the price they can negotiate becomes even lower when retailers are left with drives that don't shift as well.
That only works in a very short-term, one-shot method, and over the long-term would be counter-productive. Since they have continuous need of new drives, I don't think that would work for them.
If their drives aren't selling, Seagate isn't going to continue producing too many, at least not too far in the future. And in general, the most widely available product is the one you can get the best prices on... Companies buy truckloads full, then want to unload them quickly, make a profit, then will happily sell any older units at a loss. But when there's less supply of something desirable... prices go up. Compare the prices of DDR1, DDR2, and DDR3 memory...
In the long term, making your preferred product more popular, slightly lowers prices. But then again, this is just a chart on their website being read by a modest number of geeks, hardly going to move the needle. Now if it gets picked up by some major trade mag...
A few years back a rep told me that 2.5" drives were generally more reliable than 3.5" because 2.5" were designed for laptops, were they would be expected to have a hard life
Backblaze says they suspect their ridiculously high failure rates of some "green" drives are due to aggressive power management... Would you like to guess what 2.5" laptop drives all do???
Laptop components are made to be low-power and light-weight, not particularly durable. Yeah, I'd fully expect WORSE reliability from laptop hard drives than desktop drives.
No, that would be why they have to combine several of the above methods to even get a HARD landing. And yes, Mars has proven to be the most difficult body to land on... Only the US has managed it, and not at an impressive success rate, either.
To land on a body with an atmosphere you have to just carry shielding and hit it at the right angle and the friction does the rest.
Except Mars has such an incredibly thin atmosphere that a parachute needs to be impossibly large for a soft landing. The gravity is too high for a rocket-powered landing like on the moon. Not to mention that same thin atmosphere being thick enough that you also need a tough heat shield.
I'd put it in a glass box at the top of a greasy pole in the middle of the gun-toters.
Then somebody drives up in a bucket-truck, wearing a high-visibility shirt with the city/county/state logo on it, and smiles at everyone passing by, while he robs you....
Dude, they're tablets. You're supposed to carry them around in your pocket and use them when you're not at a desk.
I'll thank you not to tell me what I'm *SUPPOSED* to do with my computers. But on that note, you must be HUGE if 7" tablets fit in your pockets.
Why would anyone in their right mind want a USB port and RJ45 port on a 7" tablet?
Same reason someone would want them on a laptop... And why are we talking about 7" tablets? How about 10 and 13" tablets?
Why this insane desire to build 'one size fits all', when it just results in a horrible kludge that no-one wants?
There is no kludge here. Phones and tablets already have USB ports, but they're of the "micro" variety, which requires carrying around an adapter cable. Phones and tablets already have networking, but it's of the wireless kind, eliminating numerous options to hook-up to it. Adding these ports would neither make the hardware nor software any more complicated. I can't imagine how you can call that a kludge, other than your having no clue what the term means.
And looky here! Here's at least 700+ people who wanted a full USB-A port on their tablets, but had to settle for carrying an adapter cable instead:
Old computers work great... NOW... But certainly didn't a few years ago. When Flash video took over the web, with no hardware acceleration and utterly horrendous performance, the fastest machines a few years before would struggle to play postage stamp sized videos.
A few years before, computers were only just getting fast enough to display 1080p H.264 videos... Then Flash was inflicted upon us, and we went through another round. If not for the horrible Flash plugin, computers would have been fast enough, several years before they finally got there. If Flash (and YouTube) was updated to H.265 today, we'd have another few years of prosperous computer makers, and mobile devices rushing to catch up.
When ME and Vista came around, there wasn't any viable Windows alternative out there... Fleetingly few vendors were offering different versions of Linux. Today, Chromebooks are selling quite well, and unlike MacOS, runs on the same hardware, and is cheaper. I'd feel quite claustrophobic using a Chromebook, but I feel claustrophobic whenever I have to use Windows, anyhow.
IMHO, Google just needs to provide Dalvik for Chromebooks, and they'd have a mature desktop environment with a huge software library.
Tablets running Android could make the leap, but they don't seem to be... When all tablets come with USB-A ports (people want to use thumb drives, and their SD cards, etc) and RJ45 ports (not all networking is wireless), then they could make a run at laptops and desktops. Those few missing options are terrible limitations, keeping them from being the only computers people need. Right now, Chromebooks are in the better position, despite the less appealing form-factor.
Theo long ago burned his bridges with the US government, back when they were giving OpenBSD money. That's a big reason why they are perpetually under funded.
Many Europeans are already used to using different keyboards at different times. As we speak I'm typing on a Danish-layout keyboard remapped to US-English.
As someone who touch-types Dvorak at home, and has to switch back to QWERTY at work, I think I can safely say my experience trumps your few symbol keys moving around...
The thing that bothers me the most is poor visibility... I'd be fine with the CTRL and ALT keys moving all over the place with different laptop keyboards, IF the keyboard was backlit... Those with small, low-contrast ink labels in low-light are the WORST. Without a clear visual indicator to orient yourself to using a different keyboard than usual, it can be painful to switch... Lighting can make all the difference, and a smooth transition.
Personally, I'd like laptops to standardize keyboard sizes and connectors so we can swap them after-market, as I previously said here: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4683675&cid=45998205 But I prefer the current state of uselessness to laptop makers standardizing on lowest-common-denominator crap that is good for nobody.
Input devices are the most important part of any computer, yet we don't worry about keyboards/mice on desktops, because we know we can swap them with something we prefer, at will. With laptops, we're stuck with the cheap junk that's included. And worse, we're stuck with the economics laptop makers are under, and we don't want to pay $500 extra for a high-end laptop, just to get a $20 keyboard we like.
If laptop makers standardized on a few sizes of keyboard, and made them easy to slide in and out and swap with a different model, life would be good...
It's POSSIBLE for laptop makers to get it right and include a great keyboard with their laptops. There are innumerable awesome small keyboards out there. In fact, I use nothing but ultra compact keyboards for my home computers, because the ergonomics of super-flat are best, and the lack of a keypad on the side makes reaching over for the mouse vastly quicker and easier. To make an awesome laptop, start with a keyboard like this one: http://typematrix.com/ But the odds of them doing that are far too slim, and there's just too little incentive to ever expect it to happen. The input market is far too specialized. Instead, just make the parts interchangeable, and not only will your core customers be happy with their input options even on the cheapest laptops, but your products will also sell better to non-English speakers, who want a very different keyboard.
The only real result of the death penalty seems to be deterrence and revenge catharsis.
Death has finality that imprisonment does not. Ask the family members of any murder victims, or those who were directly involved, and they will tell you that they are harmed by every day their attacker lives, and relive the events after every stay of execution and retrial.
'This whole scenario of having to make us wait... it's like having a knife stuck in your back every time somebody says or does something,'
You can argue the death penalty all you want, but don't forget that the guilty party isn't the only one being "harmed". Commuting those executions also dreadfully hurts the victims families, and that should not be forgotten, just because they aren't the ones outside the courthouse carrying signs and shouting clever slogans...
Since innocent people end up on death-row and are frequently exonnerated by DNA or new evidence, then how can it be logical to maintain a death penalty?
I am utterly disgusted by people who believe that executing someone is cruel and unusual punishment, but that an innocent person spending decades in prison is perfectly okay... If anything, the threat of execution of innocent people has done more to improve our justice system than anything else.
If you're going to say "well, maybe.1% of the time an innocent person is put to death but it's for the greater good", then how about you line up to be the next.1%?
The appeals process is so exhaustive that not a single person who has been executed has later been found to have been innocent, in modern history. Yes, there's bound to be some mistakes, but would you really prefer an unjust lifetime in prison over execution? Plenty of prison suicides indicate many people who have first hand experience don't agree with you.
Windows XP has been out for 12 years and they just started to look into the problem last month?
The bug didn't exhibit itself 12 years ago. I believe the earliest report was 2 years ago, there were workarounds (like upgrading to IE9) and this isn't the first time they've TRIED to properly fix the issue...
But what do I know, I just spent 2 minutes RTFA...
I wonder, how much Co2 has been released into the atmosphere, with this bug present on millions of computers, over decades, causing PC's to eat more electricity than they should.
Far less than would have been caused by XP users "upgrading" to Vista...
If you want to calculate something... Figure out how much energy would be saved if everyone had stuck with Windows 2000 for the past decade and a half, instead of upgrading.
CFL's DO NOT last longer. I've tested that theory a few times in my house and NONE of those that I bought (any name brand) lasted longer than the incandescent bulbs that had been in place before and after the CFL's died.
And here the entire pack of cheap as dirt, no-name "EcoSmart" CFLs that I bought from Home Depot 6 years ago, continue chugging away just fine, despite being my sole artificial light source, and having been installed in 4 very different locations as I've move around, without a single issue yet.
I even see CFLs being inherited... They outlive their owners by many years, and continue to function just fine. I don't know for sure how old the oldest CFL bulb I've seen still in daily-use is, but it's so old that it's 27watts for a 60-watt equivalent light output. Probably one of the very first combined electronic ballast CFLs.
LEDs have about the same efficiency of CFLs, though they're SLOWLY getting better
Common (read: cheap) LED bulbs have 50% better efficiency than CFLs, and that will only improve. You need only do the math by taking something like Cree's 40 or 60 watt equivalent LED bulbs, and dividing lumens by watts, and doing the same for any CFLs.
And LED bulbs are only that low efficiency because of cost... Flashlights have been using LED emitters that are more efficient for over 5 years now, and some that double that over the past couple years.
CFL's take about 30 seconds to come to full brightness.
And you feel you have to spend those 30 seconds, while your CFLs are *only* at 95% brightness, stabbing yourself in the eye with a red-hot poker?
At full brightness, they are still dimmer than incandesants.
That's utter nonsense. 800 lumens is 800 lumens, whether it comes from a bulb, a CFL, an LED, or a sodium light. Now, if the CFLs your are looking at claim to be 60-watt equivalents while outputting less than 800 lumens, you simply need to find a different brand... Because of course, you light your home in such a way that losing even 10 lumens makes life intolerable for you...?
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That only works in a very short-term, one-shot method, and over the long-term would be counter-productive. Since they have continuous need of new drives, I don't think that would work for them.
If their drives aren't selling, Seagate isn't going to continue producing too many, at least not too far in the future. And in general, the most widely available product is the one you can get the best prices on... Companies buy truckloads full, then want to unload them quickly, make a profit, then will happily sell any older units at a loss. But when there's less supply of something desirable... prices go up. Compare the prices of DDR1, DDR2, and DDR3 memory...
In the long term, making your preferred product more popular, slightly lowers prices. But then again, this is just a chart on their website being read by a modest number of geeks, hardly going to move the needle. Now if it gets picked up by some major trade mag...
Backblaze says they suspect their ridiculously high failure rates of some "green" drives are due to aggressive power management... Would you like to guess what 2.5" laptop drives all do???
Laptop components are made to be low-power and light-weight, not particularly durable. Yeah, I'd fully expect WORSE reliability from laptop hard drives than desktop drives.
No, that would be why they have to combine several of the above methods to even get a HARD landing. And yes, Mars has proven to be the most difficult body to land on... Only the US has managed it, and not at an impressive success rate, either.
Except Mars has such an incredibly thin atmosphere that a parachute needs to be impossibly large for a soft landing. The gravity is too high for a rocket-powered landing like on the moon. Not to mention that same thin atmosphere being thick enough that you also need a tough heat shield.
Then somebody drives up in a bucket-truck, wearing a high-visibility shirt with the city/county/state logo on it, and smiles at everyone passing by, while he robs you....
I'll thank you not to tell me what I'm *SUPPOSED* to do with my computers. But on that note, you must be HUGE if 7" tablets fit in your pockets.
Same reason someone would want them on a laptop... And why are we talking about 7" tablets? How about 10 and 13" tablets?
There is no kludge here. Phones and tablets already have USB ports, but they're of the "micro" variety, which requires carrying around an adapter cable. Phones and tablets already have networking, but it's of the wireless kind, eliminating numerous options to hook-up to it. Adding these ports would neither make the hardware nor software any more complicated. I can't imagine how you can call that a kludge, other than your having no clue what the term means.
And looky here! Here's at least 700+ people who wanted a full USB-A port on their tablets, but had to settle for carrying an adapter cable instead:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B005F...
In fact the number of buyers is surely at least in the tens of thousands.
Old computers work great... NOW... But certainly didn't a few years ago. When Flash video took over the web, with no hardware acceleration and utterly horrendous performance, the fastest machines a few years before would struggle to play postage stamp sized videos.
A few years before, computers were only just getting fast enough to display 1080p H.264 videos... Then Flash was inflicted upon us, and we went through another round. If not for the horrible Flash plugin, computers would have been fast enough, several years before they finally got there. If Flash (and YouTube) was updated to H.265 today, we'd have another few years of prosperous computer makers, and mobile devices rushing to catch up.
When ME and Vista came around, there wasn't any viable Windows alternative out there... Fleetingly few vendors were offering different versions of Linux. Today, Chromebooks are selling quite well, and unlike MacOS, runs on the same hardware, and is cheaper. I'd feel quite claustrophobic using a Chromebook, but I feel claustrophobic whenever I have to use Windows, anyhow.
IMHO, Google just needs to provide Dalvik for Chromebooks, and they'd have a mature desktop environment with a huge software library.
Tablets running Android could make the leap, but they don't seem to be... When all tablets come with USB-A ports (people want to use thumb drives, and their SD cards, etc) and RJ45 ports (not all networking is wireless), then they could make a run at laptops and desktops. Those few missing options are terrible limitations, keeping them from being the only computers people need. Right now, Chromebooks are in the better position, despite the less appealing form-factor.
Japan both has extreme population density, and a large number of early adopters they can count on.
You don't need government subsudies when you've got lots of fools who are easily parted from their money.
Theo long ago burned his bridges with the US government, back when they were giving OpenBSD money. That's a big reason why they are perpetually under funded.
It may be less-awful than those from manufacturers who try hard to do something special and fail, but it's certainly not the best keyboard around.
I recommend one of these:
http://typematrix.com/
Or for the cheapskates among us:
http://www.vpi.us/keyboard-mini.html
As someone who touch-types Dvorak at home, and has to switch back to QWERTY at work, I think I can safely say my experience trumps your few symbol keys moving around...
The thing that bothers me the most is poor visibility... I'd be fine with the CTRL and ALT keys moving all over the place with different laptop keyboards, IF the keyboard was backlit... Those with small, low-contrast ink labels in low-light are the WORST. Without a clear visual indicator to orient yourself to using a different keyboard than usual, it can be painful to switch... Lighting can make all the difference, and a smooth transition.
Personally, I'd like laptops to standardize keyboard sizes and connectors so we can swap them after-market, as I previously said here: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4683675&cid=45998205
But I prefer the current state of uselessness to laptop makers standardizing on lowest-common-denominator crap that is good for nobody.
Input devices are the most important part of any computer, yet we don't worry about keyboards/mice on desktops, because we know we can swap them with something we prefer, at will. With laptops, we're stuck with the cheap junk that's included. And worse, we're stuck with the economics laptop makers are under, and we don't want to pay $500 extra for a high-end laptop, just to get a $20 keyboard we like.
If laptop makers standardized on a few sizes of keyboard, and made them easy to slide in and out and swap with a different model, life would be good...
It's POSSIBLE for laptop makers to get it right and include a great keyboard with their laptops. There are innumerable awesome small keyboards out there. In fact, I use nothing but ultra compact keyboards for my home computers, because the ergonomics of super-flat are best, and the lack of a keypad on the side makes reaching over for the mouse vastly quicker and easier. To make an awesome laptop, start with a keyboard like this one: http://typematrix.com/
But the odds of them doing that are far too slim, and there's just too little incentive to ever expect it to happen. The input market is far too specialized. Instead, just make the parts interchangeable, and not only will your core customers be happy with their input options even on the cheapest laptops, but your products will also sell better to non-English speakers, who want a very different keyboard.
It's long overdue.
Death has finality that imprisonment does not. Ask the family members of any murder victims, or those who were directly involved, and they will tell you that they are harmed by every day their attacker lives, and relive the events after every stay of execution and retrial.
'This whole scenario of having to make us wait... it's like having a knife stuck in your back every time somebody says or does something,'
You can argue the death penalty all you want, but don't forget that the guilty party isn't the only one being "harmed". Commuting those executions also dreadfully hurts the victims families, and that should not be forgotten, just because they aren't the ones outside the courthouse carrying signs and shouting clever slogans...
I am utterly disgusted by people who believe that executing someone is cruel and unusual punishment, but that an innocent person spending decades in prison is perfectly okay... If anything, the threat of execution of innocent people has done more to improve our justice system than anything else.
The appeals process is so exhaustive that not a single person who has been executed has later been found to have been innocent, in modern history. Yes, there's bound to be some mistakes, but would you really prefer an unjust lifetime in prison over execution? Plenty of prison suicides indicate many people who have first hand experience don't agree with you.
The bug didn't exhibit itself 12 years ago. I believe the earliest report was 2 years ago, there were workarounds (like upgrading to IE9) and this isn't the first time they've TRIED to properly fix the issue...
But what do I know, I just spent 2 minutes RTFA...
Far less than would have been caused by XP users "upgrading" to Vista...
If you want to calculate something... Figure out how much energy would be saved if everyone had stuck with Windows 2000 for the past decade and a half, instead of upgrading.
Like I said... you can't do math.
That's awfully big talk, from the company that unleashed EFI upon an innocent and unsuspecting public.
You should have said up-front that you're incapable of doing math. Would have saved me some time.
How fortunate for you that they do have payback periods of about 2 years...
And here the entire pack of cheap as dirt, no-name "EcoSmart" CFLs that I bought from Home Depot 6 years ago, continue chugging away just fine, despite being my sole artificial light source, and having been installed in 4 very different locations as I've move around, without a single issue yet.
I even see CFLs being inherited... They outlive their owners by many years, and continue to function just fine. I don't know for sure how old the oldest CFL bulb I've seen still in daily-use is, but it's so old that it's 27watts for a 60-watt equivalent light output. Probably one of the very first combined electronic ballast CFLs.
Common (read: cheap) LED bulbs have 50% better efficiency than CFLs, and that will only improve. You need only do the math by taking something like Cree's 40 or 60 watt equivalent LED bulbs, and dividing lumens by watts, and doing the same for any CFLs.
And LED bulbs are only that low efficiency because of cost... Flashlights have been using LED emitters that are more efficient for over 5 years now, and some that double that over the past couple years.
Just because your local home center feels like ripping you off, does not make the technology any more or less expensive...
You didn't say what power you use, but how about a 10W LED flood light for $18?
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004DDQK0O/
And you feel you have to spend those 30 seconds, while your CFLs are *only* at 95% brightness, stabbing yourself in the eye with a red-hot poker?
That's utter nonsense. 800 lumens is 800 lumens, whether it comes from a bulb, a CFL, an LED, or a sodium light. Now, if the CFLs your are looking at claim to be 60-watt equivalents while outputting less than 800 lumens, you simply need to find a different brand... Because of course, you light your home in such a way that losing even 10 lumens makes life intolerable for you...?