I hear the rocket was carrying a load of BS... and that, given the international community's response to the launch, we can say that the rocket did, in fact, hit its target.
I guarantee you the NK engineers learned from this "failure." Tests aren't failures as long as you learn from them. Since we don't know whether or what NK learned from this, calling the test a "failure" is pure speculation.
Yeah, but are those engineers still alive and thus able to learn from their mistakes?
I would think that if you wrote 0s to every block of an SSD, that there wouldn't be anything recoverable left on the SSD (I am also probably naive enough to believe this about HDDs). Are there rumors of tools that can tell the firmware to ignore remapping and such?
This is where SSDs differ from HDs. When a block (or cell, or whatever it's called) on an SSD dies, I've read it tends to do so on write, thus remaining readable. So once it's been remapped, PHYSICALLY, it can still be read from by something that can ignore remapping - I'm quite sure the three-letter agencies have already got something like this, and obviously the SSD makers will already have this. Data recovery companies will likely, as well. For purposes of entities who have the legal requirement of securely destroying data (credit card companies, those with access to medical records, etc.), you can no longer use a multi-write format like you describe, as the media isn't physically capable of writing those 0s to all bits that are still readable. I dunno what a degausser would do to an SSD, but I'd be interested in finding out. We have one at work for our HDs. You wouldn't believe how loud the thing is.
Okay, here's my thinking: consider what things fail on a system, and why.
Number one thing that shortens system life of your average non-overclocked machine: bad power. This includes a crappy PSU, and bad power coming into the machine from the wall. The solutions: PC Power & Cooling PSU, and a good power-regulating UPS. Keep in mind if you have some severe power surges, you may have to replace parts of your UPS over the years. Better parts in the UPS than in the computer itself. It's there to take the hits; accept it's brave sacrifice and move on.
Number two: cooling. Cool your system! Make sure the system shuts itself down when fans stop running, so the system doesn't fry itself. Replace your fans every 2 years. They're cheap ($10 per fan for the good ones). Don't forget the fans on the HSF (heat sink fan unit on the CPU) and on your video card. Or better yet, get a system with integrated video. One less fan to worry about, and if it dies but everything else on the mobo works, you can always add a videocard later.
Number two A: underclock the system a bit. Nothing drastic, but why push it, since you're going for longevity?
Number two B: Keep the system cleaned out on a regular basis. I'm not talking about defragging (we'll get to that), but keep the insides free from actual dust. Regularly. That doesn't mean once a year, but at least a couple of times a year. More often depending on the environment it's running in. Some cases have filters where air is bring drawn in from the fans, but almost all cases will be bringing in air from more places than just the fan intakes, so you'll get dust no matter what.
Number three: crappy RAM. Look, just buy quality components, run Memtest86 whatever on it to make sure it's good when you get it. Again, don't overclock this, or anything in the system.
Number four: quality mobo. This includes things like solid capacitors (not 'solid-state', which some people confuse this with), etc. Read the reviews from the hardware sites and make your choice. This kind of thing is where you'll most likely have to build your own machine. It's not that hard, so don't worry about it if you've never done it before.
Number five: storage. Okay, here's something that's in flux right now - spinning drives or SSD (solid state disk, meaning no moving parts). I'd say go with an SSD now, and upgrade in 2 years or so once things have settled down a bit. Higher-quality SSDs are already pretty nice, especially with wear-leveling, etc. Make sure you dispose of these properly, as the ability to reformat an SSD isn't as secure (as far as I know) as with spinning discs, yet, to a level I'm comfortable with. When an SSD dies, the information is still readable, generally, so you can't (maybe) reformat it completely. The bit gets marked as bad (non-writable), and I'm sure someone could (or has already) written a program that can read those bits to get information that you would hope is gone after a format. The rise of SSD for storage will be one of the biggest boons to long-life systems, as long as you follow the above advice first.
Number six: If he needs a floppy drive for some reason, turn off the auto-check feature on it. That kills floppy drives faster than anything. I've had floppy drives last longer than ten years. So long that the entire format went obsolete before the drive itself died.
Number seven: security. Put the thing behind a firewall or at least a NAT 'firewall'. Lock the machine the hell down; no root/administrator access to normal users, etc. If in Windows land, install Vista/Win 7 - the sandboxing abilities are far superior to that of Windows XP & older. Obviously, some type of Linux OS is preferrable. Security is a process, remember, so you have to keep checking things out.
And that's all I can think of off the top of my head right now. I'm sure there will be plenty of other good advice to come along from others.
I'm working on a solution. If only I can contact Oracle.
"Thank you for calling Oracle. For English press 1, para en Español marque el numero dos.
*beep*
You have reached the Oracle Help Line. Please hold for the current Oracle. All calls are answered in the order received. There are currently [1,983,457] callers ahead of you. Estimated wait time is [5,347,987] minutes.
Have you tried knowing thyself? Try checking our website at thereisnospoon.oracle.com.
The relevant question is: What's the cheapest laptop that fits my needs cost at Apple? I just checked the Apple store. The cheapest laptop they HAVE is $999, and that's the OLD version, in white plastic. The cheapest NEW model MacBook (aluminum enclosure) is $1299. No Netbook, no low-end generic 15.4" model, that's it, $999. Apple simply doesn't sell models in the middle to low-end market for laptops. Call it what you will - an Apple Tax, a Steve Jobs Cult of Personality Tax, whatever. When all you sell is upper middle-end hardware, that's a problem for people wanting something affordable. Even their low-end desktop, the Mac Mini, could be cheaper. They decided to make a 'design statement' and make something the market wasn't asking for (the smallest desktop Mac), and had to use more expensive laptop-class components to meet their design, rather than making a truly affordable Mac. Apple sure does think differently. And now that the CPU is soldered in on the new Mac Mini (and what's with adding a 5th USB port instead of an eSATA port?!), my hopes for a reasonable Mac Mini have fled. *shrug*
PS: Do you want me to punch you in face? You see, C++ is one of my favorite languages:)
I don't like the feeling of being punched in the face, which is one of the big reasons I don't code in C++ or Java. But if that's your thing, you should keep at it!:)
if you want the current state-of-the-art in virtual machine development, you should check Sun JVM.
Yeah, but then you run into the problem where you have to write in Java, and let's be honest -- fuck that.
If you're going to write in something as butt-ugly as Java, you might as well write in C++, and really, if you're going to write in something as nasty as C++ for performance reasons, you might as well just go all the way and write in asm.
Then again, there is always D to consider, if you don't want to go down that path.
And so does anarchism, communism, fascism, nationalism, and plenty other nonreligious or anti-religious political causes which you conveniently fail to mention.
It was pretty convenient in that those weren't the topic of discussion, while religion is.:)
Please to not be assigning beliefs to me that I have expressed nothing about, thanks.
Re:Sorry, but I have to consider the source
on
UN Attacks Free Speech
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Quoth the resolution:
"Defamation of religious is a serious affront to human dignity leading to a restriction on the freedom of their adherents and incitement to religious violence," the adopted text read, adding that "Islam is frequently and wrongly associated with human rights violations and terrorism."
Restriction of freedom of speech and religion is a serious affront to human dignity leading to violence.
In other news, as I've been saying for years now, religion breeds terrorism. Being a peaceful, tolerant religious person doesn't negate that, or change it. And ignoring that fact simply lets it run rampant. Making laws to let religious intolerance run rampant is equivalent to committing violence in the name of religion.
As an American liberal democrat atheist gay, I should say that even most of the people who aren't as awesome as me aren't as dumb as you make them out to be.
Nowhere did I indicate that even most 'liberal democrat atheist gays' are all, or even mostly, smart. I'm just saying the people on the other side of that equation ARE generally dumb. And I'm not saying it's their fault, even. Inbreeding will generally do that.:)
Sorry, I meant to say 'NOT representative', the mistake in doing that is, of course, representative, therefore, I was correct either way. Ha! Next, I shall go on to prove black is white.
"Question 1: Prove why Cold Fusion is impossible."
See also Outer Limits episode, "Final Exam"
Any scientist saying it's impossible is making just as big an assumption as the other way around, and should be suspect. The sad fact is, scientists are people, too (well, mostly) and are as full of bias as anyone else.
Put this in terms the average American can understand. How much does this increase the odds of Earth-swallowing black holes being created?
You severely overestimate what the 'average' American can understand. Let me try, "Will this make my bigscreen tv bigger for watching Gravedigger(tm) vs Truckosaurus(tm) pay per view event?, and if so, how much will it cost?" Also, "Does this help us defeat the terrorists GOD BLESS AMERICA. (Except the Liberals/Democrats/Commies/Atheists/Gays.)" (Please to note: spelling is representative of the 'average' American.)
Slashdot Mirror
Yawning and saying "Not a threat"? Now, if the Japanese had tried to shoot it down and failed...
Dude, even a freaking Samurai Pizza Cat can take out anything North Korea is capable of launching.
I hear the rocket was carrying a load of BS ... and that, given the international community's response to the launch, we can say that the rocket did, in fact, hit its target.
OMG - the rocket hit Washington, D.C.!
I guarantee you the NK engineers learned from this "failure." Tests aren't failures as long as you learn from them. Since we don't know whether or what NK learned from this, calling the test a "failure" is pure speculation.
Yeah, but are those engineers still alive and thus able to learn from their mistakes?
I would think that if you wrote 0s to every block of an SSD, that there wouldn't be anything recoverable left on the SSD (I am also probably naive enough to believe this about HDDs). Are there rumors of tools that can tell the firmware to ignore remapping and such?
This is where SSDs differ from HDs. When a block (or cell, or whatever it's called) on an SSD dies, I've read it tends to do so on write, thus remaining readable. So once it's been remapped, PHYSICALLY, it can still be read from by something that can ignore remapping - I'm quite sure the three-letter agencies have already got something like this, and obviously the SSD makers will already have this. Data recovery companies will likely, as well. For purposes of entities who have the legal requirement of securely destroying data (credit card companies, those with access to medical records, etc.), you can no longer use a multi-write format like you describe, as the media isn't physically capable of writing those 0s to all bits that are still readable. I dunno what a degausser would do to an SSD, but I'd be interested in finding out. We have one at work for our HDs. You wouldn't believe how loud the thing is.
Okay, here's my thinking: consider what things fail on a system, and why.
Number one thing that shortens system life of your average non-overclocked machine: bad power. This includes a crappy PSU, and bad power coming into the machine from the wall. The solutions: PC Power & Cooling PSU, and a good power-regulating UPS. Keep in mind if you have some severe power surges, you may have to replace parts of your UPS over the years. Better parts in the UPS than in the computer itself. It's there to take the hits; accept it's brave sacrifice and move on.
Number two: cooling. Cool your system! Make sure the system shuts itself down when fans stop running, so the system doesn't fry itself. Replace your fans every 2 years. They're cheap ($10 per fan for the good ones). Don't forget the fans on the HSF (heat sink fan unit on the CPU) and on your video card. Or better yet, get a system with integrated video. One less fan to worry about, and if it dies but everything else on the mobo works, you can always add a videocard later.
Number two A: underclock the system a bit. Nothing drastic, but why push it, since you're going for longevity?
Number two B: Keep the system cleaned out on a regular basis. I'm not talking about defragging (we'll get to that), but keep the insides free from actual dust. Regularly. That doesn't mean once a year, but at least a couple of times a year. More often depending on the environment it's running in. Some cases have filters where air is bring drawn in from the fans, but almost all cases will be bringing in air from more places than just the fan intakes, so you'll get dust no matter what.
Number three: crappy RAM. Look, just buy quality components, run Memtest86 whatever on it to make sure it's good when you get it. Again, don't overclock this, or anything in the system.
Number four: quality mobo. This includes things like solid capacitors (not 'solid-state', which some people confuse this with), etc. Read the reviews from the hardware sites and make your choice. This kind of thing is where you'll most likely have to build your own machine. It's not that hard, so don't worry about it if you've never done it before.
Number five: storage. Okay, here's something that's in flux right now - spinning drives or SSD (solid state disk, meaning no moving parts). I'd say go with an SSD now, and upgrade in 2 years or so once things have settled down a bit. Higher-quality SSDs are already pretty nice, especially with wear-leveling, etc. Make sure you dispose of these properly, as the ability to reformat an SSD isn't as secure (as far as I know) as with spinning discs, yet, to a level I'm comfortable with. When an SSD dies, the information is still readable, generally, so you can't (maybe) reformat it completely. The bit gets marked as bad (non-writable), and I'm sure someone could (or has already) written a program that can read those bits to get information that you would hope is gone after a format. The rise of SSD for storage will be one of the biggest boons to long-life systems, as long as you follow the above advice first.
Number six: If he needs a floppy drive for some reason, turn off the auto-check feature on it. That kills floppy drives faster than anything. I've had floppy drives last longer than ten years. So long that the entire format went obsolete before the drive itself died.
Number seven: security. Put the thing behind a firewall or at least a NAT 'firewall'. Lock the machine the hell down; no root/administrator access to normal users, etc. If in Windows land, install Vista/Win 7 - the sandboxing abilities are far superior to that of Windows XP & older. Obviously, some type of Linux OS is preferrable. Security is a process, remember, so you have to keep checking things out.
And that's all I can think of off the top of my head right now. I'm sure there will be plenty of other good advice to come along from others.
I'm working on a solution. If only I can contact Oracle.
"Thank you for calling Oracle. For English press 1, para en Español marque el numero dos.
*beep*
You have reached the Oracle Help Line. Please hold for the current Oracle. All calls are answered in the order received. There are currently [1,983,457] callers ahead of you. Estimated wait time is [5,347,987] minutes.
Have you tried knowing thyself? Try checking our website at thereisnospoon.oracle.com.
Thank you for holding."
Anyone concerned that when a SLA batter is charged, hydrogen is one of the by-products?
New Google revenue stream - capture the Hydrogen and sell it! Or use it to generate more electricity, and up their total efficiency.
It's April 1st somewhere in the world already. :)
The relevant question is: What's the cheapest laptop that fits my needs cost at Apple? I just checked the Apple store. The cheapest laptop they HAVE is $999, and that's the OLD version, in white plastic. The cheapest NEW model MacBook (aluminum enclosure) is $1299. No Netbook, no low-end generic 15.4" model, that's it, $999. Apple simply doesn't sell models in the middle to low-end market for laptops. Call it what you will - an Apple Tax, a Steve Jobs Cult of Personality Tax, whatever. When all you sell is upper middle-end hardware, that's a problem for people wanting something affordable. Even their low-end desktop, the Mac Mini, could be cheaper. They decided to make a 'design statement' and make something the market wasn't asking for (the smallest desktop Mac), and had to use more expensive laptop-class components to meet their design, rather than making a truly affordable Mac. Apple sure does think differently. And now that the CPU is soldered in on the new Mac Mini (and what's with adding a 5th USB port instead of an eSATA port?!), my hopes for a reasonable Mac Mini have fled. *shrug*
PS: Do you want me to punch you in face? You see, C++ is one of my favorite languages :)
I don't like the feeling of being punched in the face, which is one of the big reasons I don't code in C++ or Java. But if that's your thing, you should keep at it! :)
if you want the current state-of-the-art in virtual machine development, you should check Sun JVM.
Yeah, but then you run into the problem where you have to write in Java, and let's be honest -- fuck that.
If you're going to write in something as butt-ugly as Java, you might as well write in C++, and really, if you're going to write in something as nasty as C++ for performance reasons, you might as well just go all the way and write in asm.
Then again, there is always D to consider, if you don't want to go down that path.
another saying of mine comes to mind, "My ten amendments beats your ten commandments."
And so does anarchism, communism, fascism, nationalism, and plenty other nonreligious or anti-religious political causes which you conveniently fail to mention.
It was pretty convenient in that those weren't the topic of discussion, while religion is. :)
Please to not be assigning beliefs to me that I have expressed nothing about, thanks.
Quoth the resolution:
"Defamation of religious is a serious affront to human dignity leading to a restriction on the freedom of their adherents and incitement to religious violence," the adopted text read, adding that "Islam is frequently and wrongly associated with human rights violations and terrorism."
Restriction of freedom of speech and religion is a serious affront to human dignity leading to violence.
In other news, as I've been saying for years now, religion breeds terrorism. Being a peaceful, tolerant religious person doesn't negate that, or change it. And ignoring that fact simply lets it run rampant. Making laws to let religious intolerance run rampant is equivalent to committing violence in the name of religion.
So whatever happened to 'Stackless' Python? Is that ever going to be merged into CPython? And would it work with this?
I'm not quite sure what benefits this gives that Psyco doesn't already.
It doesn't get as stabby.
Where's Microsoft Bob?
He's SAILING!
I would love to revisit the web as it appeared when I first discovered it (1994 at psu.edu).
No, you wouldn't.
As an American liberal democrat atheist gay, I should say that even most of the people who aren't as awesome as me aren't as dumb as you make them out to be.
Nowhere did I indicate that even most 'liberal democrat atheist gays' are all, or even mostly, smart. I'm just saying the people on the other side of that equation ARE generally dumb. And I'm not saying it's their fault, even. Inbreeding will generally do that. :)
Sorry, I meant to say 'NOT representative', the mistake in doing that is, of course, representative, therefore, I was correct either way. Ha! Next, I shall go on to prove black is white.
"Question 1: Prove why Cold Fusion is impossible."
See also Outer Limits episode, "Final Exam"
Any scientist saying it's impossible is making just as big an assumption as the other way around, and should be suspect. The sad fact is, scientists are people, too (well, mostly) and are as full of bias as anyone else.
If it's perpetual motion, why does it need power? :)
Because it's HUNGRY. This is known as Sinistar(tm) Syndrome, coward. Beware. *RAWWWWRRRR!!!!*
Put this in terms the average American can understand. How much does this increase the odds of Earth-swallowing black holes being created?
You severely overestimate what the 'average' American can understand. Let me try, "Will this make my bigscreen tv bigger for watching Gravedigger(tm) vs Truckosaurus(tm) pay per view event?, and if so, how much will it cost?" Also, "Does this help us defeat the terrorists GOD BLESS AMERICA. (Except the Liberals/Democrats/Commies/Atheists/Gays.)" (Please to note: spelling is representative of the 'average' American.)
I'm pretty sure that was a design problem.
Microsoft will *always* improve their products. As the very last resort.