"How do you know that those drives weren't tested like that, and somehow got excessive shock while in transit?"
I don't, but it doesn't seem likely. After all, when modern drives are powered down, the heads are parked automatically. Even 15 years ago, you could drop a hard drive from a desk and no harm would come of it (I know because a friend of mine did that to his brand new $500 80 meg WD drive, and I told him not to worry, it wasn't like those "old 5-1/4 20 meg" drives).
The heads can't "crash" during shipping, unless they wre involved in some sort of train wreck or airplane crash or other "violent disassembly".
> "Bill Hilf, has added a new duty -- general manager of Windows server marketing -- to his already established role of shepherding the company's efforts to have open source software peacefully coexist with Microsoft technologies"
So, let's analyse this. Hilf failed at getting open source software to "peacefully coexist" with Microsoft shite. His "reward" is to take on Windows server marketing - an area where open source beats Microsoft in terms of quality, TCO, initial price, and performance.
It would seem to me that it should be easy to build proper QA testing into every device. For example, the 4 brand new Seagate hard drives I've got sitting on my desk, all bad. There's no reason they couldn't have been automatically spun up for a minute before being shipped, and their smart status queried - they would have been found to be defective before being shipped, and they could have fixed the problem on the production floor, instead of continuing to produce junk that is going to end up costing money instead of generating profit.
Its not like you even need humans to do this - it can be automated fairly easily.
The cost savings would mean QA would be a profit center, not a money loser.
Newspapers USED to have a high rate of smeared ink, misprints, etc. Its a lot rarer nowadays, at least for big-city presses.
I haven't bought a book in years that has unslit pages (something that I used to see once in a while). Quality control has gone way up in most areas over the last decade.
Specifically, a 1 in 34 fail rate for consumer electronics, given the cost of handling returns, etc., IS a fiasco, unless its some cheapie $10 item that people are going to just throw away if it doesn't work.
That's just it. None of these drives ever worked properly. They all started accumulating errors right away, and making funny noises within 24 hours. They're close enough in serial number that they're probably all the same batch, even though I bought them from 2 different companies located in 2 different cities.
The first two, which I bought 2 weeks ago, never built a proper raid - one drive was always marked as bad-rebuilding, then once it was rebuilt, immediately marked as bad-rebuilding again. The second two, which I bought Saturday, actually succeeded in building a proper raid1 - but then drive 0 started making noises Sunday morning, just like the first batch, and that was it for that raid as well.
Its not like a software RAID1 is all that complicated. Stick the drives on 2 different controllers, mark them as raid, create a raid1 device from them, format, and you're done. Except that, in both these cases, its more a case of "stick a fork in it" type of "you're done."
All the drives report more than 100 million read errors - that's unacceptable for brand new drives. My bet is contaminated media.
"That was just a fluke, and truly falls into the standard ~1-3% acceptable failure rate for consumer electronics."
WFT - 1 in every 34 consumer electronics devices failing is acceptable???
Imagine if the whole world worked that way. 1 in every 34 elevators failing, 1 in every 34 food items sold at stores being rotten, 1 in every 34 newspapers or books you buy filled with blank pages instead of news, 1 in every 34 flushes not "doing the job"...
A 1% failure rate indicates a very poorly designed product, poorly executed, and with awful quality control processes, or one that is operating at the experimental limits of today's technology, like the space shuttle.
gPhone ad: "Are you looking for slaves? Say 'yes' to search for slaves in your area."
"I hate this gPhone!"
gPhone: "Thank you for your user input. We have subscribed you to 5000 email lists for gay pr0n, and sent out invites in your name to everyone in your phone book, as well as everyone in THEIR phone books. Have a nice day."
Its not the power supply - the Western Digital on the same bus is still working fine, and its got 9,900 hours on it. How do you think I'm posting?
The drives all have an enormous amount of read/write errors (verified using smartclt to read the SMART data) after a days' operation, and two of them now make that "zing zing zing" noise that heads make when they repeatedly fail during a seek and reset themselves. These drives - ST3320620A - 320 gig, 16 meg cache - are absolutely awful in quality. The two pairs of drives were bought from different companies, in different cities, so its not a "shipping/handling" issue.
I don't want "refurbished" drives to replace 4 brand-new drives that are absolute crap. And their assurance that they "meet the same quality standards as the new drives" just makes me want to laugh. What, they'll also break after a day? No thanks.
I bought these instead of WD drives because the 5-year warranty seemed to be an indicator of their confidence in their product. Instead, its more like the muffler shop scam - you can guarantee a muffler for the life of the car because most people who replace their muffler will either sell the car within the next few years, or it will go to the scrap yard.
The ball is in Seagate's court at this point, but I'm not optimistic. All the recent ST3320620As made in the China factory should be recalled.
"and protect writes (write in to this, power goes out, data still safe... RAM wouldn't do that)."
flash memory doesn't do that, either. Ask anyone whose flash drive has died because they removed it prematurely. Abrupt power-down can kill flash dead. Heck, one guy at the office killed 2 flash drives in one day, simply because his install of XP is screwed up (so what else is new?) and even after the drives were supposedly safe to remove, they weren't. One I could believe as coincidence - 2 is a pattern.
Why would I take offense? Its only zealots who get upset when you suggest that their world view cannot and should not be applied to everyone.
If someone wants to believe in God, that's their problem. Just don't force it on others, or attempt to indoctrinate the vulnerable (eg. children) into the same belief system. Let them make up their minds when they're old enough.
People living in a hypothetical mathematical world called "Flatland" (2 dimensions) would still see and be able to interact with a cross-section of a 3-dimensional being. They wouldn't be able to explain the being by their own physical models, but the interactions would be there. In other words, if God existed, we should be able to interact with him/her/it physically in our 3 dimensions now, today, same as flatlanders with a 3-dimensional being.
"Have 'they' solved the problem of the limited number of writes a flash device device can handle. If it's only going to last a few months and then wear out I won't consider it! Pity the poor fool that forgets to turn off atime updates.
"
First, let them solve the number of writes their regular hard disks can handle - 4 drives, bought at 2 different retailers, all dead within 24 hours. It appears that the old Maxtor plant in China that Seagate acquired has some quality-control issues. Best to avoid any 320 gig Seagate drive with a serial # starting with "60F1"
While we're at it, what is it with Seagate only wanting to give a "refurbished" drive to replace a brand-new DOA anyway? This "policy" sucks.. No other business would get away with such tactics.
"Sorry you new car is a lemon. Here, take this used, refurbished car instead." "Sorry the heel broke off your new shoes. Here, have this pair of used, refurbished shoes." "Sorry we're late serving you - we dropped your steak on the floor in the kitchen. But its okay, we refurbished it..."
I don't claim to be God - just pointing out that the premis upon which his original claim is made (along the lines of "since you can't prove God doesn't exist blah blah blah) is utter nonsense.
In other words, atheism is not a religious belief - its a belief about religion - specifically, that there is no god. Two entirely different things, but for some reason, those who regularly indulge in "suspending their disbelief" seem to be unable to discern this.
You also claim that you can't prove there is no God. so therefore an atheists' belief is also faith.
This is about as nonsensical as "how many angels can dance on the head of a pin."
Atheists say that there is no God, and there is no proof that compels us to change our minds.
Looked at from your perspective: You cannot, for example, disprove that I am God. According to your "logic", since its not disprovable, its a "valid" belief. According to atheists' logic, until proven, its just more religious superstition, and can be safely ignored.
Seriously, prove that I am not God. Or shut the fuck up with the pseudo-logic.
The real "miracle" is that supposedly educated, literate people accept this story, which was obviously cut from whole cloth.
Then again, most of them never even read the bible, don't see (or don't *want* to see) the contradictions, the advocation of genocide, rape, violence, etc...
Like I said, *that* is the only "miracle", and its easily explained away by the simple fact that people don't want to admit they were wrong.
> "Atheists is America are generally just anti-Christian. However, they are still materialistic and self-centered, in general overweight, but over educated in the history of Christianity, especially everything bad, and largely ignorant of their own narrow bias.
"
Fortunately, the US only represents 5% of the world's population. Atheists in the rest of the world will continue to condemn all religious superstitions equally, not be overweight, and not indulge in quite so much navel-gazing. With any luck, the US will join the world as a post-christian society sometime in the next generation.
> "Antenna designs are straightforward physical design patents, and have nothing to do with software or business method patents. Such off the cuff, mis-aimed ranting makes the rest of us who dislike software patents look foolish: please don't do it again."
Guess you missed the whole "pringles can antenna" debate. According to your argument, someone should now be able to patent using a pringles can (or design equivalent) as a directional antenna to extend wifi network ranges. Sure, someone "invented" it first, but that doesn't mean it should be patented. Some "inventions" are trivial.
Well, seeing as the latest openSUSE will run Windows (Win9x or XP Pro) as a guest operating system, either inside a window, or running the individual apps right on the desktop, no wine needed, and its a LOT nicer than Vista... we have a Winner! Or should I say a Window of Opportunity?
As opposed to Soviet Korporate Amerika, where Microsoft taxes YOU!
In such a context,
couldn't running linux be considered somewhat equivalent to the Boston Tea Party? Or would that be running a pirated copy of Windows?
could running a pirated copy of Windows, in the current "Corporatist" environment, be considered a political statement, and as such, be "protected speech", same as flag burning?
"The solution is to have the computer metaphorically pick itself up by its bootstraps to get the first bit loaded. "
It was always a poor metaphor.
The reality is that once the cpu is initialized, it executes whatever code is found at a fixed, hard-coded address. That's not "lifting yourself up by your bootstraps."
Pul the cpu and ram out and you'll see nothing happens. No bios initialization, no post, etc.
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"How do you know that those drives weren't tested like that, and somehow got excessive shock while in transit?"
I don't, but it doesn't seem likely. After all, when modern drives are powered down, the heads are parked automatically. Even 15 years ago, you could drop a hard drive from a desk and no harm would come of it (I know because a friend of mine did that to his brand new $500 80 meg WD drive, and I told him not to worry, it wasn't like those "old 5-1/4 20 meg" drives).
The heads can't "crash" during shipping, unless they wre involved in some sort of train wreck or airplane crash or other "violent disassembly".
> "Bill Hilf, has added a new duty -- general manager of Windows server marketing -- to his already established role of shepherding the company's efforts to have open source software peacefully coexist with Microsoft technologies"
So, let's analyse this. Hilf failed at getting open source software to "peacefully coexist" with Microsoft shite. His "reward" is to take on Windows server marketing - an area where open source beats Microsoft in terms of quality, TCO, initial price, and performance.
So Hilf is being punished, right?
It would seem to me that it should be easy to build proper QA testing into every device. For example, the 4 brand new Seagate hard drives I've got sitting on my desk, all bad. There's no reason they couldn't have been automatically spun up for a minute before being shipped, and their smart status queried - they would have been found to be defective before being shipped, and they could have fixed the problem on the production floor, instead of continuing to produce junk that is going to end up costing money instead of generating profit.
Its not like you even need humans to do this - it can be automated fairly easily.
The cost savings would mean QA would be a profit center, not a money loser.
Newspapers USED to have a high rate of smeared ink, misprints, etc. Its a lot rarer nowadays, at least for big-city presses.
I haven't bought a book in years that has unslit pages (something that I used to see once in a while). Quality control has gone way up in most areas over the last decade.
Specifically, a 1 in 34 fail rate for consumer electronics, given the cost of handling returns, etc., IS a fiasco, unless its some cheapie $10 item that people are going to just throw away if it doesn't work.
That's just it. None of these drives ever worked properly. They all started accumulating errors right away, and making funny noises within 24 hours. They're close enough in serial number that they're probably all the same batch, even though I bought them from 2 different companies located in 2 different cities.
The first two, which I bought 2 weeks ago, never built a proper raid - one drive was always marked as bad-rebuilding, then once it was rebuilt, immediately marked as bad-rebuilding again. The second two, which I bought Saturday, actually succeeded in building a proper raid1 - but then drive 0 started making noises Sunday morning, just like the first batch, and that was it for that raid as well.
Its not like a software RAID1 is all that complicated. Stick the drives on 2 different controllers, mark them as raid, create a raid1 device from them, format, and you're done. Except that, in both these cases, its more a case of "stick a fork in it" type of "you're done."
All the drives report more than 100 million read errors - that's unacceptable for brand new drives. My bet is contaminated media.
"That was just a fluke, and truly falls into the standard ~1-3% acceptable failure rate for consumer electronics."
WFT - 1 in every 34 consumer electronics devices failing is acceptable???
Imagine if the whole world worked that way. 1 in every 34 elevators failing, 1 in every 34 food items sold at stores being rotten, 1 in every 34 newspapers or books you buy filled with blank pages instead of news, 1 in every 34 flushes not "doing the job" ...
A 1% failure rate indicates a very poorly designed product, poorly executed, and with awful quality control processes, or one that is operating at the experimental limits of today's technology, like the space shuttle.
You're assuming google actually wants to acquire the spectrum, rather than make the carriers do a repeat of the dark fibre build-out.
"I worked like a slave today ..."
gPhone ad: "Are you looking for slaves? Say 'yes' to search for slaves in your area."
"I hate this gPhone!"
gPhone: "Thank you for your user input. We have subscribed you to 5000 email lists for gay pr0n, and sent out invites in your name to everyone in your phone book, as well as everyone in THEIR phone books. Have a nice day."
Seems to me that journaling file systems already provide this, without the added risk of flash failure.
Hello, 911
"... one moment please. You have dialed 911. gPhone will place your call shortly. Please listen to these 3 contextual ads."
"Hi, need a lawyer? Call 1-900-SUX-2-B-U!"
"Need an ambulance in a hurry? Call 123-456-7890"
"Remember Forest Lawn - when it comes time to go to that big sleep."
"Thak you for waiting. gPhone will now connect you to 911"
"This is 911 emergency services. Your call is important to us. In the meantime, plase listen to these contextual ads ..."
Its not the power supply - the Western Digital on the same bus is still working fine, and its got 9,900 hours on it. How do you think I'm posting?
The drives all have an enormous amount of read/write errors (verified using smartclt to read the SMART data) after a days' operation, and two of them now make that "zing zing zing" noise that heads make when they repeatedly fail during a seek and reset themselves. These drives - ST3320620A - 320 gig, 16 meg cache - are absolutely awful in quality. The two pairs of drives were bought from different companies, in different cities, so its not a "shipping/handling" issue.
I don't want "refurbished" drives to replace 4 brand-new drives that are absolute crap. And their assurance that they "meet the same quality standards as the new drives" just makes me want to laugh. What, they'll also break after a day? No thanks.
I bought these instead of WD drives because the 5-year warranty seemed to be an indicator of their confidence in their product. Instead, its more like the muffler shop scam - you can guarantee a muffler for the life of the car because most people who replace their muffler will either sell the car within the next few years, or it will go to the scrap yard.
The ball is in Seagate's court at this point, but I'm not optimistic. All the recent ST3320620As made in the China factory should be recalled.
"and protect writes (write in to this, power goes out, data still safe... RAM wouldn't do that)."
flash memory doesn't do that, either. Ask anyone whose flash drive has died because they removed it prematurely. Abrupt power-down can kill flash dead. Heck, one guy at the office killed 2 flash drives in one day, simply because his install of XP is screwed up (so what else is new?) and even after the drives were supposedly safe to remove, they weren't. One I could believe as coincidence - 2 is a pattern.
Why would I take offense? Its only zealots who get upset when you suggest that their world view cannot and should not be applied to everyone.
If someone wants to believe in God, that's their problem. Just don't force it on others, or attempt to indoctrinate the vulnerable (eg. children) into the same belief system. Let them make up their minds when they're old enough.
People living in a hypothetical mathematical world called "Flatland" (2 dimensions) would still see and be able to interact with a cross-section of a 3-dimensional being. They wouldn't be able to explain the being by their own physical models, but the interactions would be there. In other words, if God existed, we should be able to interact with him/her/it physically in our 3 dimensions now, today, same as flatlanders with a 3-dimensional being.
If they make it at the same plant my 4 DOA drives came from, all I can say is "etter you than me."
"Have 'they' solved the problem of the limited number of writes a flash device device can handle. If it's only going to last a few months and then wear out I won't consider it! Pity the poor fool that forgets to turn off atime updates. "
First, let them solve the number of writes their regular hard disks can handle - 4 drives, bought at 2 different retailers, all dead within 24 hours. It appears that the old Maxtor plant in China that Seagate acquired has some quality-control issues. Best to avoid any 320 gig Seagate drive with a serial # starting with "60F1"
While we're at it, what is it with Seagate only wanting to give a "refurbished" drive to replace a brand-new DOA anyway? This "policy" sucks.. No other business would get away with such tactics.
"Sorry you new car is a lemon. Here, take this used, refurbished car instead." "Sorry the heel broke off your new shoes. Here, have this pair of used, refurbished shoes." "Sorry we're late serving you - we dropped your steak on the floor in the kitchen. But its okay, we refurbished it..."
I don't claim to be God - just pointing out that the premis upon which his original claim is made (along the lines of "since you can't prove God doesn't exist blah blah blah) is utter nonsense.
In other words, atheism is not a religious belief - its a belief about religion - specifically, that there is no god. Two entirely different things, but for some reason, those who regularly indulge in "suspending their disbelief" seem to be unable to discern this.
Well, now you know why your butt is so sore.
You mistake atheism with a religious belief.
You also claim that you can't prove there is no God. so therefore an atheists' belief is also faith.
This is about as nonsensical as "how many angels can dance on the head of a pin."
Atheists say that there is no God, and there is no proof that compels us to change our minds.
Looked at from your perspective: You cannot, for example, disprove that I am God. According to your "logic", since its not disprovable, its a "valid" belief. According to atheists' logic, until proven, its just more religious superstition, and can be safely ignored.
Seriously, prove that I am not God. Or shut the fuck up with the pseudo-logic.
The real "miracle" is that supposedly educated, literate people accept this story, which was obviously cut from whole cloth.
Then again, most of them never even read the bible, don't see (or don't *want* to see) the contradictions, the advocation of genocide, rape, violence, etc ...
Like I said, *that* is the only "miracle", and its easily explained away by the simple fact that people don't want to admit they were wrong.
> "Atheists is America are generally just anti-Christian. However, they are still materialistic and self-centered, in general overweight, but over educated in the history of Christianity, especially everything bad, and largely ignorant of their own narrow bias. "
Fortunately, the US only represents 5% of the world's population. Atheists in the rest of the world will continue to condemn all religious superstitions equally, not be overweight, and not indulge in quite so much navel-gazing. With any luck, the US will join the world as a post-christian society sometime in the next generation.
> "Antenna designs are straightforward physical design patents, and have nothing to do with software or business method patents. Such off the cuff, mis-aimed ranting makes the rest of us who dislike software patents look foolish: please don't do it again."
Guess you missed the whole "pringles can antenna" debate. According to your argument, someone should now be able to patent using a pringles can (or design equivalent) as a directional antenna to extend wifi network ranges. Sure, someone "invented" it first, but that doesn't mean it should be patented. Some "inventions" are trivial.
Well, seeing as the latest openSUSE will run Windows (Win9x or XP Pro) as a guest operating system, either inside a window, or running the individual apps right on the desktop, no wine needed, and its a LOT nicer than Vista ... we have a Winner! Or should I say a Window of Opportunity?
Its time to "fix" this problem by removing software and business methods from the purview of the patent office.
As opposed to Soviet Korporate Amerika, where Microsoft taxes YOU!
In such a context,
"The solution is to have the computer metaphorically pick itself up by its bootstraps to get the first bit loaded. "
It was always a poor metaphor.
The reality is that once the cpu is initialized, it executes whatever code is found at a fixed, hard-coded address. That's not "lifting yourself up by your bootstraps."
Pul the cpu and ram out and you'll see nothing happens. No bios initialization, no post, etc.