Older Yamaha drives were notorious for overheating and dying in record numbers. I'd bet that all of your 19 drives were mounted internally without adequate airflow or ventilation.
I've purchased 3 external Yamaha drives since 97, and to date they are all still working perfectly well; alebit very slowly.
For those of you who don't know, or are too lazy to find out, Ebay's auction for america is a method of raising money for various charities, such as the September 11th Fund, The New York State World Trade Center Relief Fund, The Twin Towers Fund and the American Red Cross.
This is probably offtopic too, but as i said, my term project involved an overview of current research dealing with the possibility of HCI (human-computer interfaces,) and EEG technologies for the severly disabled. It's moderatly interesting what can be done today. People can actually spell out messages at ~2 characters/minute simply by thinking and looking at a computer screen -- with no physical movements whatsoever. Yes, it's slow, but for some people, it's better then nothing.
This may make an interesting ask slashdot article, to see what other people have observed in this field.
If there's enough interest, i may consider posting my research online sometime.
Oddly enough, this semester i've just completed a Cogs 300 class (That's Cognitive Sciences, for those of you who do not know), one in which our prof got his docterate dealing with EEG's(Electroencephalography,) and such. In a nutshell, the method in which an EEG functions is by amplifying (20 000 some times) the extraordinarily minute electrical signals given off by the collective firing of the neurons in the human brain.
Term project was a biofeedback one, and originally consisted of training myself to try to produce more alpha/beta waves for communication and computer control, applicable to severly physically handicapped people with such dieases as ALS. In the later stages of ALS, it leaves its victims in such a state that one's cognitive abilities are as normal, except that you have absolutly no muscular control whatsoever.
Before you mod this offtopic, training was done via a custom A/D converter box, attached to a parallel port, and using custom software analysing the signals and such for relevant waveforms. Mind you, this software was designed with EEG analysis in mind (no pun intended.)
"With NAT-based hubs, cable providers won't be able to see into all connected devices-making remote troubleshooting difficult-because, again, the NAT is speaking for all connected devices. It's the data communications equivalent of, "You wanna talk to her, you go through me"-except you don't even know she's there to talk."
Which cable company is THIS? I know many people who would love their cable company to troubleshoot ALL of their net connected devices, for the simple fee of $5.00/month/IP address. 10 computers? 50 extra bucks a month to make sure the cable company can address and troubleshoot them. What nice guys!
Really now... often those cable tech support guys don't seem know all that much. As if they'll know enough (and actually be willing) to remotely troubleshoot your computer.
"NAT also raises issues for forthcoming cable-delivered home-networking services. A crucial part of the success or failure of broadband home networks will be the set-up and ongoing care processes used to link PCs and consumer-electronics gear."
They are assuming that any additional devices MUST be behind the NAT gateway. This is simply false. I can run 10 computers behind NAT, and if i bought a "digital cable IP addressable shopping device" to hook up to my TV, i don't have to hook that up to address the internet through the NAT gateway. I could just hook that up directly to the net, so its directly addressable. In short, some devices can be put behind NAT, and some other ones that need to be addressable can be given real IP addresses.
"What's the value of the stolen goods? Revenues associated with additional IP addresses, for one. Let's say one in 10 of the 5 million U.S. cable modem subscribers are usurping IP addresses without paying the $4.95 per month fee that's typically charged (beyond a pre-specified limit, which varies MSO to MSO.) Right off that bat, that's just shy of $30 million lost, annually."
I've never ran an ISP, so i'm not familiar with how IP addresses are doled out to the "big" guys. Interesting that they calculate the "losses" at $5.00 a month.
A long time ago, weren't different classes of IP addresses handed out for free? How does one put a price on these things?
Furthermore, i thought there was a shortage of IP addresses now. If they're going to implement some funky $5.00/month additional IP charge, i actually wonder if these IPs are going to be routable ones, or an IP on some cheezy intranet, unaddressable to the outside world (as if the cable companies were themselves NATting the connection for you from your private $5.00/month address.)
From the other Slashdot link to techtv , the innards of the Xbox show a Seagate hard drive. This one, however is a WD. Different brands of HD in different Xboxes?
I would think that kind of odd - wouldn't it be cheaper to just use one brand?
I live in BC, Canada, and as far as i understood the law, it prohibited the sale of violent video games to minors. By scrapping the law, now it is the exclusive responsability of the industry to police itself.
BUT i've never quite understood how banning the sale of video games to minors would prevent them from playing the game. Wasen't that the original intent of the law -- to stop kids from playing violent games?
Yes, we only sell tobacco products to those of age. Does that prevent kids from smoking anyways? Hell no. More often then not it's in the early teens that kids start smoking.
Take it one step further - you can pirate any game online with minimal hassle. Now it's no longer a tangable, physical object to buy (like cigarettes,) but rather pirated software.
Get real. This law wouldn't stop kids from playing games. If anything, it would probably cost the game companies sales. Since little Billy Bob can't buy the game from Future Shop (now Best Buy, i guess,) his only option is to pirate it online.
If it was a local file, seeking wouldn't be bad, but even on my DSL connection, it takes ~ 6-10 seconds to buffer every time you jump around the file. Very, very annoying.
Thank goodness i already had RealVideo installed. (ugh.)
I'm sure there's a PDF floating around on their site, but i can't find it right now. Have a gander at the Security set password and Security unlock fields.
Perhaps someone will be able to write a utility to lock a desktop HD when users go on vacation or something. (not sure how the BIOS would handle a locked drive though.)
A while back i was looking through IBM's specs for their deskstar drives, and it appears that they all support the same levels of password protection as their travelstar line of HD's. That is to say they all support a user and supervisor password, with multiple levels of security. (both user and supervisor passwords could be set to allow access to data, or it could be set such that only the user password could access the data, with the supervisor password needed to re-initialize the drive.)
Kind of a moot point, as most bios's have no support for this type of thing.
Perhaps IBM commercial sales have some systems that support these levels of desktop HD passwords.
just FYI, for those who actally read the article; the comparison is between a combination of win2k/xp (work/home) and solaris/caldera (work/home). Interesting that they calculated prices based on an implementation of Solaris at work, as opposed to Linux.
Are you really claiming that X+GNOME or X+KDE and a plethora of widget sets in order to get a decent number of programs running is less-bloated and better-designed than Windows desktop?
On a Linux box, you've got choice. You don't need Gnome. You don't even really need X. Obviously some programs will require all sorts of widgets etc etc, to run, but aren't there other alternatives that will do the same thing? Linux is great in that it's customizable. Try seperating win2k from the GUI. You can't even boot to a command prompt anymore (unless you use the install CD to enter rescue mode.)
It's a sad, sad thing when you need 128mb+ ram and 2gb+ hard drive space to install the newest Microsoft OS, just to read e-mail and surf the web.
These guys have got the right idea.
on
Tiny Apps
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
"How about BeOS, *nix, Amiga, QNX, etc?," I am asked. Those who are comfortable using these operating systems need no such guide as this; clean, well-made software is the rule rather than the exception.
These guys have got it right on. Outside of the windows software world, priorities are on well made software, in stark contrast to the windows feature bloat that we're becoming accustomed to. I'm not saying all windows software is ill-designed and bloated - it just seems to be the status quo.
It's nice to see that compact well made programs are still available outside of the "alternative" os's
Slashdot Mirror
Older Yamaha drives were notorious for overheating and dying in record numbers. I'd bet that all of your 19 drives were mounted internally without adequate airflow or ventilation.
I've purchased 3 external Yamaha drives since 97, and to date they are all still working perfectly well; alebit very slowly.
April fools day eh?
BUT the article was posted before April 1st!
Posted by Cliff on Sunday March 31, @11:52PM
I'm sorry to say, this article wasen't a joke. Now that's sad.
Interestingly, replacing the www with college seems to give you a direct link to articles at nytimes. No registration required!
Direct Link to article
For those of you who don't know, or are too lazy to find out, Ebay's auction for america is a method of raising money for various charities, such as the September 11th Fund, The New York State World Trade Center Relief Fund, The Twin Towers Fund and the American Red Cross.
This is probably offtopic too, but as i said, my term project involved an overview of current research dealing with the possibility of HCI (human-computer interfaces,) and EEG technologies for the severly disabled. It's moderatly interesting what can be done today. People can actually spell out messages at ~2 characters/minute simply by thinking and looking at a computer screen -- with no physical movements whatsoever. Yes, it's slow, but for some people, it's better then nothing.
This may make an interesting ask slashdot article, to see what other people have observed in this field.
If there's enough interest, i may consider posting my research online sometime.
Oddly enough, this semester i've just completed a Cogs 300 class (That's Cognitive Sciences, for those of you who do not know), one in which our prof got his docterate dealing with EEG's(Electroencephalography,) and such. In a nutshell, the method in which an EEG functions is by amplifying (20 000 some times) the extraordinarily minute electrical signals given off by the collective firing of the neurons in the human brain.
Term project was a biofeedback one, and originally consisted of training myself to try to produce more alpha/beta waves for communication and computer control, applicable to severly physically handicapped people with such dieases as ALS. In the later stages of ALS, it leaves its victims in such a state that one's cognitive abilities are as normal, except that you have absolutly no muscular control whatsoever.
Before you mod this offtopic, training was done via a custom A/D converter box, attached to a parallel port, and using custom software analysing the signals and such for relevant waveforms. Mind you, this software was designed with EEG analysis in mind (no pun intended.)
Imagine that... if you replaced the windshield with a "monitor," that'd sure bring a whole new meaning to the Blue Screen of Death!
Rendundant, yes; but it had to be said!
Once again, this article looks like an old rerun
Too bad the link is slashdotted already.
Though the inside of the gamecube can be found here (from the other slashdot article)
"With NAT-based hubs, cable providers won't be able to see into all connected devices-making remote troubleshooting difficult-because, again, the NAT is speaking for all connected devices. It's the data communications equivalent of, "You wanna talk to her, you go through me"-except you don't even know she's there to talk."
Which cable company is THIS? I know many people who would love their cable company to troubleshoot ALL of their net connected devices, for the simple fee of $5.00/month/IP address. 10 computers? 50 extra bucks a month to make sure the cable company can address and troubleshoot them. What nice guys!
Really now... often those cable tech support guys don't seem know all that much. As if they'll know enough (and actually be willing) to remotely troubleshoot your computer.
again from the article:
"NAT also raises issues for forthcoming cable-delivered home-networking services. A crucial part of the success or failure of broadband home networks will be the set-up and ongoing care processes used to link PCs and consumer-electronics gear."
They are assuming that any additional devices MUST be behind the NAT gateway. This is simply false. I can run 10 computers behind NAT, and if i bought a "digital cable IP addressable shopping device" to hook up to my TV, i don't have to hook that up to address the internet through the NAT gateway. I could just hook that up directly to the net, so its directly addressable. In short, some devices can be put behind NAT, and some other ones that need to be addressable can be given real IP addresses.
from the article:
"What's the value of the stolen goods? Revenues associated with additional IP addresses, for one. Let's say one in 10 of the 5 million U.S. cable modem subscribers are usurping IP addresses without paying the $4.95 per month fee that's typically charged (beyond a pre-specified limit, which varies MSO to MSO.) Right off that bat, that's just shy of $30 million lost, annually."
I've never ran an ISP, so i'm not familiar with how IP addresses are doled out to the "big" guys. Interesting that they calculate the "losses" at $5.00 a month.
A long time ago, weren't different classes of IP addresses handed out for free? How does one put a price on these things?
Furthermore, i thought there was a shortage of IP addresses now. If they're going to implement some funky $5.00/month additional IP charge, i actually wonder if these IPs are going to be routable ones, or an IP on some cheezy intranet, unaddressable to the outside world (as if the cable companies were themselves NATting the connection for you from your private $5.00/month address.)
oops. knee-jerk reaction to looking at the picture.
looks like the article mentions this fact.
That's Funny.
From the other Slashdot link to techtv , the innards of the Xbox show a Seagate hard drive. This one, however is a WD. Different brands of HD in different Xboxes?
I would think that kind of odd - wouldn't it be cheaper to just use one brand?
I live in BC, Canada, and as far as i understood the law, it prohibited the sale of violent video games to minors. By scrapping the law, now it is the exclusive responsability of the industry to police itself.
BUT i've never quite understood how banning the sale of video games to minors would prevent them from playing the game. Wasen't that the original intent of the law -- to stop kids from playing violent games?
Yes, we only sell tobacco products to those of age. Does that prevent kids from smoking anyways? Hell no. More often then not it's in the early teens that kids start smoking.
Take it one step further - you can pirate any game online with minimal hassle. Now it's no longer a tangable, physical object to buy (like cigarettes,) but rather pirated software.
Get real. This law wouldn't stop kids from playing games. If anything, it would probably cost the game companies sales. Since little Billy Bob can't buy the game from Future Shop (now Best Buy, i guess,) his only option is to pirate it online.
No problem.
If it was a local file, seeking wouldn't be bad, but even on my DSL connection, it takes ~ 6-10 seconds to buffer every time you jump around the file. Very, very annoying.
Thank goodness i already had RealVideo installed. (ugh.)
I'm watching the video right now, and its taken a bit of time to find out where this segment is on the bbc news.
So, for those of you who don't feel like jumping around the video for this segment, it starts at about 22 minutes in the broadcast.
Here's a page from IBM listing the control commands for their Deskstar line of drives:
o m.htm
http://www.storage.ibm.com/hdd/support/dtla/dtlac
I'm sure there's a PDF floating around on their site, but i can't find it right now. Have a gander at the Security set password and Security unlock fields.
Perhaps someone will be able to write a utility to lock a desktop HD when users go on vacation or something. (not sure how the BIOS would handle a locked drive though.)
There's some food for thought.
A while back i was looking through IBM's specs for their deskstar drives, and it appears that they all support the same levels of password protection as their travelstar line of HD's. That is to say they all support a user and supervisor password, with multiple levels of security. (both user and supervisor passwords could be set to allow access to data, or it could be set such that only the user password could access the data, with the supervisor password needed to re-initialize the drive.)
Kind of a moot point, as most bios's have no support for this type of thing.
Perhaps IBM commercial sales have some systems that support these levels of desktop HD passwords.
Called the RipGO mini CD-R burner and digital audio player, the unit works on both Macintosh and Windows (except 95 and NT), machines.
So let's get this straight... It doesn't work with Windows 95. Nor does it work with NT. Win2k is based on NT. So I guess you need Win98, or ME. Ick.
just FYI, for those who actally read the article; the comparison is between a combination of win2k/xp (work/home) and solaris/caldera (work/home). Interesting that they calculated prices based on an implementation of Solaris at work, as opposed to Linux.
Linux has already been ported to the simulator, and supports 511 GB of memory per process. That should do for a start!
It's too tempting not to insert a joke about Mozilla here...
*grins*
Too bad i don't have mod points right now, or else this comment would have been modded Funny... or would that be Informative? =)
Are you really claiming that X+GNOME or X+KDE and a plethora of widget sets in order to get a decent number of programs running is less-bloated and better-designed than Windows desktop?
On a Linux box, you've got choice. You don't need Gnome. You don't even really need X. Obviously some programs will require all sorts of widgets etc etc, to run, but aren't there other alternatives that will do the same thing? Linux is great in that it's customizable. Try seperating win2k from the GUI. You can't even boot to a command prompt anymore (unless you use the install CD to enter rescue mode.)
It's a sad, sad thing when you need 128mb+ ram and 2gb+ hard drive space to install the newest Microsoft OS, just to read e-mail and surf the web.
"How about BeOS, *nix, Amiga, QNX, etc?," I am asked. Those who are comfortable using these operating systems need no such guide as this; clean, well-made software is the rule rather than the exception.
These guys have got it right on. Outside of the windows software world, priorities are on well made software, in stark contrast to the windows feature bloat that we're becoming accustomed to. I'm not saying all windows software is ill-designed and bloated - it just seems to be the status quo.
It's nice to see that compact well made programs are still available outside of the "alternative" os's
Don't know if it's authentic though