That's not enough. Given that 1TB storage devices are on the market now, that could become outdated quite quickly. You'd be foolish to adopt that sort of filesystem, unless you were absolutely positive that you'd never upgrade (unlikely).
Honestly, ZFS seems like it's the holy grail of filesystems. There are a few small issues that might need to be worked out, though it seems as close to "ideal" as you'd ever be able to get.
Maybe this is a psychological thing, but Physicists are rarely in their field of work for the glory of it.
Although you can certainly be quite proud of a great discovery, most of the physicists I've met seem to be perfectly happy recanting the data they've collected, and making a cautious conclusion that states that the results are tenuous, but could be of importance to X, Y, and Z.
Come to think of it, the manner in which grants/money is approved for the respective fields could also be a great influence on how papers are written. In medicine, the money flows whenever a great discovery is claimed to have been made. In physics, the grant-writers seem a bit more trusting, and will generally grant requests to continue that particular line of research for a few more years, provided that the work up to that point has been satisfactory. This results in many cautious and understated conclusions being made....
I suspect it's how Sarah Palin jokes are strung together that is the new medium. they're ubiquitous and cannot be stopped by any force known to mankind.
Vote for somebody else, and she'll fade back into irrelevance.
On the other hand, if you're a political impersonator, an Obama presidency could be bad for business, unless he selects a particularly humorous cabinet.
AFAIK, there's nothing terribly innovative about the accelerator or cryo portions of the LHC, apart from the scale of the thing.
The CEBAF in Virginia has been operating at 2 Kelvin since the mid-80s. The technology to operate an accelerator at Liquid Helium temperatures is mature and well-understood.
Odds are, this is a one-time design/construction hiccup. It's unfortunate that it happened, but should be something which can easily be overcome.
Solar output and atmospheric heat retention are two completely independent variables.
The fact that one is rising, while the other is falling is merely a fortunately coincidence.
My own personal view is that there's a heck of a lot that we don't know about the mechanics of the atmosphere. Until we figure everything else out, though, it's probably a good idea to err on the side of caution.
Re:the significance of this unusual calm
on
The Quietest Sun
·
· Score: 1
Apple's got some intereting ideas in terms of Office Applications. They don't highly tout iWork, or even promote it that much, despite the fact that it shows quite a bit of promise.
Keynote is hands-down the best presentation app out there. Numbers is considerably more intuitive than Excel, with its vastly superior UI. A few minor features are missing, though it's really a joy to work with. Pages is the enigma of the bunch. Apple seems to want to combine the roles of the layout app with the word processor (Publisher vs. Word). They seem to have done a pretty remarkable job at the layout part, though the word-processing bits could still use some work. It's "different" enough that users might have a tough time getting used to it.
More importantly.... none of the apps are trying to mimic Office, OoO, or AppleWorks. If OoO tried to be daring for once, and adopted a completely new set of paradigms, rather than mimicking MS Office, they might actually have a compelling product. For now, though, it's a second-rate knockoff of an already mediocre product.
I don't want to hate on Apple, because I truly do believe that their hearts are in the right places. However, it's definitely true that they still have a ways to go in terms of their server products. I feel that all too often, Apple products can be described as "Great, revolutionary, and amazing, BUT...." -- This is especially true of their server products.
Similarly, if they *ever* want to be taken seriously, they need to start ironing the bugs out of their directory access implementations. The fact that these would break with security/OS updates, and stay broken for months on end is insane. Microsoft would be burned alive if they let something like that slide.
I love Apple, but God, they seriously need to improve their standing with the IT world. A good first step would be to start working with, rather than against the Unix paradigms that their OS is built on top of.
A large component of Microsoft's success is that they are second-to-none in terms of catering to developers and sysadmins, even though their products themselves are decidedly second-tier. Until Apple catches up, or the Linux world produces a Wikipedia for all things linux (and maintains it at a high degree of quality), Microsoft will continue to dominate the business world.
For example, professors and/or students working on Defense dept, Energy department, or CIA/NSA research (although, it might be that in such a situation, they would be using a more secure email system run by the government agency they are collaborating with, instead of the University email, anyhow, so maybe that's not such a concern).
Every University I've worked at has explicitly prohibited these sort of activities from taking place on University systems, *especially* E-Mail. There may be exceptions to this rule, but I'd honestly guess that these activities are either on their own networks, or hosted by the DoE/DoD themselves. University networks don't tend to be particularly secure.
I need to overwhelmingly emphasize that OS X Server is *barely* suitable for a production environment.
I'm a big fan of Apple, and do appreciate the nice GUIs that they provided with OS X Server. However, it's not particularly stable, tends to break at odd intervals, and ignores many common Unix conventions, making it a huge pain to perform certain tasks, or do things not supported by the GUI.
It's a nice start, but I'd be very cautious about adopting it across your entire server infrastructure. Using it to host certain Apple-y apps might be fine, though I'd rely upon Linux/BSD for serious server tasks, especially if you already have the staff/experience to do so.
Re:'pure' flash devices
on
Linux 2.6.27 Out
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
So what kind of flash hardware is this for? Embedded devices, apparently. But maybe as flash storage becomes more common, more devices will support raw access?
Olympus' xD card format essentially specifies a direct connection between the NAND flash chips and its external interface.
It's weird and proprietary, yes. However, it's already being done, and there are arguments to be had for minimizing the amount of circuitry on the memory card itself. Interacting directly with Flash isn't as uncommon as you might think it, and can be of huge benefits for portable/embedded devices that require low power consumption.
We really need to begin compiling our scientific knowledge into a hyperlinked wiki/database of sorts.
Wikipedia's great for basic stuff, though there's still gobs of information (much of which is in the public domain) that's inexplicably confined to books and journals.
Hyperlinks (and extended data sets) should be *standard* for all journal articles these days, given that we have the technology to do so. There's no reason that the arXiv needs to remain as a repository for dead-tree PDFs.
I was rear-ended at a fairly high-speed (I was sitting at a stop light) a few years ago in a Volvo, by a Saturn.
The Saturn was a mess (and literally *bounced* off of the Volvo). My car needed a new bumper and a bit of paint*.
There's something to be said for putting teenagers in slow, heavy cars. The Volvo wasn't particularly *slow* or underpowered, though it also certainly wasn't the sort of car that one "joyrides" in.
The first car I drove was a Minivan. It served very well to teach me the, uh, limitations of certain vehicles. Having a good sense of when to be conservative (and also when it's OK to be somewhat less so) was one of the more important driving skills I picked up. It also seated 7, which was great as a teenager, despite the extremely "uncool" stigma associated with driving a van.
Learning to drive in an SUV, on the other hand, is a terrible idea. They're so huge, heavy, and overpowered that you can get away with just about anything, and also not face many consequences if you do somehow screw up.
Have you never avoided an accident on the highway by speeding up?
I'd daresay that it's a *better* option in many cases than slamming on the brakes -- you already know what's in front of you, but might not necessarily be able to tell how far away the nearest car behind you is, or correctly judge that driver's stopping distance.
That all said, the Focus isn't a terribly thrilling car to drive, and probably shouldn't be driven much above 80mph as it is. This would be a much more interesting story if they were including the feature on the Mustang to start.
The decision to lock out the traction control toggle also seems a bit bizarre. I don't know of anybody (teenagers or adults) who have ever actually turned it off.
I could see these "keys" becoming mandatory for people on provisional licenses, and would actually approve of such use (within reason). Although there are cases where it's reasonably safe to drive fast, one needs some experience before developing a good sense of that.
Slashdot Mirror
Max Volume Size: 8 TiB.
That's not enough. Given that 1TB storage devices are on the market now, that could become outdated quite quickly. You'd be foolish to adopt that sort of filesystem, unless you were absolutely positive that you'd never upgrade (unlikely).
Honestly, ZFS seems like it's the holy grail of filesystems. There are a few small issues that might need to be worked out, though it seems as close to "ideal" as you'd ever be able to get.
Maybe this is a psychological thing, but Physicists are rarely in their field of work for the glory of it.
Although you can certainly be quite proud of a great discovery, most of the physicists I've met seem to be perfectly happy recanting the data they've collected, and making a cautious conclusion that states that the results are tenuous, but could be of importance to X, Y, and Z.
Come to think of it, the manner in which grants/money is approved for the respective fields could also be a great influence on how papers are written. In medicine, the money flows whenever a great discovery is claimed to have been made. In physics, the grant-writers seem a bit more trusting, and will generally grant requests to continue that particular line of research for a few more years, provided that the work up to that point has been satisfactory. This results in many cautious and understated conclusions being made....
I suspect it's how Sarah Palin jokes are strung together that is the new medium. they're ubiquitous and cannot be stopped by any force known to mankind.
Vote for somebody else, and she'll fade back into irrelevance.
On the other hand, if you're a political impersonator, an Obama presidency could be bad for business, unless he selects a particularly humorous cabinet.
I personally choose to hate people for who they are, not what color they are.
How noble of you....
For what it's worth, it's almost exactly what it sounds like.
Not true. Look at yesterday's slashdot.
Odds are a number of today's stories are repeated on there.
Therefore, slashdot is not a singleton.
QED.
AFAIK, there's nothing terribly innovative about the accelerator or cryo portions of the LHC, apart from the scale of the thing.
The CEBAF in Virginia has been operating at 2 Kelvin since the mid-80s. The technology to operate an accelerator at Liquid Helium temperatures is mature and well-understood.
Odds are, this is a one-time design/construction hiccup. It's unfortunate that it happened, but should be something which can easily be overcome.
Were crowbars included in the LHC design specification?
If so, then I might know a guy who can help...
Um. I can't find where they made this excuse...
Solar output and atmospheric heat retention are two completely independent variables.
The fact that one is rising, while the other is falling is merely a fortunately coincidence.
My own personal view is that there's a heck of a lot that we don't know about the mechanics of the atmosphere. Until we figure everything else out, though, it's probably a good idea to err on the side of caution.
Actually, it's been declining since 1996.
The Dollar, the Euro, and the Pound have all been tanking over the past few months.
In fact, the dollar's considerably better off right now than it was a year ago versus those currencies.
There's a huge problem, there's no doubt. However, it seems that all of the western nations are being hit by it at once.
Does anyone else know if this is the first time that such a "space dynasty" has occurred?
Have there been any other cases of descendants, siblings, spouses, etc.... both going into space?
No real reason for asking... just kinda cool.
Apple's got some intereting ideas in terms of Office Applications. They don't highly tout iWork, or even promote it that much, despite the fact that it shows quite a bit of promise.
Keynote is hands-down the best presentation app out there.
Numbers is considerably more intuitive than Excel, with its vastly superior UI. A few minor features are missing, though it's really a joy to work with.
Pages is the enigma of the bunch. Apple seems to want to combine the roles of the layout app with the word processor (Publisher vs. Word). They seem to have done a pretty remarkable job at the layout part, though the word-processing bits could still use some work. It's "different" enough that users might have a tough time getting used to it.
More importantly.... none of the apps are trying to mimic Office, OoO, or AppleWorks. If OoO tried to be daring for once, and adopted a completely new set of paradigms, rather than mimicking MS Office, they might actually have a compelling product. For now, though, it's a second-rate knockoff of an already mediocre product.
I don't want to hate on Apple, because I truly do believe that their hearts are in the right places. However, it's definitely true that they still have a ways to go in terms of their server products. I feel that all too often, Apple products can be described as "Great, revolutionary, and amazing, BUT...." -- This is especially true of their server products.
Similarly, if they *ever* want to be taken seriously, they need to start ironing the bugs out of their directory access implementations. The fact that these would break with security/OS updates, and stay broken for months on end is insane. Microsoft would be burned alive if they let something like that slide.
I love Apple, but God, they seriously need to improve their standing with the IT world. A good first step would be to start working with, rather than against the Unix paradigms that their OS is built on top of.
A large component of Microsoft's success is that they are second-to-none in terms of catering to developers and sysadmins, even though their products themselves are decidedly second-tier. Until Apple catches up, or the Linux world produces a Wikipedia for all things linux (and maintains it at a high degree of quality), Microsoft will continue to dominate the business world.
For example, professors and/or students working on Defense dept, Energy department, or CIA/NSA research (although, it might be that in such a situation, they would be using a more secure email system run by the government agency they are collaborating with, instead of the University email, anyhow, so maybe that's not such a concern).
Every University I've worked at has explicitly prohibited these sort of activities from taking place on University systems, *especially* E-Mail. There may be exceptions to this rule, but I'd honestly guess that these activities are either on their own networks, or hosted by the DoE/DoD themselves. University networks don't tend to be particularly secure.
*sigh* Obama voted for it.
But not for those reasons.
Don't forget Sigur Ros! I swear those guys are elves or something....
I need to overwhelmingly emphasize that OS X Server is *barely* suitable for a production environment.
I'm a big fan of Apple, and do appreciate the nice GUIs that they provided with OS X Server. However, it's not particularly stable, tends to break at odd intervals, and ignores many common Unix conventions, making it a huge pain to perform certain tasks, or do things not supported by the GUI.
It's a nice start, but I'd be very cautious about adopting it across your entire server infrastructure. Using it to host certain Apple-y apps might be fine, though I'd rely upon Linux/BSD for serious server tasks, especially if you already have the staff/experience to do so.
So what kind of flash hardware is this for? Embedded devices, apparently. But maybe as flash storage becomes more common, more devices will support raw access?
Olympus' xD card format essentially specifies a direct connection between the NAND flash chips and its external interface.
It's weird and proprietary, yes. However, it's already being done, and there are arguments to be had for minimizing the amount of circuitry on the memory card itself. Interacting directly with Flash isn't as uncommon as you might think it, and can be of huge benefits for portable/embedded devices that require low power consumption.
We really need to begin compiling our scientific knowledge into a hyperlinked wiki/database of sorts.
Wikipedia's great for basic stuff, though there's still gobs of information (much of which is in the public domain) that's inexplicably confined to books and journals.
Hyperlinks (and extended data sets) should be *standard* for all journal articles these days, given that we have the technology to do so. There's no reason that the arXiv needs to remain as a repository for dead-tree PDFs.
don't worry
there will be a cheat code that lets you use an FPGA instead.
If you haven't seen it already, go watch Top Gear. It's effectively a British combination of Mythbusters and Car Talk.
Absolutely brilliant, and also one of the best-filmed shows on TV today.
Seriously.
I was rear-ended at a fairly high-speed (I was sitting at a stop light) a few years ago in a Volvo, by a Saturn.
The Saturn was a mess (and literally *bounced* off of the Volvo). My car needed a new bumper and a bit of paint*.
There's something to be said for putting teenagers in slow, heavy cars. The Volvo wasn't particularly *slow* or underpowered, though it also certainly wasn't the sort of car that one "joyrides" in.
The first car I drove was a Minivan. It served very well to teach me the, uh, limitations of certain vehicles. Having a good sense of when to be conservative (and also when it's OK to be somewhat less so) was one of the more important driving skills I picked up. It also seated 7, which was great as a teenager, despite the extremely "uncool" stigma associated with driving a van.
Learning to drive in an SUV, on the other hand, is a terrible idea. They're so huge, heavy, and overpowered that you can get away with just about anything, and also not face many consequences if you do somehow screw up.
Have you never avoided an accident on the highway by speeding up?
I'd daresay that it's a *better* option in many cases than slamming on the brakes -- you already know what's in front of you, but might not necessarily be able to tell how far away the nearest car behind you is, or correctly judge that driver's stopping distance.
That all said, the Focus isn't a terribly thrilling car to drive, and probably shouldn't be driven much above 80mph as it is. This would be a much more interesting story if they were including the feature on the Mustang to start.
The decision to lock out the traction control toggle also seems a bit bizarre. I don't know of anybody (teenagers or adults) who have ever actually turned it off.
I could see these "keys" becoming mandatory for people on provisional licenses, and would actually approve of such use (within reason). Although there are cases where it's reasonably safe to drive fast, one needs some experience before developing a good sense of that.