Either you've lived in the same area for some time and have a careless carrier, you play hackie sack with your disks before installing them, or you're misdiagnosing common drive thermal adjustments for failure (incorrectly).
A disk isn't "defective" unless it starts having errors. Are you familiar with SMART? It's not fool-proof but it's certainly useful: if SMART starts to bitch, you've typically then got a problem, but short of a "drive doesn't exist" issue, there's rarely a scenario where a disk doesn't show some sign of digital failure in the event of problems (This has been the case for some time.)
As for the longevity of disks... I've got a stack of 5 20G Seagate drives (same model/capacity) next to me right now. They all work still, and were simply the most common capacity (so that I could mess with zfs on them w/o complaints). I'm still using 100Gb and 120GB disks which are over 5 years old (one is powered on and spun down in my 'always on' system and has a SMART on-time life of over 5 years). I've got servers at work which have disks in that ballpark as well.
Either you've got some serious personal issues relating to disks dying, or you need to go out and read a study or two (Google's should do) on disk longevity. Your personal experience is way out of everyone else's experience.
It's not the SSD price drops so much as it is the spinning media - includingDVD, tape, and hard drives - themselves which are pushing people to SSDs.
Why? The older technologies are a pain in the ass: 1) They don't degrade consistently. 2) They offer poor performance. 3) They aren't getting any faster (a marginal concern in most scenarios due to insanely low RAM prices). 4) Most significantly, their reliability has been horrible for the past year+: everyone's seeing massive failure rates for every vendor in the larger capacity disks, with anywhere from 2% to 50% failure rates (per batch) in early-life.
The only thing the older magnetic/optical storage has to offer is capacity, and as that benefit disappears - due to increasingly large SSDs, lower prices, and unreliable large-capacity hard drives - people will stop buying them.
Of course, manufacturers are trying to push people towards SSDs, too: they're much higher profit margin. Though, just like with the CRT/LCD transition, both the new and old transitional technologies suffer in quality until the transition is complete.
Ok, so what matter of convenience would an iPad provide?
I can see only a handful of things you would want to reasonably perform on a tablet: - watch movies by yourself and/or while traveling/camping - play cards - watch porn in the bathroom - read books (for which there are cheaper, better/more appropriate devices) - use as a kitchen kiosk for (say) looking up recipes
For all other things, existing technology - specifically, laptops or desktops - fill that role. Nobody is going to have an iPad w/o a laptop or desktop, and the price of the iPad is likely to make it not much more than a novelty (due to its cost). The iPad isn't even going to be good for common web surfing.
Of course, that all changes if APple gets a contract or four with major schools and/or book publishers to provide books digitally via the iPad. I wouldn't hold my breath, though; as has been said recently (I think on/.), colleges/universities/schools have somewhat soured on the whole idea of a 'digitally connected classroom'. There are enough distractions for students as it is. The only substantial market this thing will have will be within schools which have already largely gone 'digital' and provide laptops for all their students currently.
He could certainly use the serial port, but there are also "cheap" ways of doing it:
Granted, you'll have to find an old system with an ISA port to use the card, but it's quite doable. I did the same for a 10MB (IBM brand? I don't remember) 8" MFM years ago. In my case, it was actual data recovery: I had to locate the lost (previously deleted) files. That took some time; I wish there had been something like photorec back then.
Actually, due to an echo chamber effect, it probably would work better.
However, the application which immediately sprung to mind for me was: use it with waterfalls. Not only would it be continual and mostly consistent power generation (with a replenished water source), but it could be used to supplement existing hydroelectric power plants (dams).
(I didn't read the article, but does this device require non-pure water - ie one with an electrolyte - to assist in the splitting? If it did not, it would be significant. I'd imagine it does not, which would be the reasonable conclusion.)
Medicare, Medicaid - soon to be bankrupt with horrible overhead. Ponzi scheme.
Social Security - costly & ineffectual, a Ponzi scheme.
Postal Service - bankrupt. Rates keep going up despite decreased service and increased funding.
FCC - a special interest group in disguise (catering to media conglomerates); they're stuck in 1950.
FDA - another agency which caters to special interests groups and large business, pushing market competition out and encouraging big business food production over localized, sustainable production.
EPA - mandating ineffectual, costly changes for everyone who deals with oils, whether a single 55 gallon waste veggie oil drum in the barn or large suppliers.
ATF - a remnant of the Prohibition which seems to do more to affront liberty directly than any other agency.
FBI - they're law enforcement, so it's a bit harder to tack on ineptitude due to the nature of their work. But consider how much overreach of responsibility they've had, and how increasingly militarized such agencies have become (in no small part due to the Patriot Act and similar legislation).
IRS - utilizing the ATF's draconian behavior to enforce a tax requirement which is legally questionable.
Census - continually overspending their budget and increasing in size exponentially since 2000; polling data they've got no right to.
Border Patrol - unquestionably ineffectual to the point of being useless.
US Military - how much do we spend on the military's budget, and how awesome are our weapons, yet we're still unable to beat a couple backwater Muslim redneck tyrants? Sounds like a management issue.
I'm sure there are a lot, lot more, but yeah, here's a good sampling.
Re:A false choice, of course...
on
Health Care Reform
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
It's not even health insurance reform: it's single-payer health insurance (which died on the table months ago quite quickly) but with a different name.
Furthermore, they're shuffling their deck of money pretty thoroughly on this one, pulling from this and that fund (many of which are close to bankruptcy as it is - like Medicare) to fund this thing and calling it a "savings". Sorry, that doesn't fix anything: you're spreading (supposedly) short funds even shorter. Sure, health care would be 'free' but it'll make any existing services/care even worse.
The fact that it's not supposed to actually take effect until the next sitting President's term starts (at least in one of its permutations) should be a pretty good indication of what those voting on it think about it. That's a classic "we're pushing this for its power/political benefits, the populace be damned" move. Seems every President has to have one of these doozies. Unfortunately, this doozie is particularly heinous in an already-difficult economic time.
I feel sorry for the people who expect to get immediate financial/healthcare relief as soon as this bill is passed. They're up for some major disappointment.
Since '96, so yes, I've been online for some time (look at my/. #, ffs).
Bandwidth costs have dropped, yes; but they've been pretty static for the past several years. If anything (for home use) the actual bandwidth you get for the same price is less than it was 5 years ago. The first cable internet account I had (in 1999) was undeniably better than what I've got now, at a similar price: 8Mbit up and down for $45/month. Now I've got 5Mbit/2Mbit for $30/month in the same service area/provider, and I've got QoS and port blocking 'services' tacked on for free.
We've had providers chasing profits - to boost stock, not necessarily to make money - for some time now. They find a way to provide more for less, they provide the same amount and filter the savings to their stock prices.
So does this mean that we'll be able to have less expensive bandwidth and/or pipe costs in the near future? No? I didn't think so.
I find it highly unlikely this will do much more than shave the costs of operation a bit for larger organizations which might actually need something like this: hosting providers, pipe providers, colo providers, and the like. I'd say the chances are slim that the common man would gain much benefit from this change.
Congratulations on your son's success. I'm sure you're quite proud.
As everyone is saying, it pretty much depends on which games are being played. There are mindless games, and there are ones which impart life skills.
For instance, my son got better at chess (he's 6) after spending copious amounts of time playing Red Alert 3 (and finally figuring out how to use individual units). Sure, he doesn't like playing chess as much as he used to (he's on a huge RA3 kick now, of course) but he's better at it due to mental stimulation in the strategic/look-at-everything parts of the brain.
I think you're pointing at the wrong thing being a problem.
It's not the religions that are a problem. It's societal law that says "you're only allowed to have self-determinant free will if you're of a religious bent, everyone else get stuffed".
Racist? Sexist? Global warmer? So what? Let people have their stupid opinions; it'll impact their lives socially. THe reality is that if you were black/gay/purple/whatever, you wouldn't want to work somewhere where a person who interviewing you is anti-black/white/gay/purple.
No, they can't use illegally obtained information in court. But removing the illegality of obtaining said information - where it'd have been illegal previously - removes such limitations.
Not only that, but like you suggested: it's a step closer to a total control society. It's one fewer barriers they've got to go through to get the information, and as a result, they're able to do it more often and more wantonly. This frees up their resources (which we paid for, urg) to try to tear down other barriers. Before long, they'll be "knocking on doors" looking for contraband.
It's perfectly clear what's intended, it's just the application of that intent isn't desirable by those in power. This is the same bullshit loophole that the government is currently violating by getting financial/personal data from "third party" institutions: "We can't monitor you directly, so we're asking someone else to do it for us."
In essence, it's a digital Gestapo. "If you suspect someone of doing something Against The State, turn them in and we'll make the determination on whether they're guilty of Anti-Government Activities!" Except, in this case, there's a blanket clause, and turning several million people in is as easy as turning on SQL replication.
What about all those things? Actual privacy on all those mediums has been dead for the better part of 10 years, if not longer.
The only thing left is the illusion of privacy. The privacy itself was long ago violated: the FBI has had illegal phone tap banks since at least the 1960s, and that was pre-digital. ECHELON was likely just the tip of the iceberg, and (constitutionally illegitimate) laws like the Patriot Act. If the government hasn't been polling and logging this data themselves, the benevolent phone, bank, etc. companies have been doing it for them as a "third party".
The only thing this does is give an air of legitimacy (and legality) to "subject" monitoring. "Well, we thought it was OK to $doSomething. It looks like it complies with this here law, doesn't it? I mean, it's a wide-sweeping law, pretty permissive. And if it doesn't apply, it should!"
Not that the Constitution or its amendments have really meant all that much for some time. The joke has been on "we the people" for some time - since the establishment of the Federal state. It's never been perfect, but that was the start of the great political decline. All social and economic decline we've seen in this country since has been (recursively) a result of continued Federal growth.
Gov't Tech Boss: Hey, Jim. It's kinda hard for me to figure out how to monitor the Interweb for email. Gov't Tech Lackey: But boss, that's illegal. GTB: Yeah, but we want to do it anyway. For security and all, you know? I've already filed the paperwork. GTL: Yeah, OK. Sounds like a difficult problem. Why don't we just read it on their mail servers like I, er, used to do? GTB: Good idea! I'll push the idea up to the tops and see what they have to say.
Part of it might be due Flash vs. HTML5 performance in Linux. HTML5 blows away Flash in every respect on Linux these days, regardless of which browser you're using. That might have something to do with the Geek's perspective.
Slashdot Mirror
At some point SSDs in the 120Gb range will be cheaper than spinning platters. It is probably close right now.
Where can you find a 120G SSD for under $50? You can get an iPod with a 120Gb drive for $20, but an 8Gb SSD is still $60.
Meh, 6 months?
Either you've lived in the same area for some time and have a careless carrier, you play hackie sack with your disks before installing them, or you're misdiagnosing common drive thermal adjustments for failure (incorrectly).
A disk isn't "defective" unless it starts having errors. Are you familiar with SMART? It's not fool-proof but it's certainly useful: if SMART starts to bitch, you've typically then got a problem, but short of a "drive doesn't exist" issue, there's rarely a scenario where a disk doesn't show some sign of digital failure in the event of problems (This has been the case for some time.)
As for the longevity of disks... I've got a stack of 5 20G Seagate drives (same model/capacity) next to me right now. They all work still, and were simply the most common capacity (so that I could mess with zfs on them w/o complaints). I'm still using 100Gb and 120GB disks which are over 5 years old (one is powered on and spun down in my 'always on' system and has a SMART on-time life of over 5 years). I've got servers at work which have disks in that ballpark as well.
Either you've got some serious personal issues relating to disks dying, or you need to go out and read a study or two (Google's should do) on disk longevity. Your personal experience is way out of everyone else's experience.
And certainly cleaner than burning hippies and baby seals!
It's not the SSD price drops so much as it is the spinning media - includingDVD, tape, and hard drives - themselves which are pushing people to SSDs.
Why? The older technologies are a pain in the ass:
1) They don't degrade consistently.
2) They offer poor performance.
3) They aren't getting any faster (a marginal concern in most scenarios due to insanely low RAM prices).
4) Most significantly, their reliability has been horrible for the past year+: everyone's seeing massive failure rates for every vendor in the larger capacity disks, with anywhere from 2% to 50% failure rates (per batch) in early-life.
The only thing the older magnetic/optical storage has to offer is capacity, and as that benefit disappears - due to increasingly large SSDs, lower prices, and unreliable large-capacity hard drives - people will stop buying them.
Of course, manufacturers are trying to push people towards SSDs, too: they're much higher profit margin. Though, just like with the CRT/LCD transition, both the new and old transitional technologies suffer in quality until the transition is complete.
The "email" question, which they are likely goign to sell the results of.
Ok, so what matter of convenience would an iPad provide?
I can see only a handful of things you would want to reasonably perform on a tablet:
- watch movies by yourself and/or while traveling/camping
- play cards
- watch porn in the bathroom
- read books (for which there are cheaper, better/more appropriate devices)
- use as a kitchen kiosk for (say) looking up recipes
For all other things, existing technology - specifically, laptops or desktops - fill that role. Nobody is going to have an iPad w/o a laptop or desktop, and the price of the iPad is likely to make it not much more than a novelty (due to its cost). The iPad isn't even going to be good for common web surfing.
Of course, that all changes if APple gets a contract or four with major schools and/or book publishers to provide books digitally via the iPad. I wouldn't hold my breath, though; as has been said recently (I think on /.), colleges/universities/schools have somewhat soured on the whole idea of a 'digitally connected classroom'. There are enough distractions for students as it is. The only substantial market this thing will have will be within schools which have already largely gone 'digital' and provide laptops for all their students currently.
He could certainly use the serial port, but there are also "cheap" ways of doing it:
Granted, you'll have to find an old system with an ISA port to use the card, but it's quite doable. I did the same for a 10MB (IBM brand? I don't remember) 8" MFM years ago. In my case, it was actual data recovery: I had to locate the lost (previously deleted) files. That took some time; I wish there had been something like photorec back then.
No, but a lot of them have boyfriends. Maybe they both like being on bottom?
That's a great idea! Let's put them along all the California highways!
Actually, due to an echo chamber effect, it probably would work better.
However, the application which immediately sprung to mind for me was: use it with waterfalls. Not only would it be continual and mostly consistent power generation (with a replenished water source), but it could be used to supplement existing hydroelectric power plants (dams).
(I didn't read the article, but does this device require non-pure water - ie one with an electrolyte - to assist in the splitting? If it did not, it would be significant. I'd imagine it does not, which would be the reasonable conclusion.)
That's why it goes to 11.
Medicare, Medicaid - soon to be bankrupt with horrible overhead. Ponzi scheme.
Social Security - costly & ineffectual, a Ponzi scheme.
Postal Service - bankrupt. Rates keep going up despite decreased service and increased funding.
FCC - a special interest group in disguise (catering to media conglomerates); they're stuck in 1950.
FDA - another agency which caters to special interests groups and large business, pushing market competition out and encouraging big business food production over localized, sustainable production.
EPA - mandating ineffectual, costly changes for everyone who deals with oils, whether a single 55 gallon waste veggie oil drum in the barn or large suppliers.
ATF - a remnant of the Prohibition which seems to do more to affront liberty directly than any other agency.
FBI - they're law enforcement, so it's a bit harder to tack on ineptitude due to the nature of their work. But consider how much overreach of responsibility they've had, and how increasingly militarized such agencies have become (in no small part due to the Patriot Act and similar legislation).
IRS - utilizing the ATF's draconian behavior to enforce a tax requirement which is legally questionable.
Census - continually overspending their budget and increasing in size exponentially since 2000; polling data they've got no right to.
Border Patrol - unquestionably ineffectual to the point of being useless.
US Military - how much do we spend on the military's budget, and how awesome are our weapons, yet we're still unable to beat a couple backwater Muslim redneck tyrants? Sounds like a management issue.
I'm sure there are a lot, lot more, but yeah, here's a good sampling.
It's not even health insurance reform: it's single-payer health insurance (which died on the table months ago quite quickly) but with a different name.
Furthermore, they're shuffling their deck of money pretty thoroughly on this one, pulling from this and that fund (many of which are close to bankruptcy as it is - like Medicare) to fund this thing and calling it a "savings". Sorry, that doesn't fix anything: you're spreading (supposedly) short funds even shorter. Sure, health care would be 'free' but it'll make any existing services/care even worse.
The fact that it's not supposed to actually take effect until the next sitting President's term starts (at least in one of its permutations) should be a pretty good indication of what those voting on it think about it. That's a classic "we're pushing this for its power/political benefits, the populace be damned" move. Seems every President has to have one of these doozies. Unfortunately, this doozie is particularly heinous in an already-difficult economic time.
I feel sorry for the people who expect to get immediate financial/healthcare relief as soon as this bill is passed. They're up for some major disappointment.
Since '96, so yes, I've been online for some time (look at my /. #, ffs).
Bandwidth costs have dropped, yes; but they've been pretty static for the past several years. If anything (for home use) the actual bandwidth you get for the same price is less than it was 5 years ago. The first cable internet account I had (in 1999) was undeniably better than what I've got now, at a similar price: 8Mbit up and down for $45/month. Now I've got 5Mbit/2Mbit for $30/month in the same service area/provider, and I've got QoS and port blocking 'services' tacked on for free.
We've had providers chasing profits - to boost stock, not necessarily to make money - for some time now. They find a way to provide more for less, they provide the same amount and filter the savings to their stock prices.
So does this mean that we'll be able to have less expensive bandwidth and/or pipe costs in the near future? No? I didn't think so.
I find it highly unlikely this will do much more than shave the costs of operation a bit for larger organizations which might actually need something like this: hosting providers, pipe providers, colo providers, and the like. I'd say the chances are slim that the common man would gain much benefit from this change.
Congratulations on your son's success. I'm sure you're quite proud.
As everyone is saying, it pretty much depends on which games are being played. There are mindless games, and there are ones which impart life skills.
For instance, my son got better at chess (he's 6) after spending copious amounts of time playing Red Alert 3 (and finally figuring out how to use individual units). Sure, he doesn't like playing chess as much as he used to (he's on a huge RA3 kick now, of course) but he's better at it due to mental stimulation in the strategic/look-at-everything parts of the brain.
My family is a non-profit organization, but I'm told I still have to pay tax. I make a living - a wage - not income or a profit.
If I were to incorporate myself, it might be another story. But I haven't, so it isn't.
I think you're pointing at the wrong thing being a problem.
It's not the religions that are a problem. It's societal law that says "you're only allowed to have self-determinant free will if you're of a religious bent, everyone else get stuffed".
Racist? Sexist? Global warmer? So what? Let people have their stupid opinions; it'll impact their lives socially. THe reality is that if you were black/gay/purple/whatever, you wouldn't want to work somewhere where a person who interviewing you is anti-black/white/gay/purple.
I believe you're missing the point.
No, they can't use illegally obtained information in court. But removing the illegality of obtaining said information - where it'd have been illegal previously - removes such limitations.
Not only that, but like you suggested: it's a step closer to a total control society. It's one fewer barriers they've got to go through to get the information, and as a result, they're able to do it more often and more wantonly. This frees up their resources (which we paid for, urg) to try to tear down other barriers. Before long, they'll be "knocking on doors" looking for contraband.
Basically, the distinction is that they're going to ISPs, which are not the recipient - they're a transit.
If they were to go to one of the sending computers, that'd be one thing. But they don't: they go to the Post Office and read it there, in essence.
It's perfectly clear what's intended, it's just the application of that intent isn't desirable by those in power. This is the same bullshit loophole that the government is currently violating by getting financial/personal data from "third party" institutions: "We can't monitor you directly, so we're asking someone else to do it for us."
In essence, it's a digital Gestapo. "If you suspect someone of doing something Against The State, turn them in and we'll make the determination on whether they're guilty of Anti-Government Activities!" Except, in this case, there's a blanket clause, and turning several million people in is as easy as turning on SQL replication.
What about all those things? Actual privacy on all those mediums has been dead for the better part of 10 years, if not longer.
The only thing left is the illusion of privacy. The privacy itself was long ago violated: the FBI has had illegal phone tap banks since at least the 1960s, and that was pre-digital. ECHELON was likely just the tip of the iceberg, and (constitutionally illegitimate) laws like the Patriot Act. If the government hasn't been polling and logging this data themselves, the benevolent phone, bank, etc. companies have been doing it for them as a "third party".
The only thing this does is give an air of legitimacy (and legality) to "subject" monitoring. "Well, we thought it was OK to $doSomething. It looks like it complies with this here law, doesn't it? I mean, it's a wide-sweeping law, pretty permissive. And if it doesn't apply, it should!"
Not that the Constitution or its amendments have really meant all that much for some time. The joke has been on "we the people" for some time - since the establishment of the Federal state. It's never been perfect, but that was the start of the great political decline. All social and economic decline we've seen in this country since has been (recursively) a result of continued Federal growth.
Probably started out something like this:
Gov't Tech Boss: Hey, Jim. It's kinda hard for me to figure out how to monitor the Interweb for email.
Gov't Tech Lackey: But boss, that's illegal.
GTB: Yeah, but we want to do it anyway. For security and all, you know? I've already filed the paperwork.
GTL: Yeah, OK. Sounds like a difficult problem. Why don't we just read it on their mail servers like I, er, used to do?
GTB: Good idea! I'll push the idea up to the tops and see what they have to say.
Are you saying FreeBSD should look like Windows?
Because for the most part, system management options and the GUI (as well as CLI) remain fairly static. Yes, they improve, but otherwise...
Windows, on the other hand, usually preferences said bling changes to actual useful system changes. See: Aero on Vista.
Part of it might be due Flash vs. HTML5 performance in Linux. HTML5 blows away Flash in every respect on Linux these days, regardless of which browser you're using. That might have something to do with the Geek's perspective.