But why would the auto makers do this when they can continue to charge you 2000 dollars for a nav system that cost them $150?
Although the prices can be outrageous, there is a lot more physical cost than you imagine. A 9" touchscreen that has been somewhat ruggedized will probably cost more than $150.
Ideally, I shouldn't have to take my phone out of my pocket when I get in the car, I should have phone, maps, and music all linked to the car automatically via something like Bluetooth 3.0 or something.
You've pretty much described Ford's Sync, although since it's older tech it doesn't quite have everything.
My phone stays in its holster and connects to the car via Bluetooth. This gives you full access to the phone (including contacts) via hands-free, and you can play any audio from the phone (music, etc.) over the vehicle sound system. There's also integration on many web sites (like Google maps) that allows you to send info to the car (like destinations for the navigation system) via your phone. Sync works with pretty much any phone that supports Bluetooth. On a side note, the entire Sync system is fairly generic...you can play music off of damn near any device with a USB connection.
There's a lot more that it could do, but again, it was limited by being designed nearly 5 years ago, when phones weren't very sophisticated. The next iteration should have a lot more functionality.
Re:Your right to what?
on
BTJunkie No More?
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
We know what the vast majority of stuff that places like BT Junkie link to, and it's not Linux ISO's. It's mainly copyright material.
Same for Google.
BTJunkie was nothing more than a search engine with a comment and results rating system (not unlike./). It hosted no torrent files and was not a torrent tracker. You could get almost the same results by entering your query into Google and appending "torrent".
So, what, exactly, makes a site like BTJunkie "illegal" while Google doing the same thing is OK?
I don't think they are lying about anything. They are being very clear in what they are doing and why they are doing.
Do they clearly state that when their activation/DLC servers are turned off, you will no longer have access to the complete game you paid for unless you are still using the original install? Because, that's how this works.
Once you activate the content using the code on on the package, that code is no longer valid. So, that first install is the only one with the full content available.
Am i missing something, or is this something we'll lose out on with Magnet files?
You're missing the fact that a magnet link is nothing more than an indirect way to download the.torrent file. Think of it just like a URL shortener...you click on the link, and magic happens that eventually gets you to the page you want.
A magnet link for.torrent file is the same thing, just that instead of asking a single server where the.torrent file lives, the magnet link causes a query to the Distributed Hash Table (DHT)) database, and your torrent client finds the.torrent file from the DHT query results.
So yes the mpg is overstated but so is the gas version. regardless the hybrid gets far better mileage in my experience and I'd get another without hesitation.
So, you seriously think that paying an extra $5,000 for the hybrid version make good economic sense? You don't get payback for the extra cost until about 6 years have passed (at 15,000 miles per year at $3.50/gallon), but at that point, you'll be close to having to replace the batteries.
Yes, hybrids might be better for the environment (nobody really knows, as there haven't been any studies that show the full impact (including battery production and disposal) over the life of the car, but they generally don't make good economic sense, although the Prius is getting cheap enough that it's not a bad deal for what it is (a car for at most two people with real-world belongings and needs that has good fuel economy).
Rather like all cars. They advertise a certain fuel efficiency, driven properly.
I make no attempt to do "fuel efficent" driving and my car gets exactly the MPG from the window sticker. I know people with the same vehicle that do use some of the "hypermiling" techniques and get 5-15% better mileage.
So, no, not "all cars" require them to be "driven properly" to get the fuel efficiency listed on the window sticker. But, my wife has a hybrid, and it has exactly the same issues as describe in the article. If it had not been the same price as the non-hybrid version (end-of-model closeout), we never would have purchased it. But, since we didn't pay the hybrrid premium and still got the tax break and still get decent fuel efficiency, it's was a great deal.
Because the bulk of your ticket price is actually the movie theatre.
This is flat-out wrong...the majority of the ticket price for a first-run movie goes to the distributor (i.e., the studio), and it is a percentage of the ticket price.
It used to be that theaters rented the print of the movie for a fixed price per week and kept all the ticket revenue for themselves. Gradually, the distributors started adding a percentage cut of the ticket sales in addition to the print rental, and now the print rental is really just a token payment (sometimes it's zero), with the 80-90% of ticket sale revenue being the majority of what the distributor gets from the theater. This is why ticket prices jumped so fast in the 90s.
When a theater kept 100% of the ticket price, they could raise prices $1 and keep up with a lot of increase in the cost of the print rental. For big theaters, that $1/ticket could be $5,000 or more per week Now, raising prices $1 per ticket only puts $0.10 or so into the theater bank account. Even without the print rental costs, it means that what used to be a $5 ticket to the consumer that gave the theater $1 in profit now has to be a $10 ticket to get the same profit.
Don't have the 125w friend, I have the 95w 1035t. I just did as you suggested, Prime 95 64bit let it run for about 15 minutes and it maxed out at 97. I could hear the fans kick up when it did but that was it Once i killed the test it dropped down to 73f in less than 2 minutes which is damned near room temp in my apt.
For a 95W part, 15 degrees C over ambient is about right for that cooler, but the 212 Plus is still about 4 degrees better for the same price.
The most striking thing about the CIA (and many other cards), is that they don't even have the person's *NAME*.
Yes, I have some first hand knowledge, as I was inside the CIA HQ building about 10 years ago and my escort mentioned how the ID cards don't have any names on them, intentionally.
Similarly, I had friends who worked in such places, but not anymore, so they could have changed style. The look of the badge is easily faked (at least for flashing at a bar), but the barcode and mag-stripe info are not, so it's not like a fake badge would get you into anyplace.
Not that I really believe the mobo comes with a surface-mounted i7 but even if that's a "suggested" processor, it's stupid, since this is a job for an i3 or better yet, Celeron (or Sempron or Athlon II).
For a server, you want lots of threads, ECC memory and lots of PCIe connectivity, which this has. I use a W3520 processsor, but disable hyperthreading so I have 4 cores.
Then there's all the SAS ports, which is theoretically very cool until he goes to buy drives and.. well, just check the low capacities and the prices.
So, buy SATA, which every SAS controller supports.
Ooh, and it can take 24GB of RAM, as if you need more than the minimum you can buy these days. 2GB will be overkill.
With 8GB of RAM, Linux is using nearly all of it as disk cache. This gives me in the neighborhood of 900MB/sec reads for cached data for the VMs (over 10Gbps Ethernet). Since I don't cache the media (movies, music, etc.), but only the OS and other small data, this gives huge performance benefits for stuff that matters.
He's going to have you build a really bitchin' machine but that's not what you want [to pay for]. DO NOT buy a "server" board. Most servers don't need "server" boards.
If you want to run something 24/7, you need to pay for quality. Since the OP also wants lots of connectivity, he's better off paying $200-300 for a better motherboard instead of paying $100 for a cheap one that needs $100-200 in extra cards. Also, if his needs grow, he won't need to replace the motherboard...he can just add a card or three.
You do know, any ROM flash is just software raid right? Even SAS controllers don't have hardware RAID unless you buy a real raid card for $$$. Real raid cards have write back memory and a BBU.
I never claimed the motherboard had hardware RAID...I just said it had 8 ports of SAS on-board. As an add-in card, that will set you back around $100, so I was trying to show how a true server motherboard is a better deal than a cheap motherboard that you have to add everything to. Also, the SAS controller has 8x PCIe lanes dedicated to it, so that you can even use SSDs and get their full speed.
I do use Linux software RAID, with 5 drives on the on-board SAS, and 5 on my add-in card (which is full battery-backed hardware RAID, but I'm using it in JBOD mode, 'cause it was handy). The RAID-10 splits each mirror set across the two controllers. I tried RAID-5, but it only gave me about 200MB/sec write speeds, and I get nearly 350MB/sec with RAID-10.
Once you start to use more than one hard drive worth of space, RAID is pretty much required unless you really like to spend days restoring data when a hard drive fails.
useing software raid is ok most boards have about 6 ports so if you want like 10 then maybe a x4 or better pci-e card may be needed.
Or, get an actual server board (this is gonna be a server, right?), like this one. That's six SATA ports and 8 SAS ports. If you flash the SAS ROM to the "no-RAID" version, the controller is recognized natively by Linux. In addition, you get lots of PCIe connectivity, a pair of Gigabit Ethernet ports, and IPMI (allowing remote power cycle).
Then, find a full-tower case with lots of 5-1/4" drive bays, and add hot swap bays. There are smaller versions, as well...just budget what you need for drives.
I use the motherboard I referenced along with an add-on 8-port SATA card (anything supported by Linux would be fine) and two of the drive bays for ten 2TB drives in RAID-10. I boot Fedora off a pair of SSDs in RAID-1 and also have four 2-1/2" 750GB drives in RAID-10. The 10TB array serves iSCSI over 10Gbit Ethernet to ESX systems that hold all my VMs, with the 1.5TB array as local and NFS storage. There's still PCIe slots available if you need more controller cards.
With this setup, the VMs are how everything is accessed, so you can pick whatever OS you want to face client machines.
You're screwed anyway. Warranty replacement drives are all refurbs, meaning they tend to die themselves within like six months. When the manufacturers don't ship new drives as replacements, the warranty is useless.
Every drive I have received as a replacement from WD, Seagate, and Maxtor had the exact same warranty expiration date as the original drive, even if the replacement drive was a refurb (which it wasn't always).
So, when a drive with a 5-year-warranty failed after two years, I still had 3 years warranty left on the drive that replaced it. As far as I know, this is the policy of every drive manufacturer.
Suppose someone like me has about 16 TB of data. Where does he find an ISP that will allow more than a tiny trickle of throughput per month?
It doesn't really matter, since until you really pay through the nose per month, online backup services limit your upload speed.
For example, you can't ever upload faster than 1 Mbps to Backblaze, at least not on any of the plans listed on their site. There may be a "secret" plan you can get by contacting them and paying more, but limiting to about 300GB/month total upload means even a few terabytes is not feasible...your hard drive warranty will expire and thee drive will die long before you finish the first backup.
Most of the blue labeled drives came out of Optiplex 755's.
The Dell small-form-factor and ultra-small-form-factor chassis are likely responsible for most of your drive deaths.
If you have a user that actually loads the processor, the heat inside those boxes becomes frightful. For most "normal" users, it's probably not an issue, but if the cooling fan starts to spin up loud enough to hear, that's the sign.
As for drive brands, I find that pretty much every manufacturer is equal. Out of about 40 drives that have seen 24/7 use for the last 8 years, I've had about 8 fail, and they are a mixed bag (Seagate, WD, pre-Seagate Maxtor, Samsung, and Hitachi), all at about the same percentage as the drive mix (i.e., more failed Maxtors and WD because there are more of those drives). Every drive had a five-year warranty at the time of purchase.
I can see though why they've stopped having long warranties, i mean what was the size 5 years ago? something like 160gb? How many of the OEMs want to keep a pallet of those things in a warehouse for replacements?
For older drives, it's common practice for a warranty replacement to be a newer model than the broken one. I have a lot of drives with 5-year warranties and have gotten larger drives about half the time I sent in an RMA, and pretty much always got the latest equivalent in other specs, so cache might be higher, power use lower, etc.
Also, every drive manufacturer is still selling new 160GB drives. No, I don't understand it, either, but it shouldn't be a stock problem for the manufacturer to replace even a five year old drive.
("I work for the CIA!" - with an ID with CIA on it to show chicks in a bar?)
Last I saw, CIA badges (i.e., the thing that gets you into the building and opens doors, not a shiny gold thing) had a picture, an ID number and a barcode and nothing else on them.
They may have changed, but if they haven't, there's nothing on them to indicate that they are CIA badges.
damned if it hasn't dropped to 84F while still cranking out transcodes!
You must not be using all the cores, as the N520 can only keep a full 125W load at about 20 degrees Celsius over ambient, and I highly doubt that you have your computer in a 50 degree Fahrenheit room.
Run something like Prime 95 with 6 threads and see how it heats up.
I have a (Hyper 212 Plus) which is very similar to the N520, it's the size of the radiators used by these liquid coolers and it has amazing cooling ability.
The N520 performs quite a bit worse than the Hyper 212 Plus. It was a step backward for Cooler Master. For the numbers of damn near every heatsink, see FrostyTech. They never drop heatsinks off their comparison, so the latest review always gives the full picture.
Although it's a little pricier now than when I bought, the Zaward Vapor 120 is the best under $50 heatsink by far, but the 212 Plus at $26 is definitely worth it, and makes me wonder why the $34 at best N520 even exists.
I'm not sure why it's OK to bar drivers from driving drunk, but driving distracted is perfectly OK.
Because "distracted" can't be defined, and varies even more widely than the effects of alcohol.
Some people are "distracted" while driving simply because the number of things they need to pay attention to just to drive is too much for them. On the other hand, some people can do complex math in their head while driving and perform as well as if they focused just on driving.
Personally, listening to the radio or a person talking to me (in the car or on hands-free phone) doesn't distract me at all. If I have to think about answers to questions, then that is somewhat distracting. Because of this, I limit cell phone use in the car to things like "I'm stuck in traffic...I'll be there 10 minutes late"...long conversations about the movie I just saw aren't appropriate.
This last bit is the primary reason that cell phone use in cars is so high...too damn many people feel they need to constantly talk and get feedback about every little thing in their lives. Facebook and Twitter probably wouldn't have been popular 20 years ago even if the current devices and connectivity existed.
My state has a law against using a cell phone while driving unless you use a hands-free device. This doesn't stop anybody. Every day on my 15-mile commute, I see dozens of people holding phones up to their ears.
I don't see how an outright ban would make any difference, either, unless they actually enforce it.
That's obviously true for reads, but is it true for writes?
The Momentus XT only caches reads. Writes (i.e., data from the computer to the drive) completely bypass the cache.
If you can add 4-8GB of RAM, you're better off spending your money on that and a standard 3-1/2" mechanical hard drive. The Momentus XT really is only useful in laptops.
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But why would the auto makers do this when they can continue to charge you 2000 dollars for a nav system that cost them $150?
Although the prices can be outrageous, there is a lot more physical cost than you imagine. A 9" touchscreen that has been somewhat ruggedized will probably cost more than $150.
Ideally, I shouldn't have to take my phone out of my pocket when I get in the car, I should have phone, maps, and music all linked to the car automatically via something like Bluetooth 3.0 or something.
You've pretty much described Ford's Sync, although since it's older tech it doesn't quite have everything.
My phone stays in its holster and connects to the car via Bluetooth. This gives you full access to the phone (including contacts) via hands-free, and you can play any audio from the phone (music, etc.) over the vehicle sound system. There's also integration on many web sites (like Google maps) that allows you to send info to the car (like destinations for the navigation system) via your phone. Sync works with pretty much any phone that supports Bluetooth. On a side note, the entire Sync system is fairly generic...you can play music off of damn near any device with a USB connection.
There's a lot more that it could do, but again, it was limited by being designed nearly 5 years ago, when phones weren't very sophisticated. The next iteration should have a lot more functionality.
We know what the vast majority of stuff that places like BT Junkie link to, and it's not Linux ISO's. It's mainly copyright material.
Same for Google.
BTJunkie was nothing more than a search engine with a comment and results rating system (not unlike ./). It hosted no torrent files and was not a torrent tracker. You could get almost the same results by entering your query into Google and appending "torrent".
So, what, exactly, makes a site like BTJunkie "illegal" while Google doing the same thing is OK?
I don't think they are lying about anything. They are being very clear in what they are doing and why they are doing.
Do they clearly state that when their activation/DLC servers are turned off, you will no longer have access to the complete game you paid for unless you are still using the original install? Because, that's how this works.
Once you activate the content using the code on on the package, that code is no longer valid. So, that first install is the only one with the full content available.
Am i missing something, or is this something we'll lose out on with Magnet files?
You're missing the fact that a magnet link is nothing more than an indirect way to download the .torrent file. Think of it just like a URL shortener...you click on the link, and magic happens that eventually gets you to the page you want.
A magnet link for .torrent file is the same thing, just that instead of asking a single server where the .torrent file lives, the magnet link causes a query to the Distributed Hash Table (DHT)) database, and your torrent client finds the .torrent file from the DHT query results.
So yes the mpg is overstated but so is the gas version. regardless the hybrid gets far better mileage in my experience and I'd get another without hesitation.
So, you seriously think that paying an extra $5,000 for the hybrid version make good economic sense? You don't get payback for the extra cost until about 6 years have passed (at 15,000 miles per year at $3.50/gallon), but at that point, you'll be close to having to replace the batteries.
Yes, hybrids might be better for the environment (nobody really knows, as there haven't been any studies that show the full impact (including battery production and disposal) over the life of the car, but they generally don't make good economic sense, although the Prius is getting cheap enough that it's not a bad deal for what it is (a car for at most two people with real-world belongings and needs that has good fuel economy).
Rather like all cars. They advertise a certain fuel efficiency, driven properly.
I make no attempt to do "fuel efficent" driving and my car gets exactly the MPG from the window sticker. I know people with the same vehicle that do use some of the "hypermiling" techniques and get 5-15% better mileage.
So, no, not "all cars" require them to be "driven properly" to get the fuel efficiency listed on the window sticker. But, my wife has a hybrid, and it has exactly the same issues as describe in the article. If it had not been the same price as the non-hybrid version (end-of-model closeout), we never would have purchased it. But, since we didn't pay the hybrrid premium and still got the tax break and still get decent fuel efficiency, it's was a great deal.
Because the bulk of your ticket price is actually the movie theatre.
This is flat-out wrong...the majority of the ticket price for a first-run movie goes to the distributor (i.e., the studio), and it is a percentage of the ticket price.
It used to be that theaters rented the print of the movie for a fixed price per week and kept all the ticket revenue for themselves. Gradually, the distributors started adding a percentage cut of the ticket sales in addition to the print rental, and now the print rental is really just a token payment (sometimes it's zero), with the 80-90% of ticket sale revenue being the majority of what the distributor gets from the theater. This is why ticket prices jumped so fast in the 90s.
When a theater kept 100% of the ticket price, they could raise prices $1 and keep up with a lot of increase in the cost of the print rental. For big theaters, that $1/ticket could be $5,000 or more per week Now, raising prices $1 per ticket only puts $0.10 or so into the theater bank account. Even without the print rental costs, it means that what used to be a $5 ticket to the consumer that gave the theater $1 in profit now has to be a $10 ticket to get the same profit.
Then every 5-6 years, there's a leap *week* at the end of the year after December
Which is why everybody above about 40 degrees north would hate this calendar, and instead want the extra days at the end of June.
Don't have the 125w friend, I have the 95w 1035t. I just did as you suggested, Prime 95 64bit let it run for about 15 minutes and it maxed out at 97. I could hear the fans kick up when it did but that was it Once i killed the test it dropped down to 73f in less than 2 minutes which is damned near room temp in my apt.
For a 95W part, 15 degrees C over ambient is about right for that cooler, but the 212 Plus is still about 4 degrees better for the same price.
The most striking thing about the CIA (and many other cards), is that they don't even have the person's *NAME*.
Yes, I have some first hand knowledge, as I was inside the CIA HQ building about 10 years ago and my escort mentioned how the ID cards don't have any names on them, intentionally.
Similarly, I had friends who worked in such places, but not anymore, so they could have changed style. The look of the badge is easily faked (at least for flashing at a bar), but the barcode and mag-stripe info are not, so it's not like a fake badge would get you into anyplace.
Not that I really believe the mobo comes with a surface-mounted i7 but even if that's a "suggested" processor, it's stupid, since this is a job for an i3 or better yet, Celeron (or Sempron or Athlon II).
For a server, you want lots of threads, ECC memory and lots of PCIe connectivity, which this has. I use a W3520 processsor, but disable hyperthreading so I have 4 cores.
Then there's all the SAS ports, which is theoretically very cool until he goes to buy drives and .. well, just check the low capacities and the prices.
So, buy SATA, which every SAS controller supports.
Ooh, and it can take 24GB of RAM, as if you need more than the minimum you can buy these days. 2GB will be overkill.
With 8GB of RAM, Linux is using nearly all of it as disk cache. This gives me in the neighborhood of 900MB/sec reads for cached data for the VMs (over 10Gbps Ethernet). Since I don't cache the media (movies, music, etc.), but only the OS and other small data, this gives huge performance benefits for stuff that matters.
He's going to have you build a really bitchin' machine but that's not what you want [to pay for]. DO NOT buy a "server" board. Most servers don't need "server" boards.
If you want to run something 24/7, you need to pay for quality. Since the OP also wants lots of connectivity, he's better off paying $200-300 for a better motherboard instead of paying $100 for a cheap one that needs $100-200 in extra cards. Also, if his needs grow, he won't need to replace the motherboard...he can just add a card or three.
You do know, any ROM flash is just software raid right? Even SAS controllers don't have hardware RAID unless you buy a real raid card for $$$. Real raid cards have write back memory and a BBU.
I never claimed the motherboard had hardware RAID...I just said it had 8 ports of SAS on-board. As an add-in card, that will set you back around $100, so I was trying to show how a true server motherboard is a better deal than a cheap motherboard that you have to add everything to. Also, the SAS controller has 8x PCIe lanes dedicated to it, so that you can even use SSDs and get their full speed.
I do use Linux software RAID, with 5 drives on the on-board SAS, and 5 on my add-in card (which is full battery-backed hardware RAID, but I'm using it in JBOD mode, 'cause it was handy). The RAID-10 splits each mirror set across the two controllers. I tried RAID-5, but it only gave me about 200MB/sec write speeds, and I get nearly 350MB/sec with RAID-10.
Raid seem silly in a home setup.
Once you start to use more than one hard drive worth of space, RAID is pretty much required unless you really like to spend days restoring data when a hard drive fails.
useing software raid is ok most boards have about 6 ports so if you want like 10 then maybe a x4 or better pci-e card may be needed.
Or, get an actual server board (this is gonna be a server, right?), like this one. That's six SATA ports and 8 SAS ports. If you flash the SAS ROM to the "no-RAID" version, the controller is recognized natively by Linux. In addition, you get lots of PCIe connectivity, a pair of Gigabit Ethernet ports, and IPMI (allowing remote power cycle).
Then, find a full-tower case with lots of 5-1/4" drive bays, and add hot swap bays. There are smaller versions, as well...just budget what you need for drives.
I use the motherboard I referenced along with an add-on 8-port SATA card (anything supported by Linux would be fine) and two of the drive bays for ten 2TB drives in RAID-10. I boot Fedora off a pair of SSDs in RAID-1 and also have four 2-1/2" 750GB drives in RAID-10. The 10TB array serves iSCSI over 10Gbit Ethernet to ESX systems that hold all my VMs, with the 1.5TB array as local and NFS storage. There's still PCIe slots available if you need more controller cards.
With this setup, the VMs are how everything is accessed, so you can pick whatever OS you want to face client machines.
You're screwed anyway. Warranty replacement drives are all refurbs, meaning they tend to die themselves within like six months. When the manufacturers don't ship new drives as replacements, the warranty is useless.
Every drive I have received as a replacement from WD, Seagate, and Maxtor had the exact same warranty expiration date as the original drive, even if the replacement drive was a refurb (which it wasn't always).
So, when a drive with a 5-year-warranty failed after two years, I still had 3 years warranty left on the drive that replaced it. As far as I know, this is the policy of every drive manufacturer.
Suppose someone like me has about 16 TB of data. Where does he find an ISP that will allow more than a tiny trickle of throughput per month?
It doesn't really matter, since until you really pay through the nose per month, online backup services limit your upload speed.
For example, you can't ever upload faster than 1 Mbps to Backblaze, at least not on any of the plans listed on their site. There may be a "secret" plan you can get by contacting them and paying more, but limiting to about 300GB/month total upload means even a few terabytes is not feasible...your hard drive warranty will expire and thee drive will die long before you finish the first backup.
Most of the blue labeled drives came out of Optiplex 755's.
The Dell small-form-factor and ultra-small-form-factor chassis are likely responsible for most of your drive deaths.
If you have a user that actually loads the processor, the heat inside those boxes becomes frightful. For most "normal" users, it's probably not an issue, but if the cooling fan starts to spin up loud enough to hear, that's the sign.
As for drive brands, I find that pretty much every manufacturer is equal. Out of about 40 drives that have seen 24/7 use for the last 8 years, I've had about 8 fail, and they are a mixed bag (Seagate, WD, pre-Seagate Maxtor, Samsung, and Hitachi), all at about the same percentage as the drive mix (i.e., more failed Maxtors and WD because there are more of those drives). Every drive had a five-year warranty at the time of purchase.
I can see though why they've stopped having long warranties, i mean what was the size 5 years ago? something like 160gb? How many of the OEMs want to keep a pallet of those things in a warehouse for replacements?
For older drives, it's common practice for a warranty replacement to be a newer model than the broken one. I have a lot of drives with 5-year warranties and have gotten larger drives about half the time I sent in an RMA, and pretty much always got the latest equivalent in other specs, so cache might be higher, power use lower, etc.
Also, every drive manufacturer is still selling new 160GB drives. No, I don't understand it, either, but it shouldn't be a stock problem for the manufacturer to replace even a five year old drive.
("I work for the CIA!" - with an ID with CIA on it to show chicks in a bar?)
Last I saw, CIA badges (i.e., the thing that gets you into the building and opens doors, not a shiny gold thing) had a picture, an ID number and a barcode and nothing else on them.
They may have changed, but if they haven't, there's nothing on them to indicate that they are CIA badges.
damned if it hasn't dropped to 84F while still cranking out transcodes!
You must not be using all the cores, as the N520 can only keep a full 125W load at about 20 degrees Celsius over ambient, and I highly doubt that you have your computer in a 50 degree Fahrenheit room.
Run something like Prime 95 with 6 threads and see how it heats up.
I have a (Hyper 212 Plus) which is very similar to the N520, it's the size of the radiators used by these liquid coolers and it has amazing cooling ability.
The N520 performs quite a bit worse than the Hyper 212 Plus. It was a step backward for Cooler Master. For the numbers of damn near every heatsink, see FrostyTech. They never drop heatsinks off their comparison, so the latest review always gives the full picture.
Although it's a little pricier now than when I bought, the Zaward Vapor 120 is the best under $50 heatsink by far, but the 212 Plus at $26 is definitely worth it, and makes me wonder why the $34 at best N520 even exists.
I'm not sure why it's OK to bar drivers from driving drunk, but driving distracted is perfectly OK.
Because "distracted" can't be defined, and varies even more widely than the effects of alcohol.
Some people are "distracted" while driving simply because the number of things they need to pay attention to just to drive is too much for them. On the other hand, some people can do complex math in their head while driving and perform as well as if they focused just on driving.
Personally, listening to the radio or a person talking to me (in the car or on hands-free phone) doesn't distract me at all. If I have to think about answers to questions, then that is somewhat distracting. Because of this, I limit cell phone use in the car to things like "I'm stuck in traffic...I'll be there 10 minutes late"...long conversations about the movie I just saw aren't appropriate.
This last bit is the primary reason that cell phone use in cars is so high...too damn many people feel they need to constantly talk and get feedback about every little thing in their lives. Facebook and Twitter probably wouldn't have been popular 20 years ago even if the current devices and connectivity existed.
My state has a law against using a cell phone while driving unless you use a hands-free device. This doesn't stop anybody. Every day on my 15-mile commute, I see dozens of people holding phones up to their ears.
I don't see how an outright ban would make any difference, either, unless they actually enforce it.
That's obviously true for reads, but is it true for writes?
The Momentus XT only caches reads. Writes (i.e., data from the computer to the drive) completely bypass the cache.
If you can add 4-8GB of RAM, you're better off spending your money on that and a standard 3-1/2" mechanical hard drive. The Momentus XT really is only useful in laptops.