Are you actually trying to compare accident statistics between commercial fixed-wing aircraft and military helecopters? Don't you think that the operating parameters are a little different? The very nature of the operations military helecopters undertake makes them more risky-- not necessarily the fact that they are helecopters. I won't argue that helecopters aren't more dangerous, but I'd say the bigger danger is that they're flying in close formation at low altitudes.
BTW, unmanned aircraft are not permitted to fly over populated areas.
No wonder the US is always going after a war. I really have a problem when anything related to war is turned into a game (see Sony trademarking "Shock and Awe"). What's next: toy civilians that bleed just like real ones?
Insightful? Um, how about reading the article (or even the Slashdot post) instead of just bashing America? These toys are made by Konami, which, as you might imagine from the.jp and Engrish, is a Japanese company.
Now, will some moderators give this troll what he deserves?
The kind of service I would like, and which I would happily pay $10/month or so for goes one step furthur. I would like direct access to their catalogue, so I could stream or download any tracks I wanted when I wanted them.
How about listen.com? 20k albums and 300k+ tracks on demand and 50 radio "stations" (commercial free) for $9.95/month. Burn tracks for $0.99 each.
(not affiliated, yadda yadda)
Re:another thinly veiled attempt to make money
on
Open Source DRM
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· Score: 1
another thinly veiled attempt to make money by limiting other people's freedom and trying to create an artificial scarcity in one of the very few areas of our lives where we live in a world of plenty
Artificial scarcity? How does that describe using DRM to enforce copyright? Artificial scarcity describes things like limited edition prints-- physical products that could be manufactured in greater quantities but are not in order to cause a shortage which drives up prices (or creates prestige). I'm pretty certain that a music publisher will be willing to sell the right for personal use to anyone.
Like it or not, I'm allowed to charge whatever I want for my creation-- and you're allowed to not buy it if you don't find enough value for the money. Your "freedom" is not infriged when I prevent you from violating my copyright. DRM is walking a fine line right now between enforcing valid copyrights and violating fair use. As long as they stay on the (copy) right side of that line, it's goodness. Collaborative (and open) development of DRM can help ensure that we stay on the right side of that line.
I'm the last one to defend Dell, but this post is totally wrong. If you actually read the article, you'd see that there are two kinds of cartridges:
a regular cartridge with no lockout chip ($129/$99/$35)
a "use and return" cartridge with lockout chip ($99/$75/na).
I feel pretty certain that Dell wants to keep you as a cartridge customer, but they aren't locking you in. Oh, and only one of the four printers is an inkjet. The others are lasers. Even better, the inkjet does not include this technology. Bottom line: Dell is getting into the laser printer cartridge refilling business. No wonder the OP is complaining.
Just because it's FibreChannel doesn't mean it's server-class. I'm sure it does OK, but the FC-AL to IDE bridge is just bizarre. Sure, they save in media cost by using IDE instead of native FC-AL drives, but it's more than just the interface. Spindle speed and track seek times, on-board caching, and reliability improvements are all put on FC-AL/SCSI drives well before IDE (if ever). Even the waranties are longer.
Using IDE is sacrificing features for cost. If you're willing to do this, sure-- get this XServe RAID. But this is not a datacenter-quality storage solution.
In an abstract algebra class I got a D- on an exam. It was the third-highest grade in the class. That's exactly three of us who didn't flunk. If Berkeley didn't get so pissed when profs flunk then entire class, I know a few who would be happy to.
That is a sign of either (1) a bad teacher that cannot teach properly or expects too much from the class or (2) bad counselors or course guide description putting people into classes in which they do not belong.
I'm tempted to believe the former. Clearly, students should be held to a high standard. But if only a small subset are able to pass the class, something is wrong with the class, not the students. I wouldn't be surprised to see that this professor was arrogant and condecending to his students. How dare they not absorb the material as rapidly as he did (or imagine he did)? I had some professors like this in my time-- thank god for drop/add.
And when the power goes off do you want it to fail open or fail closed?
First, I would hope that Bluetooth's low-power usage would allow the lock to continue functioning for several days on battery backup. After the battery is dead, I would expect a backup physical key system to be enabled. This key system would be disabled if the Bluetooth receiver was functioning properly, but engaged (solenoid) if backup-power is exhausted. This delay will allow me enough time to make arrangements to carry physical keys with me in the event of an extended power outage.
If it's the end, it wasn't a law to start with, then, was it?
You assume that the "Law" in Moore's Law is meant to imply that it is a scientific law instead of a strong directive: "Get it done. I don't care how-- just make it happen." The "law" of the boss.
She continued to pay her bill. They screwed up. Jesus, jsut read that article.
Good lord. Maybe you should read the article. The woman did not pay her ISP bill for fourteen months. The error that the ISP made was in not billing her.
I'm not exactly sure where I stand on this case, but it looks like both parties were a little shady. It appears that (a) the woman knowingly used her ISP account for more than a year without paying and (b) the ISP looked at her email (maybe only the headers) and used the info as blackmail to get her to pay up.
Oh, and by the way, it's not like the woman missed an email offering her the job. She missed an email "encouraging" her to apply for it.
No matter how many articles I've read, it always amazes me how few Slashdotters read the article before they feel compelled to post their (usually misguided) opinion. I'm sure plenty do, but there sure are a lot who don't.
IBM is working on the commercialization of Distributed Computing (henceforth, DC). This effort has been around for a while (in a related area, called Grid Computing, which some people use interchangably with DC) in the form of the Globus project, amongst others.
The concept behind DC is essentially a next-gen timeshare-- a distributed timeshare with an abstration layer, if you will. Unlike traditional timeshare, you don't specify where your processing will occur. Unlike existing projects (like folding@home, dsitributed.net), DC doesn't require that you have a parallel, segmentable computing problem.
Let's say (in your best Police Squad voice) I'm a mechanical engineer who's designing a car engine with a few thousand parts. I want to run some simulations on my model to inspect heat flows, vibration, whatever. Car companies (or the little guy with a copy of Catilla and a great idea) don't necessarily have dedicated computing resources to run my simulation. So, until now, I had to band together with a bunch of other mechanical engineers with jobs similar to mine and try to justify a giant simulation node. Or, I might convince management to outsource the computation, requiring a bunch of red tape, NDAs, contracts, negotiation, etc.
Now consider IBM, one of the largest commercial web hosts. IBM maintains giant server farms to support these services. Consider the amount of excess processing capacity sitting in these server farms because (a) a lot of servers are spitting out static pages and (b) extra capacity necessary to cover peak loading for special events.
Expand this idea to include thousands of people who need computation power for discrete, isolated projects and thousands of companies with excess computational capacity. The consumers don't care precisely where or when their computations get completed, they only care that they get done in a "reasonable" amount of time. An intermediary, which it looks like IBM wants to be, can accept jobs from them, break them into as many pieces as they can, farm them out to whichever of their suppliers has excess capacity at any particular moment, combine the results, and return them to the customer.
Even more, IBM can charge more if you want a high priority on your computation or if your job is not symmetric and must be run on fewer nodes.
Actually, if you think about it, IBM is hurting their server sales by advancing this project. Right now, they sell a lot of excess capacity to companies to cover their peak loading. If companies can dynamically purchase exactly the amount of processing they need, that's money IBM's leaving on the table. Now, companies with high-availabity requirements will still purchase their own systems with enough extra capacity to cover their own needs. But, when they're not using that capacity, they'll sell it.
I think IBM saw that the train was leaving the station. They know this technology is coming. And they see that the chance to be the intermediary in this market is worth more than the money they'll lose in hardware sales. And, they know if they don't, someone else will.
I was under the impression that by far the main causes of hard drive failure are mechanical (head crashes, motor failure, etc). Aren't corresponding IDE and SCSI drives mechanically identical, with different electronic interfaces (which could account for the cost difference)?
Both true.
SCSI drives cost more. A lot more. Part of that cost pays for the longer warranty.
Manufacturers know that SCSI drive users are more demanding, and probably more professional. Thus, they are more likely to run their drives in an appropriate environment and follow care and handling guidelines (temperature, no shock, etc).
Many (most?) SCSI drives (and all 80-pin hot swap drives) are sold by box manufacturers specfically for their boxen. Thus, they know that airflow/cooling, vibration, and mount orientation will be per spec.
Where do you draw the line with your "fair use" statement. The kid "messing around" with Photoshop is OK. Fine. How about someone cleaning up their digital photographs for their personal website every now and then? Also, fine? Maybe. How about someone fixing up those same pics, but for their Ebay ad? How about for their personal business web site? How about for the corporation's web site? How about to design the corporation's product's packaging?
The reality is that there is a continium of use, from the casual, non-profit user up to the directly-drives-profits user. It's not black and white. There is free software out there for just about everything you'd ever buy software for. If you're willing to steal the non-free software, you must find it more useful than the free software. That use has some value-- value that the authors created for you. And they have the right to charge you for that value. Don't think it's worth the price? Don't use it-- use the free version that you find less convenient! But don't hide behind the "I only buy software that I find useful" argument. If you used it, you must have found it useful. Period. (And if you didn't, shame on you for buying it without doing enough research.) If there isn't a free version, then you owe the authors even more because they enabled you to do something that you couldn't have done before (or would have been prohibitively time consuming to do).
Why not develop a speedy drive that can slow itself down if it starts to generate too much heat or if it's not being used
This is a very good idea. But not the way you mean it. There have been a few replys to this post discussing why the spindle motor speed cannot be reduced (all correct, from what I have seen). But, for the most part, the actual cause of high drive temp is the servo motor. One of the drive manufacturers (Seagate?) had a feature on their SCSI drives called Adaptive Seek, which adjusted the seek time (and hence the energy expended and heat generated) based on how long it would take the appropriate sector to rotate underneath the head-- no reason to get there early and then wait for the disk to rotate around. I think this was primarily done for noise reasons, but why not for power/heat too? Slow down the seeks if the IOPS (I/Os per second) are low or if the read/write queue is short (assuming this is handled by the drive and not the card/OS-- I know almost nothing about IDE).
Microsoft is using the classic two-part tariff pricing method, but the strategy as they use it is flawed, IMHO. Just look at Iopener as a fairly recent example.
The concept behind two-part tariffs is actually pretty complex. Think of it like a state fair. You pay an admissions fee to get in (entry fee) and you must use tickets (which you have bought) each time you take one of the rides (use fee). The fair sets both the admissions price and the ticket price with the goal of seperating as much money as they can from you. So, how's the best way to set these two prices to make the most money? In Microsoft's case, the hardware is the entry fee and the license portion of the cost of the game is the use fee.
I'll let you explore the concept of two-part tariffs on your own (as an exercise to the reader), but here's a good graph of what the profit (pi) implications are.
Microsoft has set their entry fee to be negative, expecting to make more profit in the end through a compensatingly higher volume of use fees. Although possible, in theory, it also assumes that they have perfect control over the use fees. If I buy an XBox and run only Linux on it (no game purchases), Microsoft has net lost money because they subsudized my console purchase. If I jump over the fence at the fair, but don't ride any rides, the fair has only lost the opportunity to make money from my entry fee. This issue is a little clouded by differences in exclusivity (only one person can own the XBox, but most likely the fair space is not space constrained). The most basic strategy for setting these prices is to have the entry fee equal your fixed costs and the use fee equal your variable costs + profit. Deviating fom these increases risk (which can make you more profit if you do it correctly).
The pioneers of the at-a-loss entry fee were razor manufacturers. They lose money on the handle and make it up on the blade cartridges. Of course, what am I going to do with a razor blade handle without the blades? A lot less that I can do with an XBox (or Dreamcast or Iopener) without the games. Simply, I don't have any motivation to "hack" the razor handle.
This whole issue is similar to the trap that satellite companies fell into. They are walking a fine line by destroying the ROMs of people pirating their signal. Technically, they are destroying that person's property. Most cable companies, on the other hand, retain ownership of the cable box. Then, if you modify it to pirate the signal, you have destroyed their property. Either way, you're still stealing, but the cable companiers have a more-easily defendable position.
See that 800-number on the manual you can call if you need help assembling your [whatever]? 800 numbers cost money. The person at the other end costs money. The desk, the chair, the lights, the building, the electricity, the computer, the training, the benfits (maybe), and everything else required to put that person at the end of that phone cost money. If they can, overall, reduce their support costs by building automated, interactive intelligence into the product and reduce the number of support staff, then they should do it!
Whether you know it or not, you are already paying to support stupid people. If they can reduce their expense, they'll (probably) reduce their prices. You save money; end of story.
sheesh. From the article: "Matchbox also has a number of other fairly unique features. For example, doubling clicking window titlebars will make them collapse, freeing more screen space."
What about students (a major predicted market for the technology) needing biology, geography, history, physics, etc. texts? What about medical/pharmeceutical reference books? Even most newspapers now publish (at least a section or two) in color.
Sure, I may not need it when I'm reading the latest King novel, but I bet there are plenty of real books on your bookshelf in color-- for good reason.
If you're talking about operation problems, your LCD would crap out long before your coolant would freeze. Plus, your battery life would be terrible. If you're using a laptop in those kind of conditions, it would need to be designed specifically for the extremes it would encounter. Besides, if I'm in one of those places, I'm sure as hell going to find a nice warm building before I start browsing Slashdot via my Iridium network connection.
If you're talking about just storing it in your sealskin bag as you trudge through the snowdrifts, you've still got the LCD problem. And I'm pretty sure you've exceeded the cold non-op rating for a few other parts too.
Totally offtopic, but I left IBM to go back to school full-time for a master's degree. I didn't have any involvement with desktop-class hard drives anyway. I worked on server-class SCSI/FC-AL drives.
As far as drive defects showing up in the field, it is very hard to predict some defects. I'm not familiar with the 75GXP nor the problems discussed, but if it was a contamination problem, there are a million things that could cause a drive to pass pre-release quality inspections with flying colors and then start dying in the field: tolerance stackup changes from suppliers, assembly equipment cross-contamination, media process changes, head process changes. Any little change in the supplied parts or manufacturing process can introduce latent defects that show up in the field, sometimes with astonishingly high PPMs.
An incredible amount of effort is put into early discovery of defects and quick resolution, when possible. Management takes even low PPM defects very seriously. Now, things could be different on the desktop side, but I doubt it.
As hard drive technology has advanced, bit density of data has doubled yearly. This means that the number of bits per in^2 of platter area is double what it was last year. As each bit's real estate shrinks, the level of magnetic force it has, which must be read by the head, grows smaller. Particles collect on the surface of the heads and eventually prevent it from distinguishing between the data and the noise.
It's all a matter of probability. If you have particles in your case, they are not 100% sure to collect on the head to the point where you start getting misreads/miswrites. But, since the heads must be more sensitive now, that probability is greatly increased. If you're willing to risk your data-- go right ahead and do it.
I have tried taking a HDD apart. I was a former project manager at IBM for hard drive development (SCSI, 80-pin hot swap variety). You will significantly shorten the life of your drive by opening it.
Why do people pay thousands to the companies in the back of Computer Shopper? To get their data recovered, not their hard drive repaired. The data on a hard drive is worth a hundred or thousand (or more) times more than the value of the hard drive-- that's why companies pay so much to get high quality drives, backup, and RAID subsystems. If they do have a problem and don't have a RAID or backup, they have to resort to the data recovery companies.
As a former hard drive engineer for IBM, I can aboslutely tell you that if you do this mod your hard drive will not last long.
The case is nearly sealed-- the only opening is for pressure equalization and is protected by a pretty advanced catacomb filter. Drives are assembled in clean rooms to minimze the internal particle count after manufacture. Remember that the distance between the (moving) head and the (spinning) media is measured in nanometers!
Why does a hard drive stop working when it takes a shock, sometimes not when the shock happens but a few hours/days/weeks later? It's becuase the heads slapped into the media, chipping off some of the magnetic material. That doesn't immediately kill it-- the disk automatically notices that it can't write those bits anymore, and reassigns them to one of the spare areas. It's the little bits of magnetic material floating around the drive that kill it. Eventually, they find their way to one of the heads and block it from reading/writing. Or, more spectacularly (and more rare) if the debris is big enough, it will wedge in between the head and the media and score the substrate (aluminum or glass), which sounds a little bit like a turbine exploding.
Hard drives are incredibly complex and sensitive devices. Unless you also think it would be cool to crack open your processor case and put a little window on it-- don't do your hard drive. Now, if you have a hard drive you don't need, you can add the window to make it look cool, but don't expect it to work. Also, it's unlikely the arms will move much, so just expect to see the platters spinning.
Slashdot Mirror
Are you actually trying to compare accident statistics between commercial fixed-wing aircraft and military helecopters? Don't you think that the operating parameters are a little different? The very nature of the operations military helecopters undertake makes them more risky-- not necessarily the fact that they are helecopters. I won't argue that helecopters aren't more dangerous, but I'd say the bigger danger is that they're flying in close formation at low altitudes.
BTW, unmanned aircraft are not permitted to fly over populated areas.
No wonder the US is always going after a war. I really have a problem when anything related to war is turned into a game (see Sony trademarking "Shock and Awe"). What's next: toy civilians that bleed just like real ones?
.jp and Engrish, is a Japanese company.
Insightful? Um, how about reading the article (or even the Slashdot post) instead of just bashing America? These toys are made by Konami, which, as you might imagine from the
Now, will some moderators give this troll what he deserves?
The kind of service I would like, and which I would happily pay $10/month or so for goes one step furthur. I would like direct access to their catalogue, so I could stream or download any tracks I wanted when I wanted them.
How about listen.com? 20k albums and 300k+ tracks on demand and 50 radio "stations" (commercial free) for $9.95/month. Burn tracks for $0.99 each.
(not affiliated, yadda yadda)
another thinly veiled attempt to make money by limiting other people's freedom and trying to create an artificial scarcity in one of the very few areas of our lives where we live in a world of plenty
Artificial scarcity? How does that describe using DRM to enforce copyright? Artificial scarcity describes things like limited edition prints-- physical products that could be manufactured in greater quantities but are not in order to cause a shortage which drives up prices (or creates prestige). I'm pretty certain that a music publisher will be willing to sell the right for personal use to anyone.
Like it or not, I'm allowed to charge whatever I want for my creation-- and you're allowed to not buy it if you don't find enough value for the money. Your "freedom" is not infriged when I prevent you from violating my copyright. DRM is walking a fine line right now between enforcing valid copyrights and violating fair use. As long as they stay on the (copy) right side of that line, it's goodness. Collaborative (and open) development of DRM can help ensure that we stay on the right side of that line.
- a regular cartridge with no lockout chip ($129/$99/$35)
- a "use and return" cartridge with lockout chip ($99/$75/na).
I feel pretty certain that Dell wants to keep you as a cartridge customer, but they aren't locking you in. Oh, and only one of the four printers is an inkjet. The others are lasers. Even better, the inkjet does not include this technology. Bottom line: Dell is getting into the laser printer cartridge refilling business. No wonder the OP is complaining.Three more words: 7200 RPM IDE
Just because it's FibreChannel doesn't mean it's server-class. I'm sure it does OK, but the FC-AL to IDE bridge is just bizarre. Sure, they save in media cost by using IDE instead of native FC-AL drives, but it's more than just the interface. Spindle speed and track seek times, on-board caching, and reliability improvements are all put on FC-AL/SCSI drives well before IDE (if ever). Even the waranties are longer.
Using IDE is sacrificing features for cost. If you're willing to do this, sure-- get this XServe RAID. But this is not a datacenter-quality storage solution.
In an abstract algebra class I got a D- on an exam. It was the third-highest grade in the class. That's exactly three of us who didn't flunk. If Berkeley didn't get so pissed when profs flunk then entire class, I know a few who would be happy to.
That is a sign of either (1) a bad teacher that cannot teach properly or expects too much from the class or (2) bad counselors or course guide description putting people into classes in which they do not belong.
I'm tempted to believe the former. Clearly, students should be held to a high standard. But if only a small subset are able to pass the class, something is wrong with the class, not the students. I wouldn't be surprised to see that this professor was arrogant and condecending to his students. How dare they not absorb the material as rapidly as he did (or imagine he did)? I had some professors like this in my time-- thank god for drop/add.
And when the power goes off do you want it to fail open or fail closed?
First, I would hope that Bluetooth's low-power usage would allow the lock to continue functioning for several days on battery backup. After the battery is dead, I would expect a backup physical key system to be enabled. This key system would be disabled if the Bluetooth receiver was functioning properly, but engaged (solenoid) if backup-power is exhausted. This delay will allow me enough time to make arrangements to carry physical keys with me in the event of an extended power outage.
If it's the end, it wasn't a law to start with, then, was it?
You assume that the "Law" in Moore's Law is meant to imply that it is a scientific law instead of a strong directive: "Get it done. I don't care how-- just make it happen." The "law" of the boss.
She continued to pay her bill. They screwed up. Jesus, jsut read that article.
Good lord. Maybe you should read the article. The woman did not pay her ISP bill for fourteen months. The error that the ISP made was in not billing her.
I'm not exactly sure where I stand on this case, but it looks like both parties were a little shady. It appears that (a) the woman knowingly used her ISP account for more than a year without paying and (b) the ISP looked at her email (maybe only the headers) and used the info as blackmail to get her to pay up.
Oh, and by the way, it's not like the woman missed an email offering her the job. She missed an email "encouraging" her to apply for it.
No matter how many articles I've read, it always amazes me how few Slashdotters read the article before they feel compelled to post their (usually misguided) opinion. I'm sure plenty do, but there sure are a lot who don't.
IBM is working on the commercialization of Distributed Computing (henceforth, DC). This effort has been around for a while (in a related area, called Grid Computing, which some people use interchangably with DC) in the form of the Globus project, amongst others.
The concept behind DC is essentially a next-gen timeshare-- a distributed timeshare with an abstration layer, if you will. Unlike traditional timeshare, you don't specify where your processing will occur. Unlike existing projects (like folding@home, dsitributed.net), DC doesn't require that you have a parallel, segmentable computing problem.
Let's say (in your best Police Squad voice) I'm a mechanical engineer who's designing a car engine with a few thousand parts. I want to run some simulations on my model to inspect heat flows, vibration, whatever. Car companies (or the little guy with a copy of Catilla and a great idea) don't necessarily have dedicated computing resources to run my simulation. So, until now, I had to band together with a bunch of other mechanical engineers with jobs similar to mine and try to justify a giant simulation node. Or, I might convince management to outsource the computation, requiring a bunch of red tape, NDAs, contracts, negotiation, etc.
Now consider IBM, one of the largest commercial web hosts. IBM maintains giant server farms to support these services. Consider the amount of excess processing capacity sitting in these server farms because (a) a lot of servers are spitting out static pages and (b) extra capacity necessary to cover peak loading for special events.
Expand this idea to include thousands of people who need computation power for discrete, isolated projects and thousands of companies with excess computational capacity. The consumers don't care precisely where or when their computations get completed, they only care that they get done in a "reasonable" amount of time. An intermediary, which it looks like IBM wants to be, can accept jobs from them, break them into as many pieces as they can, farm them out to whichever of their suppliers has excess capacity at any particular moment, combine the results, and return them to the customer.
Even more, IBM can charge more if you want a high priority on your computation or if your job is not symmetric and must be run on fewer nodes.
Actually, if you think about it, IBM is hurting their server sales by advancing this project. Right now, they sell a lot of excess capacity to companies to cover their peak loading. If companies can dynamically purchase exactly the amount of processing they need, that's money IBM's leaving on the table. Now, companies with high-availabity requirements will still purchase their own systems with enough extra capacity to cover their own needs. But, when they're not using that capacity, they'll sell it.
I think IBM saw that the train was leaving the station. They know this technology is coming. And they see that the chance to be the intermediary in this market is worth more than the money they'll lose in hardware sales. And, they know if they don't, someone else will.
How about their biggest competitor? pdf
Both true.
Where do you draw the line with your "fair use" statement. The kid "messing around" with Photoshop is OK. Fine. How about someone cleaning up their digital photographs for their personal website every now and then? Also, fine? Maybe. How about someone fixing up those same pics, but for their Ebay ad? How about for their personal business web site? How about for the corporation's web site? How about to design the corporation's product's packaging?
The reality is that there is a continium of use, from the casual, non-profit user up to the directly-drives-profits user. It's not black and white. There is free software out there for just about everything you'd ever buy software for. If you're willing to steal the non-free software, you must find it more useful than the free software. That use has some value-- value that the authors created for you. And they have the right to charge you for that value. Don't think it's worth the price? Don't use it-- use the free version that you find less convenient! But don't hide behind the "I only buy software that I find useful" argument. If you used it, you must have found it useful. Period. (And if you didn't, shame on you for buying it without doing enough research.) If there isn't a free version, then you owe the authors even more because they enabled you to do something that you couldn't have done before (or would have been prohibitively time consuming to do).
Why not develop a speedy drive that can slow itself down if it starts to generate too much heat or if it's not being used
This is a very good idea. But not the way you mean it. There have been a few replys to this post discussing why the spindle motor speed cannot be reduced (all correct, from what I have seen). But, for the most part, the actual cause of high drive temp is the servo motor. One of the drive manufacturers (Seagate?) had a feature on their SCSI drives called Adaptive Seek, which adjusted the seek time (and hence the energy expended and heat generated) based on how long it would take the appropriate sector to rotate underneath the head-- no reason to get there early and then wait for the disk to rotate around. I think this was primarily done for noise reasons, but why not for power/heat too? Slow down the seeks if the IOPS (I/Os per second) are low or if the read/write queue is short (assuming this is handled by the drive and not the card/OS-- I know almost nothing about IDE).
Microsoft is using the classic two-part tariff pricing method, but the strategy as they use it is flawed, IMHO. Just look at Iopener as a fairly recent example.
The concept behind two-part tariffs is actually pretty complex. Think of it like a state fair. You pay an admissions fee to get in (entry fee) and you must use tickets (which you have bought) each time you take one of the rides (use fee). The fair sets both the admissions price and the ticket price with the goal of seperating as much money as they can from you. So, how's the best way to set these two prices to make the most money? In Microsoft's case, the hardware is the entry fee and the license portion of the cost of the game is the use fee.
I'll let you explore the concept of two-part tariffs on your own (as an exercise to the reader), but here's a good graph of what the profit (pi) implications are.
Microsoft has set their entry fee to be negative, expecting to make more profit in the end through a compensatingly higher volume of use fees. Although possible, in theory, it also assumes that they have perfect control over the use fees. If I buy an XBox and run only Linux on it (no game purchases), Microsoft has net lost money because they subsudized my console purchase. If I jump over the fence at the fair, but don't ride any rides, the fair has only lost the opportunity to make money from my entry fee. This issue is a little clouded by differences in exclusivity (only one person can own the XBox, but most likely the fair space is not space constrained). The most basic strategy for setting these prices is to have the entry fee equal your fixed costs and the use fee equal your variable costs + profit. Deviating fom these increases risk (which can make you more profit if you do it correctly).
The pioneers of the at-a-loss entry fee were razor manufacturers. They lose money on the handle and make it up on the blade cartridges. Of course, what am I going to do with a razor blade handle without the blades? A lot less that I can do with an XBox (or Dreamcast or Iopener) without the games. Simply, I don't have any motivation to "hack" the razor handle.
This whole issue is similar to the trap that satellite companies fell into. They are walking a fine line by destroying the ROMs of people pirating their signal. Technically, they are destroying that person's property. Most cable companies, on the other hand, retain ownership of the cable box. Then, if you modify it to pirate the signal, you have destroyed their property. Either way, you're still stealing, but the cable companiers have a more-easily defendable position.
How many of you even learned (much less recall ) that ok is not a word, the correct spelling is okay?
Actually, both are slang.
See that 800-number on the manual you can call if you need help assembling your [whatever]? 800 numbers cost money. The person at the other end costs money. The desk, the chair, the lights, the building, the electricity, the computer, the training, the benfits (maybe), and everything else required to put that person at the end of that phone cost money. If they can, overall, reduce their support costs by building automated, interactive intelligence into the product and reduce the number of support staff, then they should do it!
Whether you know it or not, you are already paying to support stupid people. If they can reduce their expense, they'll (probably) reduce their prices. You save money; end of story.
sheesh. From the article: "Matchbox also has a number of other fairly unique features. For example, doubling clicking window titlebars will make them collapse, freeing more screen space."
That's how it's always shown on the maps in TV and movies, anyway.
What about students (a major predicted market for the technology) needing biology, geography, history, physics, etc. texts? What about medical/pharmeceutical reference books? Even most newspapers now publish (at least a section or two) in color.
Sure, I may not need it when I'm reading the latest King novel, but I bet there are plenty of real books on your bookshelf in color-- for good reason.
If you're talking about operation problems, your LCD would crap out long before your coolant would freeze. Plus, your battery life would be terrible. If you're using a laptop in those kind of conditions, it would need to be designed specifically for the extremes it would encounter. Besides, if I'm in one of those places, I'm sure as hell going to find a nice warm building before I start browsing Slashdot via my Iridium network connection.
If you're talking about just storing it in your sealskin bag as you trudge through the snowdrifts, you've still got the LCD problem. And I'm pretty sure you've exceeded the cold non-op rating for a few other parts too.
Totally offtopic, but I left IBM to go back to school full-time for a master's degree. I didn't have any involvement with desktop-class hard drives anyway. I worked on server-class SCSI/FC-AL drives.
As far as drive defects showing up in the field, it is very hard to predict some defects. I'm not familiar with the 75GXP nor the problems discussed, but if it was a contamination problem, there are a million things that could cause a drive to pass pre-release quality inspections with flying colors and then start dying in the field: tolerance stackup changes from suppliers, assembly equipment cross-contamination, media process changes, head process changes. Any little change in the supplied parts or manufacturing process can introduce latent defects that show up in the field, sometimes with astonishingly high PPMs.
An incredible amount of effort is put into early discovery of defects and quick resolution, when possible. Management takes even low PPM defects very seriously. Now, things could be different on the desktop side, but I doubt it.
As hard drive technology has advanced, bit density of data has doubled yearly. This means that the number of bits per in^2 of platter area is double what it was last year. As each bit's real estate shrinks, the level of magnetic force it has, which must be read by the head, grows smaller. Particles collect on the surface of the heads and eventually prevent it from distinguishing between the data and the noise.
It's all a matter of probability. If you have particles in your case, they are not 100% sure to collect on the head to the point where you start getting misreads/miswrites. But, since the heads must be more sensitive now, that probability is greatly increased. If you're willing to risk your data-- go right ahead and do it.
I have tried taking a HDD apart. I was a former project manager at IBM for hard drive development (SCSI, 80-pin hot swap variety). You will significantly shorten the life of your drive by opening it.
Why do people pay thousands to the companies in the back of Computer Shopper? To get their data recovered, not their hard drive repaired. The data on a hard drive is worth a hundred or thousand (or more) times more than the value of the hard drive-- that's why companies pay so much to get high quality drives, backup, and RAID subsystems. If they do have a problem and don't have a RAID or backup, they have to resort to the data recovery companies.
As a former hard drive engineer for IBM, I can aboslutely tell you that if you do this mod your hard drive will not last long.
The case is nearly sealed-- the only opening is for pressure equalization and is protected by a pretty advanced catacomb filter. Drives are assembled in clean rooms to minimze the internal particle count after manufacture. Remember that the distance between the (moving) head and the (spinning) media is measured in nanometers!
Why does a hard drive stop working when it takes a shock, sometimes not when the shock happens but a few hours/days/weeks later? It's becuase the heads slapped into the media, chipping off some of the magnetic material. That doesn't immediately kill it-- the disk automatically notices that it can't write those bits anymore, and reassigns them to one of the spare areas. It's the little bits of magnetic material floating around the drive that kill it. Eventually, they find their way to one of the heads and block it from reading/writing. Or, more spectacularly (and more rare) if the debris is big enough, it will wedge in between the head and the media and score the substrate (aluminum or glass), which sounds a little bit like a turbine exploding.
Hard drives are incredibly complex and sensitive devices. Unless you also think it would be cool to crack open your processor case and put a little window on it-- don't do your hard drive. Now, if you have a hard drive you don't need, you can add the window to make it look cool, but don't expect it to work. Also, it's unlikely the arms will move much, so just expect to see the platters spinning.