from single task oriented use (because the cpus are actually fast enough to really be productive doing more than one thing - even w/preemption on a 1ms tick). Josephine User wants that update to download along with her P2P in the background while she's listening to MP3's and emailing someone. This wasn't an issue 5 years ago except to power users.
However, you are right in criticizing the lack of protected memory - a source of great irritation and many unnecessary crashes and reboots. The market demanded it, and Apple provided. Where is the criticism here?
ps: I still use Linux, even on my Macs, but I believe in fair criticism.
This laser (I can tell you without reading the article, as the laws of physics prevent the presumption) is only on for an EXTREMELY short duration, probably on the order of billionths of a second (that's 10E-9, for UK readers).
A peta-joule (as someone else pointed out) would be a LOT of coal. A petawatt for an extremely short duration isn't that much energy. Probably less than the entire university consumes for 1 second (I don't have accurate numbers on their power consumption, so don't micro analyze this statement).
The only use for such a short duration but high power laser is in physics experiments, and typically involves only a few dollars of electricity, so nearly no appreciable amount of coal or waste of any kind.
"If we increase service, we'll increase demand at least proportionally..."
However, this assertion is typically just flat wrong. Any business person worth their salt whose goal is to maximize profit will use the route that is most likely to give them the highest margin. If service dropped below a threshold, yes - people wouldn't use the service anymore. However, as long as the service is "good enough" people will continue to use it.
In other words, if they increased service, they wouldn't necessarily increase subscriptions enough to offset the cost. I'm sure there are plenty of people at both Blockbuster and Netflix who have thought of this idea (even with VHS when it would have been more possible and cheap). They probably came to the conclusion that it just wasn't worth it.
The government should not be allowed to pull funding because they don't like the somethign that somebody says if it has political, scientific, or artistic value.
Really? So you would support the government:
Re-instating Trent Lott as the majority leader.
Supporting "research" that involves racists "investigating" black inferiority.
Paying war protest groups to develop informational flyers on the military's progress in Iraq... in increasing order of ridiculum.
The government is not forbidden from making intelligent decisions (it just generally doesn't on accident). It is only required to provide equal opportunity to all, and make judgements based on actions, not their religious/social/racial/etc status. Some people CLEARLY have a conflict of interest. Now, in Theo's case, it is perhaps a stretch - but if he really is "that anti-military," it isn't irrational to think that he probably isn't the best person to fund in developing something for military use.
Ok, once again I feel compelled to add something to a battery discussion.
First: The single worst thing you can do for a normal battery pack is to run it all the way down. You'll almost certainly reverse some of the cells, which will KILL the overall battery life (one bad cell in the group will cause a dramatic shelf effect on the available current).
Leaving it on the charger continuously is generally believed to be a bad thing as well (causing things like crystalline growth), but exercise, not exhaustion, is a good practice.
The main problem here is that no two cells are alike. If the cells discharge asymmetrically, they'll recharge asymmetrically as well. You end up with a cell or two in the pack that is still not completely charged when the rest are. Since the voltage is still not at the peak, the charger continues dumping current in which damages the full cells. If you take it off prematurely, the cells with more charge will damage the cells that didn't completely charge.
The problem is : as long as the cells are charged and discharged in series - this is basically unavoidable. You'll get the best cell life out of charging and discharging them in parallel. However, this is more expensive - and therefore no manufacturers use it.
For the kind of GUI-I-Wanna-Slap-Atop-A-Database, I like to use Tcl/Tk. Works great for programs where you just want to have something quick, rapidly prototyped AND cross platform.
If you really want a well orchestrated OO GUI toolkit (with the exception of some nasty hacks), QT is a great thing to couple with C++. I know there are many out there that cry foul at the MOC. For the uninitiated, QT uses a macro processor to add a few keywords to C++ for their Observer(or Publish/Subscribe) pattern. I feel that these extensions are minor, and do not significantly detriment the portability of the code. That is, unless you are insane and derive EVERYTHING from QObject - then you are going to be heavily dependent on QT. In a well abstracted interface, your main code tree shouldn't contain much, if any, GUI code.
I have a lot of respect for GTK+, but it just isn't for *me*. GTK programs do generally feel a little more responsive on slower hardware, and are generally lighter weight (being mostly pure C), but the question seems to revolve more around cross platform programs, and GTK doesn't seem to integrate very naturally with the other platforms - at least not the programs that I have seen.
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You cannot buy the same performance class of drives in SATA as you can with SCSI. Some people call this a market segmentation scheme, I call it catering to the market. People who demand top class drive performance typically also want the other benefits of SCSI as well. Whether those benefits are needed for your requirements, well, depends on your requirements.
SCSI can (depending on which particular SCSI) provide you with more devices per controller without sacrificing (any noticeable) performance. If you need to shove a ton of drives into one server, this will add up quickly. Since you are talking about RAID 0+1, depending on how much storage you are shooting for, this may be a strong factor (but you may be able to skin by on the 4-6 SATA ports you'll find on most mobo's).
SCSI is more mature. So drivers are likely to be more robust, more efficient, and more stable than those you'll find in your garden variety SATA.
You'll typically find that under heavy load, SCSI performs better. Again, this is mostly due to so called "market segmentation" schemes, but that is why you pay more. If your users are going to be mostly dealing with the usual, periodic saving of word processing documents, spreadsheets, and a couple of light media files - you probably don't need to handle really heavy loads. The RAID controller will eat the peaks of write demand in cache (if you get a decent RAID controller - see later), and you should have fairly smooth performance. Then again, if your users are constantly running large installers (development test environment) or working with large remote files - you should really go SCSI.
All that said: I think you would be served best by investing in a better RAID controller rather than investing in top of the line drives. The RAID controllers they integrate on to most motherboards are crap (for what you are trying to do, desktop use - meh). You want something with a ton of cache, and good management soft/firmware. If you buy a real server class motherboard, you may get a better onboard RAID, but however you go about this - pay the most attention to this detail. Unless you really need low latency for high demand, random access applications, top end drives probably won't give you much over the usual network latencies.
If you decide to go with this kind of setup, try to make sure you use a fan with low vibration (well balanced, low speed). The last thing you need with a hard drive is more vibration. The drive head is only flying a few hundred molecules above the drive surface.
It may not amount to much as the vibration needs to be of the right frequency to be really bad. But it is probably better to err on the side of caution with drive lifetimes already being as bad as they are.
I personally use a 120mm fan that is mounted on rubber pegs, perpendicular to the hard drives, but not mounted to the drives themselves. This way, less vibration is transferred to the drives.
I found most of your post interesting, but flawed in one simple way: you seem unwilling to admit that the creators of works have rights to control its distribution. As a software developer, who has contributed to GPLed projects and proprietary products, I find this position unacceptable.
In the case of GPL'ed projects, I *chose* to freely distribute patches without "compensation" per se. For proprietary products, I *chose* to work on them because I would be compensated. Copyright law exists in order to allow the provisions of the GPL to have teeth, as well as the rights of creators of content to not be unfairly exploited. In the absence of copyright law, there is little motivation to acheive great software projects, great musical works, or great cinematic works. This is due to the fact that without legal control over the distribution, there is no reason for anyone to pay you anything for any work you do to create said work, nor for them to respect the terms of distribution (eg: the GPL).
In the market you seem to envision, where there is no copyright, creators of non-physical products cannot be paid for the products themselves. There is no motivation to create quality products, as the only way to make money is to support crappy free products (that are crappy by design, because if they worked, there would be no need for support). What you tacitly support is a service economy based on never giving people what they want: stuff that just works. I doubt that you really feel that way, and must not have thought this through to a reasonable conclusion that doesn't involve Utopia.
What you failed to address, and actively at that as those points were excised from the quoting, is that people worked on those projects. Products (music, software, movies) are sold because they were created to make money. So, receiving these goods against the terms of their distribution is, essentially, theft. It may not technically be theft, but that is a semantic quibble that is pointless. If you copy something against the terms of its distribution, have you received something that you were supposed to have paid for? YES. Did you pay for it? NO. You broke the barter because it is excessively easy not to get caught. This barter is the legal barter that the government made with the content creator that they will be afforded a protection from this kind of action in order to encourage the production of artistic, scientific, useful works. In any actual economic system that involves the exchange of goods and valuables, there must be rules by which economic exchange can take place, otherwise anarchy rules, and everyone exists in a constant prisoner's dilemma, or you are in a harmonic socialism. I'll pass on the argument about that.
So, yes, people can use iTunes. Most don't use iTunes or similar services. Not because they are scared of the mild DRM (iTunes is very lax in that respect), but because they are unwilling to pay $1 for something they can get for free. It doesn't matter how cheap it is, as long as I can receive the same quality for free.
Now. I do not agree with the direction of the extension of copyright law. I do not believe in harsher penalties than those for mere theft in the case of individual infrigement. I do believe in the government vigorously enforcing the law.
You also actively avoided the point of "being provided entertainment/products for free is not a basic, inalienable right" in your moral arguments. In order for your arguments to hold, this bridge must be crossed at some point, or else the argument does not hold water under scrutiny. This is because all these products were created under the contract that the creators would be compensated. In order to morally trump the law, you would have to argue that you have a human right that copyright violates (unreasonably long terms, perhaps - but not basic, limited copyright). I seriously doubt that anyone could successfully argue that. However, in the case of the battle for civil rights, basic, human rights were being denied from people, hence why civil disobedience was a morally justified action.
Every one of your refutations is fundamentally asinine. Demonstration follows.
Irrelevant. This is a rather brilliant quip of sarcasm which you seem unwilling to comprehend. You see, it is quite common for people to construct meaningless arguments about semantics (which, you yourself are guilty of in your post), in order to further an opinion that they cannot enforce with actual logical argument (I'm not discussing whether such a position is defensible, just that the person utilizing the tactic lacks the ability for cogent debate). What term you use to describe the subject is irrelevant in the discussion of the relative morality of the subject matter, so long as what is meant by the term is understood. Quibbling over the term is merely rhetoric, meant to manipulate the audience to feel sympathy for the author.
The figures of this have been discussed elsewhere. I will not repeat them, as the truth of this statement is irrelevant. The cost of discretionary goods does not justify their unlawful appropriation. You cannot make a moral argument that consists merely of:
1. CDs cost more than I am willing to pay for them
2. ???
------------
Conclusion: I am morally justified in ignoring the law and making copies of music that I do not have the legal rights to copy.
A moral argument must, at a minimum, contain: a factual premise, a moral premise, and a conclusion that falls naturally and logically from the premises. There is no moral premise in the argument that CDs cost too much, therefore I am entitled to use whatever means that I please to obtain the music. Now, the only moral premise I can see that would fit this is: I am morally obliged to use whatever means I wish to obtain things that I do not require for survival (or something along that line). I find it hard to believe that anyone would find this moral premise acceptable, therefore they disguise their moral justifications with a baseless, question begging
Replying here since there are multiple replies with the same mistake.
To the nay-sayers talking about heat dissipation and styrofoam:
1. What do you think the mounting kit is for? It is for getting the drive off the foam. I (like most people) have a fan in the front of my case. conveniently located directly in front of where my two hard drives are (stacked on top of each other in an old 3.5 inch drive rack). They run significantly cooler, ON TOP OF THE FOAM than when they stood attached to the case directly with no active cooling in front of them.
2. Styrofoam burns at hundreds of degrees. I don't think that your hard drive will ever generate that amount of heat. You'd have to short your powersupply with a thick copper wire and disable the safety mechanisms to generate enough power to burn styrofoam.
Yeah, it's a technology few know about.
The noisest part of all my computers i the hard drive, not the CPU fan.
How to reduce drive noise:
1. Take your hard drive off the mounts.
2. Find a 3.5" drive mounting kit and a piece of foam (styrofoam, or packing foam).
3. Mount drive on mounting kit, place on top of foam in the bottom of your case.
4. For completeness, ground the mounting kit to your case.
This will knock out a very large portion of your drive noise that is getting transmitted to the body of your case. It is a little Rube Goldberg, but it is very effective.
The concern, I believe, is mostly about people watching movies.
I know when I was travelling over the holiday - I had to ask my wife to put on headphones to watch a DVD on our laptop. I found myself having to really fight to pay attention to the road instead of the DVD. 14 hours of driving is really boring - and it is really hard not to give in to distraction.
A laptop will give you the best power economy, but the quick fix is the LCD monitor + good power management. Dropping the standard monitor will save you about 100 Watts (give or take, based on your exact size of monitor). So, you are down to 150 watts without buying anything else. So the extra $1000 you save will buy you another solar panel that is useful for all appliances, and useful when you replace your computer for a newer model.
... or the same money and have another 250 Watts of power generation and a 17inch LCD.
So you can spend your $1500 just a laptop which gets you down to 60-80 Watts
The noise you are hearing is almost certainly coming from your computer's speakers. What you are probably hearing is power supply noise. On the laptop, you are probably screwed (no space to fix it). On the ITX machine, you might be able to locate the power lines running to your sound card and isolate them a little better (get an EE friend to look at it).
Mute your sound out to see if the sound persists through that.
You might also try turning down the passthrough volume on some of your other sound inputs, like your CD passthrough. I know I had bad bleed through of powersupply noise on one of my systems through that input (same goes for any other sound input).
As dabadab said, Nyquist primarily only applies to sinusoids.
Also germane is that the reason that we use higher sampling frequencies than 44kHz isn't to help reproduce those oddly shaped waveforms, as to do so is irrelevant.
The important thing is that the uniqueness of the waveform under Nyquist's sampling theorem is based on infinite resolution. Since resolution is obviously not infinite - Nyquist need not apply. So, to make up for this lack of resolution, we increase sampling rates in order to provide more accurate reproduction through more points. Ultimately this waveform is probably passed through a low-pass filter anyway, so any higher frequency components are removed - but a better formed input wave gives us a more accurate high end.
One would expect the SCSI drives to consistently wallop similarly configured IDE drives (same buffer, spindle, size, #heads and every other physical characteristic you can think of) based solely on one observation: Tagged Command Queuing.
TCQ allows a drive to execute commands out of order to optimize the access pattern. This can have a HUGE impact on performance. Relatively few drives support TCQ on ATA, and very few chipsets support it as well. This is mostly because people who buy ATA aren't *real* performance freaks. They want high streaming performance (like hdparm -tT), but don't know to care about random access performance as it may not be relevant to them.
Server/database access patterns are far more random than typical desktop usage, and this is where SCSI wipes the floor with ATA.
Some have pointed out that RAID enclosures are moving towards IDE drives. This is due to the fact that the integrators are using optimizing logic in the controller to handle emulating TCQ. So you can have a stone-dumb drive in there and it doesn't matter as long as the physicals are there.
SCSI drives also typically come with caching algorithms which are intended to try to increase cache hits by using more intelligent cache allocation and predictive reading.
Combine that with better, more intelligent controllers, command detachment, and infinitely better bus sharing - and SCSI cannot be compared to ATA in high demand situations.
As the title says... I guess old age is a preventable cause of death. Why else would the average life expectency go down when preventable causes are excluded from the calc?
[dons flame-resistant gear]
I'm guessing traffic accidents caused by poor driving are to blame (if the statistic is correct).
Preventable: retire licenses of people who are too frail/dissociated to be able to drive properly (ie: react to situations, not back over kids playing at the edge of their driveway or plow through markets).
I'm sorry, but not everyone remains sharp into old age. I have a lucid 80+ year old grandmother who is perfectly capable of navigating on her own, and did so for the last 7 years of my grandfather's life when he became too encumbered by Parkinson's. My wife's grandmother is younger, but I'm terrified for my life when I'm in the car with her driving. When someone becomes mentally or physically incapable of handling real world driving - they shouldn't be on the road.
No.... we won't. What you are describing is insane. Come on: 3.2GHz x 32 bits? Access/transfer times over a full scale bus with a latency in picoseconds? Um... no.
There is a reason no one has done that yet - made system RAM the same speed as the CPU - and it ain't economics: it is physics. Nature does not take bribes.
Look, it isn't that it is too expensive to make fast RAM. And it isn't the distance - it is the capacitance. The problem with fast RAM is getting that signal off chip to the CPU. And the wires that connect the RAM and CPU are orders of magnitude higher capacitance than the wires on chip. That is a fundamental problem which you won't overcome without a fundamental change in how you move the data around.
Um.. no. Never will that be the case except in situations where using an archaicly small amount of processing power is adequate. Storage technology, as it is formulated now, cannot approach the speed of access, communication, and storage that even a low grade CPU would use for cache.
Maybe - MAYBE when we are using diamond wafers, high-temperature-superconductor-nanotube-quantum-
Agreed. And remember, Congress voted 357-66 in the house, and 98-1 in the senate. Which means, despite the rhetoric of Democratic presidential candidates - at least 69% of Democratic representatives (and 96% of Democratic senators) voted for it as well. So be sure to print off this sheet as well (pre-emptive google cache: here)
Give all these assholes the boot: vote against the incumbent!
No, you are guilty of contributory infringement. Having a filesharing program running, and sharing copyrighted files from it - you are knowingly distributing copyrighted materials. By the law, you do not have that right, only the copyright holder does, unless they have specifically given you that right.
It is in no way comparable to loaning someone your car, because the primary use of loaning your car is legal. If you knowingly give people access to resources that you are aware they are using to commit a crime, you are generally guilty of a crime as well.
The key word there is knowingly. You pay someone to kill someone: you have broken the law. You give them a gun knowing that they are going to use it to murder someone, you have broken the law. You give them the keys to your neighbor's house, knowing that they will use them to rob their house - you have broken the law. If you loan them your car knowing that they will use it to rob a bank, you are not only incredibly stupid, but also guilty of a crime.
You'd have to be pretty naive to think that people aren't going to use your filesharing of "J-Lo and Ben Affleck Cavort Around, Pay Us Money" to download it illegally, and stupidity is not generally a legal defense. In otherwords, you are knowingly facillitating the commission of a crime, and would be extraordinarily hard-pressed to argue otherwise (unless you were distributing licensed, or free media - in which case the **AA isn't your problem).
In the least, all these actions are "Aiding and Abetting" or criminal negligence. In the worst, they are conspiracy. Filesharing of copyrighted works is no different, although of considerably less gravity then the above crimes.
Please people, a little sanity here. The **AA are overblowing things, but distributing copyrighted works with normal, restricted distribution rights is illegal. Period.
The problem is twofold:
/dev/null. Regardless of how you feel about information freedom, copyrights are the teeth in many of the licenses that we hold dear that enable our intellectual and informational freedom. Copyrights are the law, and these companies are doing what they should do, have every right to do, and what most rational beings have been asking them to: going after law breakers.
1. Going after downloaders on P2P is not really easy (or possible, for that matter) without large scale tapping.
2. Your possession of those MP3's might be arguably legal. Assuming the copies were from vinyl, there would be little that could be argued against it. But if they were CDs, an argument could be made that the CD is a distinct work. You might not buy that argument, but it is an argument.
However, the unchecked distribution is essentially complicitory infringement. Similar to not checking ID's on liquor/porn sales - you can't assume that the person can be legally given the goods.* The onus can be legally on the distributor as well.
* note: I do not consider these crimes to be morally equivalent, don't insert usual argument about theft != infringement, or point out differences in the analogy in an intellectually dishonest way to discredit the argument. It is an analogy and will, by its very nature, be incomplete. Idiotic, rhetorical picking of nits will be sent to
1) Socialism could be improved here. Higher taxes are a small loss compared to the gains in education, health benefits, and social security. Capitalism is beginning to corrupt.
The only place socialism* isn't corrupt is in Civ II. And we have been spending more, controlling for inflation, on education year after year. Our test scores have not shown growth. In fact, they have been receding, but that is probably attributable to the fact that dumber people are taking the SAT's as college is becoming more of a requirement for many jobs nowadays. However, I don't mind borrowing some ideas from socialism, like health care. But I can certainly see that making it work as a growth industry will be far more difficult once competition is a thing of the past. Because, lets face it, the only way for the government to not get screwed by an independant health care industry is to own it completely. Once you take the profit out of health care, it will be relegated to the basement of science like basic dynamics has been. There will be little investment in new techniques because there will be fewer ways to profit from them.
Yes, capitalism sucks. But everything else sucks worse, so live with it. Until we are immortal, have free energy, live in Star Trek, etc - you'll just have to live with making concessions that make the world work best. Even if "best" doesn't include complete equality of economic power.
(* don't argue about socialism vs. communism, please. it is sarcasm, laugh a little).
That being said, voting for someone based solely on their stance on one issue (regardless of the issue) is insane. So I look at the totality of the candidates, rather than the fact that they support wasting more money on computers for schools (my opinion is that there is almost no place for computers in schools. There is a place for better instruction, which a computer will never compare to), and more crappily trained teachers. You can bitch about class size all you want, but if the students could be more effective at teaching than the freak show getting paid, then there needs to be actual thought and investigation into better means rather than just throwing money at the schools and call it "good."
Social security, however, you are right on. That problem can't be fixed without money. It is all about money.
I feel it is necessary to clear up some rather unfounded beliefs that a large number of people on slashdot seem to be perpetrating:
1. Not all stimulants have concentration enhancing effects. In fact, other than perscription drugs, the only commonly consumed substance that is conclusively linked with enhanced concentration performance is cocaine. And I do NOT recommend that for anyone, let alone anyone with ADHD.
2. Caffeine does NOT enhance concentration in a healthy, well rested brain. Period. It can help you ignore your fatigue. Period. Go off caffeine for a year, and use some decent day planning skills (get a good night's sleep), and you'll realize that caffeine doesn't do anything good for you (once you are over the withdrawl).
3. A drug that simply enhances the presence of any neurotransmitter, or raises the levels of precursors is in general useless. Period. Pouring gasoline (petrol) on top of your car's engine does nothing to enhance its performance. So these stupid herbal supplements that have "precursors" are almost certainly snake-oil, or canned spinach (Popeye syndrome). Only drugs that help enable natural production and transmission are useful. So these moronic studies that link increased [insert neurotransmitter] levels when you take [insert snake-oil/bogus drug] are fundamentally meaningless, and used SOLELY to sell you drugs.
Now, onto ADHD:
So you've been diagnosed, and you feel like you can concentrate more with ritalin. Of course you can. The question isn't are you "sharper" with ritalin, but are you functional without it in the presence of stimulation? Can you play a video game/watch a movie for 2 hours? If so, there is almost NO CHANCE IN HELL that you have ADHD, you just need to learn discipline.
Now, this isn't just the aloof ramblings of some asshole who doesn't believe in ADHD. However, I know that it is fundamentally overdiagnosed, and misunderstood. I know a lot of people who are "ADHD" and only one of them do I have any inclination to believe it.
Rational arguments can be made against preemptive multitasking for particular applications, or single task oriented machines (if you have a tick every 10ms for scheduling, 100 times a second you are dumping the cache and TLB, potentially for no good reason - and to a reasonable hit in performance). However, the average computer users' patterns of usage have shifted away from single task oriented use (because the cpus are actually fast enough to really be productive doing more than one thing - even w/preemption on a 1ms tick). Josephine User wants that update to download along with her P2P in the background while she's listening to MP3's and emailing someone. This wasn't an issue 5 years ago except to power users.
However, you are right in criticizing the lack of protected memory - a source of great irritation and many unnecessary crashes and reboots. The market demanded it, and Apple provided. Where is the criticism here?
ps: I still use Linux, even on my Macs, but I believe in fair criticism.
A watt is a unit of power, not energy.
This laser (I can tell you without reading the article, as the laws of physics prevent the presumption) is only on for an EXTREMELY short duration, probably on the order of billionths of a second (that's 10E-9, for UK readers).
A peta-joule (as someone else pointed out) would be a LOT of coal. A petawatt for an extremely short duration isn't that much energy. Probably less than the entire university consumes for 1 second (I don't have accurate numbers on their power consumption, so don't micro analyze this statement).
The only use for such a short duration but high power laser is in physics experiments, and typically involves only a few dollars of electricity, so nearly no appreciable amount of coal or waste of any kind.
I'll pass on the political discussion though.
Classic business flaw:
"If we increase service, we'll increase demand at least proportionally..."
However, this assertion is typically just flat wrong. Any business person worth their salt whose goal is to maximize profit will use the route that is most likely to give them the highest margin. If service dropped below a threshold, yes - people wouldn't use the service anymore. However, as long as the service is "good enough" people will continue to use it.
In other words, if they increased service, they wouldn't necessarily increase subscriptions enough to offset the cost. I'm sure there are plenty of people at both Blockbuster and Netflix who have thought of this idea (even with VHS when it would have been more possible and cheap). They probably came to the conclusion that it just wasn't worth it.
Really? So you would support the government:
Re-instating Trent Lott as the majority leader.
Supporting "research" that involves racists "investigating" black inferiority.
Paying war protest groups to develop informational flyers on the military's progress in Iraq ... in increasing order of ridiculum.
The government is not forbidden from making intelligent decisions (it just generally doesn't on accident). It is only required to provide equal opportunity to all, and make judgements based on actions, not their religious/social/racial/etc status. Some people CLEARLY have a conflict of interest. Now, in Theo's case, it is perhaps a stretch - but if he really is "that anti-military," it isn't irrational to think that he probably isn't the best person to fund in developing something for military use.
Ok, once again I feel compelled to add something to a battery discussion.
First: The single worst thing you can do for a normal battery pack is to run it all the way down. You'll almost certainly reverse some of the cells, which will KILL the overall battery life (one bad cell in the group will cause a dramatic shelf effect on the available current).
Leaving it on the charger continuously is generally believed to be a bad thing as well (causing things like crystalline growth), but exercise, not exhaustion, is a good practice.
The main problem here is that no two cells are alike. If the cells discharge asymmetrically, they'll recharge asymmetrically as well. You end up with a cell or two in the pack that is still not completely charged when the rest are. Since the voltage is still not at the peak, the charger continues dumping current in which damages the full cells. If you take it off prematurely, the cells with more charge will damage the cells that didn't completely charge.
The problem is : as long as the cells are charged and discharged in series - this is basically unavoidable. You'll get the best cell life out of charging and discharging them in parallel. However, this is more expensive - and therefore no manufacturers use it.
For the kind of GUI-I-Wanna-Slap-Atop-A-Database, I like to use Tcl/Tk. Works great for programs where you just want to have something quick, rapidly prototyped AND cross platform.
If you really want a well orchestrated OO GUI toolkit (with the exception of some nasty hacks), QT is a great thing to couple with C++. I know there are many out there that cry foul at the MOC. For the uninitiated, QT uses a macro processor to add a few keywords to C++ for their Observer(or Publish/Subscribe) pattern. I feel that these extensions are minor, and do not significantly detriment the portability of the code. That is, unless you are insane and derive EVERYTHING from QObject - then you are going to be heavily dependent on QT. In a well abstracted interface, your main code tree shouldn't contain much, if any, GUI code.
I have a lot of respect for GTK+, but it just isn't for *me*. GTK programs do generally feel a little more responsive on slower hardware, and are generally lighter weight (being mostly pure C), but the question seems to revolve more around cross platform programs, and GTK doesn't seem to integrate very naturally with the other platforms - at least not the programs that I have seen.