I researched flash file systems for a project at work, and they all
incorporate wear levelling. I ended up designing my own, since we
needed a flat, numbered, record-oriented file system, something
JFFS2 (for example)
couldn't meet.
Many devices (digital cameras, MP3 players, etc.) use FAT, more-or-less unmodified.
This limits them to a few million erase/write cycles on important sectors,
but I don't think the average digital camera will last that long.
A flash-based hard drive will have different requirements. I'd be interested in
seeing how they handle them, but not $549-interested.
I see no point in a head-to-head comparison of products that are not actually
competitive to each other. Am I missing something?
I have owned point-and-shoot digital cameras, but my best digital camera
is a Canon Digital Rebel (aka 300D). I didn't buy it as a point-and-shoot camera,
because that's not what it is (though it can do a pretty good imitation in
fully automatic mode). What I did buy
was the flexibility of an SLR: interchangeable lenses, full control over all
functions. Plus the things digital is so good at: instant image review,
image processing capability, zero reciprocity failure.
I can hook it up to a telescope and take first-rate
astronomical pictures. I can use my wonderful Pentax M42 lenses
and extension tubes to fill an entire frame with a single flower if
I want.
This is not the sort of stuff you do with a point and shoot.
I'm always amazed at just how much broadband costs in the
U.S. No wonder the FCC thinks nobody wants it!
I get ADSL from the phone company for $CDN 34.95 a month. They
sent me a new DSL modem that's supposed to go twice as fast (the usual residential
ADSL offering is 1.5 MBPS), but I haven't found any sites with big enough pipes to see
the difference. I'm close enough to the central office to go a lot faster if I wanted to
pay for it.
I have family who live out in the country. Until recently they suffered through
56k dialup that rarely connected above 28.8. Now they have satellite broadband,
and pay about what I do, per person (my Mum and my sister share a connection).
...laura, well-connected Canadian Linux and Mac user
I get nervous when I read product announcements with such
a high density of buzzwords.
I wonder, though: in every other field, the market decides what to buy
and what not to buy, what to support and what not to support.
This isn't the case with the Internet, where technologies
are pushed, err, widely deployed by vendors and become the pseudo-standard, whether people
use them (or even want them) or not.
Oh, come on. I am FAAAR from a MS apologist, but this trojan is not really something that they can (or should) prevent! This worm is not exploiting any flaw in MS's programs that I am aware of, it is simply social engineering. Unless you make Windows prevent a user from running arbitrary code, I don't know how you'd fix this.
Actually, there is a technical flaw, not just a human engineering one.
The system allows users to install software,
with global system implications, with no confirmation. My Mac confirms such
things with me, and seems to get it right. My Linux box won't let me touch the global system configuration
at all
unless I su to root.
This has always been the problem. I recognize that there is incompetent Windows software
out there that won't run without Administrator privileges, but that's another issue.
If you really need privilege to do something (like change your password), others systems have ways of temporarily elevating privilege. Like suid on Unix.
At lunch time today I wandered by one of the local high-tech places
and observed a 5:1 price difference between Blu-Ray and the fanciest plain old DVD players.
Add in the cost of an HD-ready TV and that's a pretty stiff upgrade cost.
The question then is: is this an upgrade that solves an old problem,
or an upgrade that provides a new experience? Or is it just another
forced upgrade for the sake of novelty?
DVD had a hefty premium at first. It didn't take off until the
prices came down, and it only really took off when manufacturers stopped making VCRs. I suspect
HD-DVD/Blu-Ray will play out much the same. I'd love to see a massive
consumer boycott over the draconian DRM that comes with the new
formats, but I doubt it will happen.
...laura, who cheerfully plays DVDs on her Linux box
I think the Star Trek TNG computers were probably the best depiction of how computers should be.
The TNG computers were pretty good. I remember seeing an interview with Michael
Okuda talking about the challenges of creating something that people would accept
as 23rd century technology, but having to use 20th century technology to do it.
I also remember, when TNG was just about to debut, remarking in another forum
that the TOS computers looked clunky by then, and that the flight deck of a Shuttle or
767 looked far more futuristic.
While it never made it in to film, the interface in the later Foundation
novels wins for me.
One evening I was driving through france, way faster than the allowed limit and the TGV passed
me on the rails about 100 m to the west of the road.
Been there, done that.
A stretch of the A1 autoroute parallels the LGV Nord line
(Paris to Lille, Brussels and the Channel Tunnel).
The speed limit is 130 km/h, and in favourable conditions the
cops tolerate 160. And even at that speed, I've been passed
by Porsches and things.
The TGVs go by at 300. It really does feel like you're standing still.
The trains themselves are perfectly smooth, except
that a lot of the mechanical noises are higher in pitch than
you might expect. It doesn't feel that fast until you look out the
window.
These things really are amazing. I've often thought the best
rail system in the world would use French trains and German
management.
Just shows you what good marketing can accomplish with garbage.
Sometimes it's support and marketing that make all the difference. Way back
when, IBM introduced a new computer called System/360. It was crude compared
to a lot of its competition, but they knew how to sell them, and they
supported them well. IBM went on the rule the mainframe world. Their
competition are now footnotes in history books.
One of IBM's competitors gave us the phrase "Sullen but unrebellious" to describe
how much money must be spent looking after customers.
I play with Linux on UltraSPARC (Sun Ultra 5) and StrongARM (gumstix)
but am typing this on an x86 Slackware box. Does this mean I too have sold out?:-)
If it will help you do your job better, your boss should be insisting that you
have Unix on your desk. Demanding, even.
Will it? Define "better". Make the case. Steal one, if you have to.
I have Solaris and Linux in my cubicle for my real work. I read my email
on the "company standard" Windows 2000 box, and run a few brain-damaged
legacy apps on an XP box in the lab.
I had the first Linux box in the company. We were a Solaris shop
until the PHBs decided they preferred Windows. We have legacy products
that are Solaris based, and still use Solaris for our new servers. I told my boss there
was this whole new world out there, and if we didn't get with it,
others would and we would lose. I was right, and our current
flagship product is a direct result of that discussion.
The Zune is a "me too" product, and a crippled one at that. It has one clever
feature (WiFi), but is just not compelling against all the other players that
are out there.
My MP3 player is an RCA Lyra. I don't need any special software: just plug it in to any
computer that groks
USB Mass Storage. I can play any MP3 I want
on it. I don't have to screw around with licenses, and I don't have to screw around
with locked-down encrypted
file formats. Hell, I can (and do) use entirely open-source software to talk to it.
Why would I want to mess around with something that costs more and does less?
Upgrades? Very people will actually buy Vista. They will get it preinstalled
when they buy a new computer. Such a nice thing for the computer company
to do to...errrrr, for them!
Record some music and I'll at least give it a listen.
Too much of the stuff nowadays is fake plastic over-hyped crap.
Who needs talent anyway?
Is it any wonder nobody is buying it?
My latest musical purchase was a genuine old-fashioned CD, and the entire album
(Bailando con Lola by Azucar Moreno) holds up just fine.
My Spanish-English dictionary says "clavame" means "nail me", but after
seeing the video I assume it has a metaphorical meaning not unlike what
it means in English...
...laura
Re:Did anyone see the "Landing Anomoly" on CNN (LA
on
Flying the Airbus A380
·
· Score: 1
Did anyone else notice the CNN video that showed the US LAX arrival earlier this week.
Looked like a sudden gust of wind. Big deal.
I've seen lot of A380 footage - hell, one landed here in Vancouver last year, en route
from Sydney back to Toulouse - and it looks and
flys like any other airliner. Just a really really big one. They also did cold-weather testing in Iqaluit. Flew in, parked
the plane overnight, went out in the morning to see if it would still start (it did). Brrr...
One thought experiment of mine has been to recast the Get a Mac
ads with two women, rather than two men. Who would play PC? Who would
play Mac? Other markets (U.K., Japan) have done their own versions, but always
with two men.
The first that came to my mind were Candace Bergen as PC, and Paula
Abdul as Mac. YMMV.
My main Linux box has a Soundblaster PCI 128, formerly Ensoniq ES1371. It works
just fine with both OSS and ALSA drivers.
I don't want all the surround junk. All I want is a decent quality
analog to digital conversion. With the (long-obsolete, alas) PCI 128, I have it.
But there just doesn't seem to be any market for a plain old sound card, just
like it's impossible to buy a plain old cell phone.
The question of the 20% time is very interesting. One of the innovations Enron touted was how its employees were free to work on whatever projects they wanted. Then it turned out Enron really was only good at trading energy, and not good enough at that. On the other hand, Google is delivering. Things like the phone will determine how deep they get. I think skeptical optimism is the stance to take.
The reality is that anybody worth hiring
is going to be curious about things, will have their own interests, and
will have their own research projects on the side.
The only decision an
employer must make is whether such projects will be on the employee's own time
and expense, or is it something the employer can support (i.e. related, even if
only tangentially, to the business). It may, after all,
turn out to be the Next Big Thing and make the employer a buttload of money.
To paraphrase a line from JAG, anybody who wants to mess around with things
that badly should be messing around for us.
...laura who messes with Linux and GPS on company time, but who pays for her own telescopes
Rendezvous with Rama, Imperial Earth and The Fountains of Paradise remain
some of my favourite Clarke books, and some of my favourite books, period.
The current edition of Glidepath, an otherwise-excellent novel,
is marred by lousy OCR and incompetent proofreading.
For high-school students, some of Heinlein's juveniles might still fit
the bill, even if they were written 50 years ago. Have Space Suit, Will Travel
holds up remarkably well, while students can debate Podkayne of Mars.
None of these authors were that good at female characters at first, though
they got better with time - who can forget Bliss ("Don't I look human?") or Dors,
who wasn't what she seemed, or Calindy, who tasted like honey?
I just finished re-reading the Foundation novels. They illustrate
a couple of the most important ideas in science fiction: if it's happened before, it
will happen again, and consider the consequences. The whole series is about the
decline and fall of an empire. A galactic one, this time.
Except that one is a radio telescope and one is an optical telescope.
So? ALMA images the universe in different wavelengths than Hubble/Spitzer at al, but
can do so at very high resolution.
What really matters is how many wavelengths your aperture is. An 18 km baseline at a 1 mm wavelength
is more wavelengths across than a 2.2 meter mirror at 600 nm. A lot of the highest resolution imaging
is done with aperture synthesis nowadays, whether it's astronomers doing long-baseline interferometry,
or using synthetic aperture radar to take pictures of the Earth.
Some day we'll be able to optical interferometry across multi-kilometer baselines.
I look forward to the results.
Please leave us alone. We can run our own country just fine without you.
Sure. We can. We're imperfect, but we have raised imperfection to a high art.:-)
What we need to go with this is a
Prime Minister who believes
it too, and you know how Stephen Harper behaves when the U.S. is
in the picture. Maybe he just needs some more positrons...
Slashdot Mirror
I researched flash file systems for a project at work, and they all incorporate wear levelling. I ended up designing my own, since we needed a flat, numbered, record-oriented file system, something JFFS2 (for example) couldn't meet.
Many devices (digital cameras, MP3 players, etc.) use FAT, more-or-less unmodified. This limits them to a few million erase/write cycles on important sectors, but I don't think the average digital camera will last that long.
A flash-based hard drive will have different requirements. I'd be interested in seeing how they handle them, but not $549-interested.
...laura
I see no point in a head-to-head comparison of products that are not actually competitive to each other. Am I missing something?
I have owned point-and-shoot digital cameras, but my best digital camera is a Canon Digital Rebel (aka 300D). I didn't buy it as a point-and-shoot camera, because that's not what it is (though it can do a pretty good imitation in fully automatic mode). What I did buy was the flexibility of an SLR: interchangeable lenses, full control over all functions. Plus the things digital is so good at: instant image review, image processing capability, zero reciprocity failure.
I can hook it up to a telescope and take first-rate astronomical pictures. I can use my wonderful Pentax M42 lenses and extension tubes to fill an entire frame with a single flower if I want.
This is not the sort of stuff you do with a point and shoot.
...laura
I'm always amazed at just how much broadband costs in the U.S. No wonder the FCC thinks nobody wants it!
I get ADSL from the phone company for $CDN 34.95 a month. They sent me a new DSL modem that's supposed to go twice as fast (the usual residential ADSL offering is 1.5 MBPS), but I haven't found any sites with big enough pipes to see the difference. I'm close enough to the central office to go a lot faster if I wanted to pay for it.
I have family who live out in the country. Until recently they suffered through 56k dialup that rarely connected above 28.8. Now they have satellite broadband, and pay about what I do, per person (my Mum and my sister share a connection).
...laura, well-connected Canadian Linux and Mac user
I get nervous when I read product announcements with such a high density of buzzwords.
I wonder, though: in every other field, the market decides what to buy and what not to buy, what to support and what not to support. This isn't the case with the Internet, where technologies are pushed, err, widely deployed by vendors and become the pseudo-standard, whether people use them (or even want them) or not.
How can we change this?
...laura
Actually, there is a technical flaw, not just a human engineering one. The system allows users to install software, with global system implications, with no confirmation. My Mac confirms such things with me, and seems to get it right. My Linux box won't let me touch the global system configuration at all unless I su to root.
This has always been the problem. I recognize that there is incompetent Windows software out there that won't run without Administrator privileges, but that's another issue. If you really need privilege to do something (like change your password), others systems have ways of temporarily elevating privilege. Like suid on Unix.
...laura
At lunch time today I wandered by one of the local high-tech places and observed a 5:1 price difference between Blu-Ray and the fanciest plain old DVD players. Add in the cost of an HD-ready TV and that's a pretty stiff upgrade cost.
The question then is: is this an upgrade that solves an old problem, or an upgrade that provides a new experience? Or is it just another forced upgrade for the sake of novelty?
DVD had a hefty premium at first. It didn't take off until the prices came down, and it only really took off when manufacturers stopped making VCRs. I suspect HD-DVD/Blu-Ray will play out much the same. I'd love to see a massive consumer boycott over the draconian DRM that comes with the new formats, but I doubt it will happen.
...laura, who cheerfully plays DVDs on her Linux box
The TNG computers were pretty good. I remember seeing an interview with Michael Okuda talking about the challenges of creating something that people would accept as 23rd century technology, but having to use 20th century technology to do it. I also remember, when TNG was just about to debut, remarking in another forum that the TOS computers looked clunky by then, and that the flight deck of a Shuttle or 767 looked far more futuristic.
While it never made it in to film, the interface in the later Foundation novels wins for me.
...laura
Been there, done that.
A stretch of the A1 autoroute parallels the LGV Nord line (Paris to Lille, Brussels and the Channel Tunnel). The speed limit is 130 km/h, and in favourable conditions the cops tolerate 160. And even at that speed, I've been passed by Porsches and things.
The TGVs go by at 300. It really does feel like you're standing still.
The trains themselves are perfectly smooth, except that a lot of the mechanical noises are higher in pitch than you might expect. It doesn't feel that fast until you look out the window.
These things really are amazing. I've often thought the best rail system in the world would use French trains and German management.
...laura
Sometimes it's support and marketing that make all the difference. Way back when, IBM introduced a new computer called System /360. It was crude compared
to a lot of its competition, but they knew how to sell them, and they
supported them well. IBM went on the rule the mainframe world. Their
competition are now footnotes in history books.
One of IBM's competitors gave us the phrase "Sullen but unrebellious" to describe how much money must be spent looking after customers.
I play with Linux on UltraSPARC (Sun Ultra 5) and StrongARM (gumstix) but am typing this on an x86 Slackware box. Does this mean I too have sold out? :-)
...laura
If it will help you do your job better, your boss should be insisting that you have Unix on your desk. Demanding, even.
Will it? Define "better". Make the case. Steal one, if you have to.
I have Solaris and Linux in my cubicle for my real work. I read my email on the "company standard" Windows 2000 box, and run a few brain-damaged legacy apps on an XP box in the lab.
I had the first Linux box in the company. We were a Solaris shop until the PHBs decided they preferred Windows. We have legacy products that are Solaris based, and still use Solaris for our new servers. I told my boss there was this whole new world out there, and if we didn't get with it, others would and we would lose. I was right, and our current flagship product is a direct result of that discussion.
...laura
The Zune is a "me too" product, and a crippled one at that. It has one clever feature (WiFi), but is just not compelling against all the other players that are out there.
My MP3 player is an RCA Lyra. I don't need any special software: just plug it in to any computer that groks USB Mass Storage. I can play any MP3 I want on it. I don't have to screw around with licenses, and I don't have to screw around with locked-down encrypted file formats. Hell, I can (and do) use entirely open-source software to talk to it.
Why would I want to mess around with something that costs more and does less?
...laura
Upgrades? Very people will actually buy Vista. They will get it preinstalled when they buy a new computer. Such a nice thing for the computer company to do to...errrrr, for them!
...laura
Record some music and I'll at least give it a listen. Too much of the stuff nowadays is fake plastic over-hyped crap. Who needs talent anyway?
Is it any wonder nobody is buying it?
My latest musical purchase was a genuine old-fashioned CD, and the entire album (Bailando con Lola by Azucar Moreno) holds up just fine. My Spanish-English dictionary says "clavame" means "nail me", but after seeing the video I assume it has a metaphorical meaning not unlike what it means in English...
...laura
Looked like a sudden gust of wind. Big deal.
I've seen lot of A380 footage - hell, one landed here in Vancouver last year, en route from Sydney back to Toulouse - and it looks and flys like any other airliner. Just a really really big one. They also did cold-weather testing in Iqaluit. Flew in, parked the plane overnight, went out in the morning to see if it would still start (it did). Brrr...
Airbus have guts. I hope they can pull it off.
...laura
Tommy Chong? That's...errr...interesting.
One thought experiment of mine has been to recast the Get a Mac ads with two women, rather than two men. Who would play PC? Who would play Mac? Other markets (U.K., Japan) have done their own versions, but always with two men.
The first that came to my mind were Candace Bergen as PC, and Paula Abdul as Mac. YMMV.
...laura
M-Audio have delicious specs. They also have OSS Linux drivers, but they're binary only (grrr...). Haven't looked up any of the others.
...laura
My main Linux box has a Soundblaster PCI 128, formerly Ensoniq ES1371. It works just fine with both OSS and ALSA drivers.
I don't want all the surround junk. All I want is a decent quality analog to digital conversion. With the (long-obsolete, alas) PCI 128, I have it. But there just doesn't seem to be any market for a plain old sound card, just like it's impossible to buy a plain old cell phone.
...laura
My employers sent me on a CPR course. A while ago, but I remember it well.
Two things in particular that stuck with me:
1. Since you have your hands full, you must nominate somebody to call for help: YOU!!! Call an ambulance! Don't ask for volunteers.
2. Don't be afraid to lean in to it. Nobody ever died of cracked ribs.
I've never had to use what I learned. I hope I never do.
...laura
The reality is that anybody worth hiring is going to be curious about things, will have their own interests, and will have their own research projects on the side. The only decision an employer must make is whether such projects will be on the employee's own time and expense, or is it something the employer can support (i.e. related, even if only tangentially, to the business). It may, after all, turn out to be the Next Big Thing and make the employer a buttload of money.
To paraphrase a line from JAG, anybody who wants to mess around with things that badly should be messing around for us.
...laura who messes with Linux and GPS on company time, but who pays for her own telescopes
Rendezvous with Rama, Imperial Earth and The Fountains of Paradise remain some of my favourite Clarke books, and some of my favourite books, period. The current edition of Glidepath, an otherwise-excellent novel, is marred by lousy OCR and incompetent proofreading.
For high-school students, some of Heinlein's juveniles might still fit the bill, even if they were written 50 years ago. Have Space Suit, Will Travel holds up remarkably well, while students can debate Podkayne of Mars. None of these authors were that good at female characters at first, though they got better with time - who can forget Bliss ("Don't I look human?") or Dors, who wasn't what she seemed, or Calindy, who tasted like honey?
I just finished re-reading the Foundation novels. They illustrate a couple of the most important ideas in science fiction: if it's happened before, it will happen again, and consider the consequences. The whole series is about the decline and fall of an empire. A galactic one, this time.
...laura
A billion here, a billion there. Sooner or later you're talking real money.
...laura
So? ALMA images the universe in different wavelengths than Hubble/Spitzer at al, but can do so at very high resolution. What really matters is how many wavelengths your aperture is. An 18 km baseline at a 1 mm wavelength is more wavelengths across than a 2.2 meter mirror at 600 nm. A lot of the highest resolution imaging is done with aperture synthesis nowadays, whether it's astronomers doing long-baseline interferometry, or using synthetic aperture radar to take pictures of the Earth.
Some day we'll be able to optical interferometry across multi-kilometer baselines. I look forward to the results.
...laura
"Tabernacle" is the only word I've ever heard bleeped out on MusiquePlus or Musimax.
...laura
Sure. We can. We're imperfect, but we have raised imperfection to a high art. :-)
What we need to go with this is a Prime Minister who believes it too, and you know how Stephen Harper behaves when the U.S. is in the picture. Maybe he just needs some more positrons...
...laura
I thought it was obvious our value systems all evolved from the Three Laws of Robotics.
Don't hurt people, get along with others and look after yourself aren't bad principles to live by, regardless of how they are presented.
...laura