If Anonymous has material evidence that points to the guilt of a particular individual, they should turn that evidence over to the responsible law enforcement agency
Problem there is that evidence was (considering the source) almost certainly obtained through illegal action. (hacking) This cause three immediate problems. 1. most legal systems spoil evidence that has been obtained through illegal actions, 2. it may make assembling an unspoiled jury (that has not been exposed to the tainted evidence) difficult, and 3. it may make the same evidence, obtained through legal means, more difficult or impossible to bring to court.
The laws concerning spoilage of evidence are made to protect the innocent, but are most frequently called upon to protect the guilty. That's the unfortunate part of it. To protect the 1% of the innocent, the 99% of the guilty must go free. Love it or hate it? You'll probably hate it, until you're the 1%.
the xbox's walled garden makes a good statement about what MS does with walled gardens. drives the devs insane. charging devs to push updates. good idea! lets discourage bug fixes and updates! *sigh*
SMART is implemented in different ways by different manufacturers. The idea is that the host can ask the peripheral "what value does slot xx contain?" This can refer to an instantaneous condition, such as the temperature of the hard drive, a static value such as how many spares are currently available, a semidynamic value such as is this hard drive failing, and a dynamic value such as how many remap operations have occurred. There's a short list of "basic/standard" values, and then there's the "extended/optional" metrics that not all devices need to support. Each smart slot will also specify the min and max values. If any smart slot has a value outside its allowed range, overall smart status will report as failing. Once a drive toggles over to failing, there's no going back, unless you figure out a way to reset the counters.
One of the standard set is the "is the hard drive failing" metric. It allows the host to get a simple yes/no answer to summarize whether any of the metrics have gone beyond their tolerated values. For example, one drive I worked with recently was allowed to overtemp twice. If it had experienced a third overtemp during its lifetime, the drive would then permanently fail the overall test. This allows the host to "check smart status" without really having to think much about what it's doing. This is the basic test that most modern OS's check to see if a hard drive needs to be replaced. You usually need to run a special tool to check individual values being returned by smart. These tools need to have a list of what each slot means, and often will report fairly meaningless information near the end of the list, where they don't know what this 23 means in slot 85 etc.
Other known values may slowly increment over the lifetime of the drive, such as "head re-calibrations", "remaps", SMS head parks, max g forces experienced, etc. You'd have to compare their current values with their claimed limits to see how close each of these metrics is to causing overall smart to toggle to failed. Without knowing what the metric is, or what it's expected limit is, the numbers aren't useful.
The sectors you are talking about are often referred to as "remaps" (or "spares"), which is also used to describe the number of blocks that have been remapped. Strategies vary, but an off-the-cuff average would be around one available spare per 1000 allocatable blocks. Some firmware will only use a spare from the same track, other firmware will pull the next nearest available spare. (allowing an entire track to go south)
The more blocks they reserve for spares, the lower the total capacity count they can list, so they don't tend to be too generous. Besides, if your drive is burning through its spares at any substantial rate, doubling the number of spares on the drive won't actually end up buying you much time, and certainly won't save any data.
But with the hundreds of failing disks I've dealt with, when more than ~5 blocks have gone bad, the drive is heading out the door fast. Remaps only hide the problem at that point. If your drive has a single block fail when trying to write, it will be remapped silently and you won't ever see the problem unless you check the remap counter in smart. If it gets an unreadable block on a read operation, you will probably see an io error however. Some drives will immediately remap it, but most don't and will conduct the remap when you next try to write to that cell. (otherwise they'd have to return fictitious data, like all zeros)
So I don't particularly like automatic silent remaps. I'd rather know whean the drive first looks at me funny so I can make sure my backups are current and get a replacement on order, and swap it out before it can even think about getting worse. I prefer to replace a drive on MY terms, on MY schedule, not when it croaks and triggers any grade of crisis. There are legitimate excuses for downtime, but a slowly failing drive shouldn't be one of them.
All that said, on multiple occasions I've tried to cleanse a drive of IO errors by doing a full zero-it format. All decent OBCCs on drives should verify all writes, so in theory this should purge the drive of all IO errors, provided all available spares have not already been used. The last time I did this on a 1TB Hitachi that had ONE bad block on it, it still had one bad block (via read verify) when the format was done. The write operation did not trigger a remap, (and I presume it wasn't verified, as the format didn't fail) and I don't understand that. If it were out of remaps, the odds of it being ONE short of what it needed is essentially zero. So I wonder in reality just how many drive manufacturers aren't even bothering with remapping bad blocks. All I can attribute this to is crappy product / firmware design.
they'll likely add algorithms to compare similarity. Too high of a percentage will trigger a hit. or they will have a specific part of the design require an exact match. More likely though, they will use a combination of these two approaches - a nearly exact match (99.5%) on any of a number of small structures, OR a 95% overall match, trips it.
It will probably require the design files to be encrypted, and you have to request the key online. The DRM will be the firmware on the fab machine that handles the decrypted data in a protected way, similar to how bluray players and hdmi cables handle the decrypted video. This is not too difficult to implement, and would be somewhat effective, until someone "cracks" your design file and publishes it somewhere. So you could download the design file for free, then use an interface on your fab machine to pay for x copies to be made - it connects to the server specified in the design file, authenticates as a secure fab machine, sends your payment, and downloads a license file with the key and a use counter and stores it. That actually makes a lot of sense.
(Scenario: the fab file would be similar to bluray, the data is encrypted with a random key like the bluray title key, call it the ItemKey. when the fab machine has authenticated (over SSL) as a secure fabber to the manufacturer, they will send the ItemKey to it. The fab machine then encrypts the ItemKey along with the counter, using its own FabKey and appends it to the fab file. Then it can create a copy of the item when requested. It has access to the ItemKey and can decrement the CopyCounter each time a copy is fabbed. If you pull the hdd/etc out you can't tamper with or access the key or the counter because you don't have the FabKey, which is hidden in the fab machine's firmware. later if you decided you didn't need all 10 copies of the item, you could use the fabber's interface to "return" the 3 copies you didn't use, at 85% of original purchase price)
So this won't prevent a "warez" market for decrypted design files, and think that was their ultimate goal. Just a matter of hacking the fabber just like they hack the bluray players now. So they're left to flat out asking permission for ANYTHING, encrypted or not. But that's been found impossible on the computer. Imagine having to get online and connect to some central computer to get permission to run that new update to Firefox, or to run the application you just finished compiling. I don't think it would be any more tolerated with a fab machine. So they'll have to be content with just protecting encrypted content. Really, they'd be complete morons to try to trust unencrypted data once it's in someone else's physical control. Client-side-security always loses in the end. The bigger you bet on it, the more spectacular the fail that results.
We need more of these trigger-happy infringement notice filers to be held accountable. I get the impression that at this point they feel they can do no wrong, and will just fire off a takedown notice with no thought to the consequences. They need to learn that we won't stand for their abuse of the system.
Applying some of the teeth in the anti-abuse clause in the DMCA is the only way to change their attitude. These groups won't stop abusing the system until it starts affecting their bottom line.
(of all the things I've seen the EFF do lately, this is the one that I appreciate the most)
finally someone from my era, class of '90 here. My gradeschool actually got a couple apple ]['s when I was in 5th grade or so. The entire school was rotated through them, so you got to see them once every 3 weeks or so, for a 15 minute period, in a group of 4, so you only got to touch it about 4 minutes a month. More of a cameo than a point.
In 7th grade my math teacher got tired of my playing around with electronic stuff I brought from home during his studyhall and gave me the book that comes with the IIe's and it said I had to use what I'd learned. Pointed that out and was given an unlimited pass to go use the computers anytime they were available during a studyhall.
From that point forward I spent a LOT of time on those computers, learning them myself. Books from the library helped. By summer vacation I found that the local library had acquired a few IIe's for "check out", as in reserve an hour of time on them. I basically lived at the library during the summer. Got together with a group of other kids and we basically were a permanent fixture there.
By the time I got to high school, the computer teacher knew me and would not permit me to take Intro to Computers, so I jumped right into programming 1 which was pascal. I'd never seen it before, the compiler booted off floppy and flipped the disc to run. WIthin a month or so I had it running on one disc, displaying error messages instead of 'error #19' etc. Next semester was pascal 2 and by that point I knew more pascal than she did, so it was an "entertaining" class to say the least.
She didn't know what a library was, and I did. Well you know how teachers like to build on previous skills, so I just libraried previous projects and code. The final project for the semester was a "put it all together", which ended up being a seven line program, two of which were blank lines. Start. Open database. edit database. close database. end. Week long project done in 5 minutes. "Shouldn't you be working on your project? you only have a week". "I'm done." Demanded a printout. "Do you need to see the libraries? NO." "What is that, that can't run." ctrl-k to compile and it runs. She spent the next 10 minutes trying to make it crash, but I write bulletproof code. Too proud to backpedal and ask for the libraries. Had to give me an A. Good times.
By then I was proficient in 6502 assembly and was writing hybrid basic/assembly apps. At one point I wrote a new DOS that occupied two disk sectors, that was surprisingly useful. All I can do today is look back and think "I wish I knew on this computer even a fraction of the percentage of what I knew then on that computer." Today even with my high end knowledge I still feel surprisingly out of touch with the magic going on inside.
lack of transparency: complain about lack of transparency
transparency: complain about what you see
I'd much rather be able to see that my government is doing something I'd like to know more about, than to know that they're hiding something from me that's potentially of interest to me.
they're fairly cheap and good. Run on 4 C batteries or can be hooked directly to a car battery. Different models take different capacity SD cards. I have two for my birdfeeder. One takes bursts of 3 pics when the PIR detects movement, it uses a visible strobe for night time. The other is more up your alley, it uses a pir also, but can take picture bursts OR video, and uses a grid of 35 IR LEDs, range is about 35 feet. The IR leds are visible but only if you really are looking for them. I have a 16 gb SD card in the video one, which is more than it says it supports, but you have to format it carefully for it to use it to full capacity.
Hunters strap them to trees, there's slots on them for that. There's also a locking latch to access the controls, battery, and sd card, but it's not really going to help much if they really want to take the evidence. Just camo it lightly and you'll be fine. I'd recommend getting two, one to watch the dumping area and one to watch the road (to try to get a plate #)
I'd bet it can technically cope with the loss of more than one engine, but may not have the thrust required to get to the necessary orbit. I don't know to what extent they can lengthen the burns to compensate for lost thrust earlier in the ascent.
I was also wondering what happens if there's a more catastrophic failure in the center engine. (being 9 engines in a 3x3 group) You'd think a failure there could cause problems for the surrounding engines moreso than if one of the outer engines went. The way the fairing shed, what would happen if that fairing sprayed out and damaged the fairing on several other engines? I wonder if they handle that engine any differently? Higher quality control for example? The odds of getting orbit if you lose one outer engine is probably different than if you lose the middle one. But it wouldn't require so much adjustment for course, so maybe the two factors balance out? And makes me wonder what sort of armor they have around the engines to protect them from each other in such an event?
Other thing of course is, if you lose two engines adjacent to each other. The way the fairing shed, and in the case of an explosion, there's significant risk of damage to adjacent engines. That may simply cause an imbalance that's difficult or impossible to manage while still making assigned orbit. (may have to dial down the opposing engines so far to balance the thrust, that you don't have sufficient total thrust to do what you need to?)
I don't see how a country with such a large workforce can have any traction in a strike? Foxconn is a huge employer over there. Their working conditions are what most westerners would describe as "sweatshops", but then so are 95% of the rest of the manufacturing plants over there, so despite being unusual for "us", it's not at all uncommon for "them".
I wonder how long it takes for Foxconn to find another 4,000 workers willing to do the job for the pay? I simply can't believe that any of those employees weren't fully aware of what was and could be asked of them. They just want more pay for what's probably more work, and certainly longer work weeks. But if there are three people lined up behind you waiting to do that job for that pay the moment you turn your back, a strike doesn't seem like a good idea.
Strikes and unions just don't make sense for unskilled labor. And just because it's electronics doesn't make it skilled - if you're doing something that could be replaced with a robotic arm, it's not "skilled", skilled refers to mental skills, not physical.
I wish I had more insight into this "chinese holiday" thing though. I get the impression they take it a lot more seriously than we're giving them credit for. I see a lot of the chinese stores going on holiday all at once, it's obviously a widespread thing, maybe that five day vacation is their unwind time for the rest of the year in the sweatshop? In that case I think I can start to understand where it becomes a big deal. Kinda stupid of Apple to expect them to launch a new production line at that time, they had to see that one coming. I would expect them to have had a conversation with foxconn, "can you DO this?" And foxconn either adding a premium to the cost during that time, or sniveling and saying they'll make it happen, to keep their biggest customer. Oh to be a fly on the wall...
I don't get far enough into it to know what wavelength I need - something that people and animals can't see but (unfiltered) B&W digicams can see. I have a wildlife cam right now that uses a grid of 35 IR LEDs to illuminate for taking video, that works surprisingly well. It lights up well to about 25 feet but I'd like to do better.
But I also have a 1 million candle spotlight with a handmade IR filtering glass cover. Got REALLY lucky at a local glass shop, we dug through their scrap bin with a night vision monocular and a little IR LED on some batteries to see what was transparent, and found a single corner of completely black glass that was totally IR transparent. Made a 9" cover for the big light as well as a couple little covers for my maglights. Those covers are normally pretty expensive, I did finally find a military grade one for my spotlight later but it was $25, that scrap of glass was I think $4 and a friend cut it for free. Only problem with these is they get HOT fast and would probably shatter if I tried to use them for any length of time.
Shine that 1mil at you and you can see a dull red glow, but can FEEL the heat on your face, and it'll make your eyes water for no apparent reason. (probably not so good on the eyes either) Works very well as a floodlight for using a night vision monocular or many (even IR filtered) cameras, due to it's high output. Would like to find something a little more reasonable and portable though. Like changing that emitter in the above link to an IR module.
Energy production tends to be more efficient and easier to mange pollution on when it's on a larger scale. When you have a random spread of vehicles between good new (low pollution, 35mpg) and say, MINE at 12mpg, the average pollution and inefficiency per mile is easily overcome by changing those fossil fuels into electricity in bulk at a power plant, and charging vehicles to drive.
Efficiency and pollution controls on all those individual cars is just a lot less effective and cheap than it is even at your local coal burning plant. So while yes, you are moving the pollution, I think you're also reducing it at the same time. Increasing efficiency also reduces pollution, less energy has to be produced (with the pollution it creates) when efficiency (both in production and use) is improved.
Actually, in areas where I'm not an authority, I DO tend to rely on wikipedia, documentaries, and science articles I've read much more than a 3rd party account of some random person that's a tech in a completely unrelated area. High end gardeners are more likely to know about radiation than random HP techs.
And I was just pointing out one specific unusual exception to the "hollywood science" rule with Kahn there. Just sayin' you're going to pick up more accurate information on this topic from that movie than your "expert". And that's entertaining.
the alleged rights holder must abandon the claim or file an official takedown notice under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.' (A false takedown claim under the DMCA can result in non-trivial legal liability.)
Though if they do file a counter-counter-claim, it'd still get taken down unjustly if you didn't have the money to buy back your justice with a lawyer. At least this will reduce the abuse of the system.
It's for reasons like this that I am occasionally happy to see processes get abused, publicly, to a degree that triggers change.
I hear you. I remember when blue LEDs were $8 each, and white were $5 each.
UV are popping up all over the place lately too. Everyone's selling little "cat piss finder" mini flashlights.
Now if you want some cheap white LEDs, buy a cheapo $4 trouble light that has 35 in it.
I still would like to find some POWERFUL IR LEDs. I'm surprised with all the 3W etc white flashlight LEDs they have out now that nobody is selling an IR module at that wattage for night vision illumination. At least none that I've seen. I just ran across a 35w single LED outdoor flood light today for $20. That would be an awesome night vision area light if it were IR. For now the cheapest way to do high power IR is to use an IR filter over a visible light. I got extremely lucky at a glass shop finding a piece of black glass in the scrap bin that was IR transparent, but you have to watch your temps even with glass.
Actually you know what, I take that back. There IS one reasonably accurate hollywood example. Star Trek - Wrath of Kahn. Spock's death by radiation exposure is probably the most clinically-accuarte portrayal of very intense radiation exposure to hit the big screen. He wore gloves so we didn't get to see him peel his skin off his hands trying to open the container. You got to see his voice getting horse, difficulty seeing, disorientation, skin blistering, and not 'dropping dead' the second he popped the cap. Tho he did go a bit faster than he should have, but at least they put in a little effort for authenticity. When I watched that I was thinking he ought to only last 20-30 minutes or so but of course I had no frame of reference on actual radiation type and dose;)
Your "HP Tech" may have been referring to having received a fatal dose by the time you got to the rod. But if he was actually implying you'd drop dead before getting to the rod, he bought too far into someone's fantasy.
An HP tech explained to me once that if you placed a spent fuel bundle on a football field, and ran towards it as fast as you could, you would drop dead before you could touch it.
And that is complete BS btw. See subject.
MOST of the damage radiation does effectively fires a shotgun through your DNA, causing your cells to be unable to synthesize critical proteins and of course divide. Cells don't manufacture proteins the moment they need them, they keep a surplus. That's why even strong radiation isn't instant. It doesn't cause your organs to liquify or your blood to evaporate. Most often it just puts a lot of your cells within days, hours, or tens of minutes of cell death. Your body will still continue to function physically until too many cells have died. And even then it won't be "drop dead", your body will just start to wind down. It'll be more like "wow this is exhausting" followed by "I think I need to lie down for a minute" and then you don't have the strength to stand back up etc.
Radiation death is only going to approach "instant" if it makes a VERY severe hit on your nervous system. Even then unless it's incredibly intense t's more likely to make you dizzy and nauseated within a few minutes. If you start hurling within a few minutes of exposure, you'd better have a pencil and paper handy for your note to mom, and get busy while you can still write legibly. That's as intense as it usually gets, short of being at hiroshima etc. But then those people were dead instantly not due to radioactive decay, but due to exposure to face-melting xrays and thermal blast.
"They would be dead before getting out the door with it."
My initial reaction to this is "this isn't Hollywood, where two 9mm bullets makes a car explode." Radiation in fatal doses takes at leas hours and usually days or weeks to kill you. If it's extremely high it could give you a pounding headache, dizzy, very sick to your stomach, or possibly even pass out. But if you got to that point quickly you'd have been many times over the fatal dose. A high enough dose of xrays can knock you unconscious, but even that requires a more energetic source than decay.
Basically what I'm saying is radiation poisoning isn't instant. All but the most intense exposure will simply write your death sentence. It will take at least many hours to play out and actually stop you from breathing. You could probably swim down and grab a rod and try to muscle it to the surface. (it's very dense) By the time you got to the surface you might even be starting to show signs of blistering on your hand that is holding the rod, but even that is more likely to be in the 10 minute range. The heat the rod is producing without the water cooling it would probably be more of a bother for you. If it was radioactive enough, you'd be a dead man walking, but walking for sure, for awhile. (and setting off every radiation alarm you got near on your way out the door with the rod) Oh, and it might be messing with your vision when you got close to the rods. Some of the people that were cleaning up at chernobyl got their skin tingling and got to see the "fairy lights" sparkling around them, which had nothing to do with actual sparkles around them, it was messing with their nervous system at that point. A lot of those people died, a good chunk of them 2-20 weeks later.
Todays green lasers aren't UV based. They work directly from a diode. LED is much more efficient than gas lasers.
Half credit for each of us. T'was not UV, they're using IR, and doubling it, not halving it. I'm not talking about gas lasers. There is currently no known semiconductor that will 'laze at a green light wavelength.
Wikipedia has some good material on green lasers.
A frequency-doubled green laser pointer, showing internal construction. Two AAA cells and electronics power the laser module (lower diagram) This contains a powerful 808 nm IR diode laser that optically pumps a Nd:YVO4 crystal inside a laser cavity. That laser produces 1064 nm (infrared) light which is mainly confined inside the resonator. Also inside the laser cavity, however, is a non-linear KTP crystal which causes frequency doubling, resulting in green light at 532 nm. The front mirror is transparent to this visible wavelength which is then expanded and collimated using two lenses (in this particular design).
These lasers are also commonly frequency doubled, tripled or quadrupled, in so-called "diode pumped solid state" or DPSS lasers. Under second, third, or fourth harmonic generation these produce 532 nm (green, visible), 355 nm and 266 nm (UV) beams. This is the technology behind the bright laser pointers particularly at green (532 nm) and other short visible wavelengths.
hmmm guess they recently figured out more than just doubling too.
Last time I read up more on them (few years ago) the green lasers were really inefficient because the Ytterbium crystal had a poor conversion factor, so they had to dump in a LOT of IR to get out a little green. But my $156 green laser pointer now goes for about $12 so guess they figured it out huh.
I'm no optics expert so a lot of the advanced physics of lens flare give me a bit of a whoosh, but from what I've read the flare isn't a single pass issue. It's a matter of light bouncing back and forth at weird angles between lenses and covers etc in the optics, creating interference patterns that show up later. (and is a bigger problem when lenses are at near parallel angles or when there is a strong light source at the edge of an optic) So this doesn't necessarily have to originate at the color wavelength that's showing up. It could for example be starting out as UV or IR light and getting mixed down to this tint we're seeing. Think of how green lasers get their green by taking UV light and mixing it down by passing it through a crystal, maybe something like that is going on with the sapphire? *shrugs*
I see a software update coming that will detect the lens flare, and correct it out.
Color correction maybe, but not flare, you can't really do much with a picture when the yutz that took it decided to include the SUN somewhere in the frame, particularly around the edge, that's just asking for it.
It wouldn't surprise me though if they added something that identifies flares and goes in and neutralizes the purple on it a bit, giving the more natural and expected white flare.
From the actual camera site reviews it looks like the flaring is the same on the 5, but it's just causing more purple tinting of the usual white flare, which people are noticing more. Many are saying this has nothing to do with the sapphire lens covers they're using, but something's got to be causing the tint. Flares themselves will be purely the color of the flare source (white usually) unless altered by the material that's leading to the flare.
Compare the two pictures taken. With the 4 they had the sun edging right up next to the frame but not IN the frame. Then with the 5 they actually had a bit of the sun IN the frame. It's no wonder the 5 got a huge amount of lens flare. It's very difficult to include the sun in a picture and not get a nasty flare, especially on an edge like that. Compare the position of the grey sidewalk and the tree tops in the two pictures too... the shots were placed and zoomed differently. Complete loss of control on other variables in the comparison.
The important issue here has been the color of the flare - the 4's was more white and the 5's is more purple. But that "example" is completely misleading due to important other differences between the two shots. But I suppose that's just "sensational journalism" at work.
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Problem there is that evidence was (considering the source) almost certainly obtained through illegal action. (hacking) This cause three immediate problems. 1. most legal systems spoil evidence that has been obtained through illegal actions, 2. it may make assembling an unspoiled jury (that has not been exposed to the tainted evidence) difficult, and 3. it may make the same evidence, obtained through legal means, more difficult or impossible to bring to court.
The laws concerning spoilage of evidence are made to protect the innocent, but are most frequently called upon to protect the guilty. That's the unfortunate part of it. To protect the 1% of the innocent, the 99% of the guilty must go free. Love it or hate it? You'll probably hate it, until you're the 1%.
the xbox's walled garden makes a good statement about what MS does with walled gardens. drives the devs insane. charging devs to push updates. good idea! lets discourage bug fixes and updates! *sigh*
SMART is implemented in different ways by different manufacturers. The idea is that the host can ask the peripheral "what value does slot xx contain?" This can refer to an instantaneous condition, such as the temperature of the hard drive, a static value such as how many spares are currently available, a semidynamic value such as is this hard drive failing, and a dynamic value such as how many remap operations have occurred. There's a short list of "basic/standard" values, and then there's the "extended/optional" metrics that not all devices need to support. Each smart slot will also specify the min and max values. If any smart slot has a value outside its allowed range, overall smart status will report as failing. Once a drive toggles over to failing, there's no going back, unless you figure out a way to reset the counters.
One of the standard set is the "is the hard drive failing" metric. It allows the host to get a simple yes/no answer to summarize whether any of the metrics have gone beyond their tolerated values. For example, one drive I worked with recently was allowed to overtemp twice. If it had experienced a third overtemp during its lifetime, the drive would then permanently fail the overall test. This allows the host to "check smart status" without really having to think much about what it's doing. This is the basic test that most modern OS's check to see if a hard drive needs to be replaced. You usually need to run a special tool to check individual values being returned by smart. These tools need to have a list of what each slot means, and often will report fairly meaningless information near the end of the list, where they don't know what this 23 means in slot 85 etc.
Other known values may slowly increment over the lifetime of the drive, such as "head re-calibrations", "remaps", SMS head parks, max g forces experienced, etc. You'd have to compare their current values with their claimed limits to see how close each of these metrics is to causing overall smart to toggle to failed. Without knowing what the metric is, or what it's expected limit is, the numbers aren't useful.
The sectors you are talking about are often referred to as "remaps" (or "spares"), which is also used to describe the number of blocks that have been remapped. Strategies vary, but an off-the-cuff average would be around one available spare per 1000 allocatable blocks. Some firmware will only use a spare from the same track, other firmware will pull the next nearest available spare. (allowing an entire track to go south)
The more blocks they reserve for spares, the lower the total capacity count they can list, so they don't tend to be too generous. Besides, if your drive is burning through its spares at any substantial rate, doubling the number of spares on the drive won't actually end up buying you much time, and certainly won't save any data.
But with the hundreds of failing disks I've dealt with, when more than ~5 blocks have gone bad, the drive is heading out the door fast. Remaps only hide the problem at that point. If your drive has a single block fail when trying to write, it will be remapped silently and you won't ever see the problem unless you check the remap counter in smart. If it gets an unreadable block on a read operation, you will probably see an io error however. Some drives will immediately remap it, but most don't and will conduct the remap when you next try to write to that cell. (otherwise they'd have to return fictitious data, like all zeros)
So I don't particularly like automatic silent remaps. I'd rather know whean the drive first looks at me funny so I can make sure my backups are current and get a replacement on order, and swap it out before it can even think about getting worse. I prefer to replace a drive on MY terms, on MY schedule, not when it croaks and triggers any grade of crisis. There are legitimate excuses for downtime, but a slowly failing drive shouldn't be one of them.
All that said, on multiple occasions I've tried to cleanse a drive of IO errors by doing a full zero-it format. All decent OBCCs on drives should verify all writes, so in theory this should purge the drive of all IO errors, provided all available spares have not already been used. The last time I did this on a 1TB Hitachi that had ONE bad block on it, it still had one bad block (via read verify) when the format was done. The write operation did not trigger a remap, (and I presume it wasn't verified, as the format didn't fail) and I don't understand that. If it were out of remaps, the odds of it being ONE short of what it needed is essentially zero. So I wonder in reality just how many drive manufacturers aren't even bothering with remapping bad blocks. All I can attribute this to is crappy product / firmware design.
they'll likely add algorithms to compare similarity. Too high of a percentage will trigger a hit. or they will have a specific part of the design require an exact match. More likely though, they will use a combination of these two approaches - a nearly exact match (99.5%) on any of a number of small structures, OR a 95% overall match, trips it.
It will probably require the design files to be encrypted, and you have to request the key online. The DRM will be the firmware on the fab machine that handles the decrypted data in a protected way, similar to how bluray players and hdmi cables handle the decrypted video. This is not too difficult to implement, and would be somewhat effective, until someone "cracks" your design file and publishes it somewhere. So you could download the design file for free, then use an interface on your fab machine to pay for x copies to be made - it connects to the server specified in the design file, authenticates as a secure fab machine, sends your payment, and downloads a license file with the key and a use counter and stores it. That actually makes a lot of sense.
(Scenario: the fab file would be similar to bluray, the data is encrypted with a random key like the bluray title key, call it the ItemKey. when the fab machine has authenticated (over SSL) as a secure fabber to the manufacturer, they will send the ItemKey to it. The fab machine then encrypts the ItemKey along with the counter, using its own FabKey and appends it to the fab file. Then it can create a copy of the item when requested. It has access to the ItemKey and can decrement the CopyCounter each time a copy is fabbed. If you pull the hdd/etc out you can't tamper with or access the key or the counter because you don't have the FabKey, which is hidden in the fab machine's firmware. later if you decided you didn't need all 10 copies of the item, you could use the fabber's interface to "return" the 3 copies you didn't use, at 85% of original purchase price)
So this won't prevent a "warez" market for decrypted design files, and think that was their ultimate goal. Just a matter of hacking the fabber just like they hack the bluray players now. So they're left to flat out asking permission for ANYTHING, encrypted or not. But that's been found impossible on the computer. Imagine having to get online and connect to some central computer to get permission to run that new update to Firefox, or to run the application you just finished compiling. I don't think it would be any more tolerated with a fab machine. So they'll have to be content with just protecting encrypted content. Really, they'd be complete morons to try to trust unencrypted data once it's in someone else's physical control. Client-side-security always loses in the end. The bigger you bet on it, the more spectacular the fail that results.
We need more of these trigger-happy infringement notice filers to be held accountable. I get the impression that at this point they feel they can do no wrong, and will just fire off a takedown notice with no thought to the consequences. They need to learn that we won't stand for their abuse of the system.
Applying some of the teeth in the anti-abuse clause in the DMCA is the only way to change their attitude. These groups won't stop abusing the system until it starts affecting their bottom line.
(of all the things I've seen the EFF do lately, this is the one that I appreciate the most)
So they don't want to tell the public about the laws they are looking to pass, because the public won't like them?
They sure have balls to say that. Now I hope they're exposed enough for someone over there to kick them, nice and hard.
finally someone from my era, class of '90 here. My gradeschool actually got a couple apple ]['s when I was in 5th grade or so. The entire school was rotated through them, so you got to see them once every 3 weeks or so, for a 15 minute period, in a group of 4, so you only got to touch it about 4 minutes a month. More of a cameo than a point.
In 7th grade my math teacher got tired of my playing around with electronic stuff I brought from home during his studyhall and gave me the book that comes with the IIe's and it said I had to use what I'd learned. Pointed that out and was given an unlimited pass to go use the computers anytime they were available during a studyhall.
From that point forward I spent a LOT of time on those computers, learning them myself. Books from the library helped. By summer vacation I found that the local library had acquired a few IIe's for "check out", as in reserve an hour of time on them. I basically lived at the library during the summer. Got together with a group of other kids and we basically were a permanent fixture there.
By the time I got to high school, the computer teacher knew me and would not permit me to take Intro to Computers, so I jumped right into programming 1 which was pascal. I'd never seen it before, the compiler booted off floppy and flipped the disc to run. WIthin a month or so I had it running on one disc, displaying error messages instead of 'error #19' etc. Next semester was pascal 2 and by that point I knew more pascal than she did, so it was an "entertaining" class to say the least.
She didn't know what a library was, and I did. Well you know how teachers like to build on previous skills, so I just libraried previous projects and code. The final project for the semester was a "put it all together", which ended up being a seven line program, two of which were blank lines. Start. Open database. edit database. close database. end. Week long project done in 5 minutes. "Shouldn't you be working on your project? you only have a week". "I'm done." Demanded a printout. "Do you need to see the libraries? NO." "What is that, that can't run." ctrl-k to compile and it runs. She spent the next 10 minutes trying to make it crash, but I write bulletproof code. Too proud to backpedal and ask for the libraries. Had to give me an A. Good times.
By then I was proficient in 6502 assembly and was writing hybrid basic/assembly apps. At one point I wrote a new DOS that occupied two disk sectors, that was surprisingly useful. All I can do today is look back and think "I wish I knew on this computer even a fraction of the percentage of what I knew then on that computer." Today even with my high end knowledge I still feel surprisingly out of touch with the magic going on inside.
lack of transparency: complain about lack of transparency
transparency: complain about what you see
I'd much rather be able to see that my government is doing something I'd like to know more about, than to know that they're hiding something from me that's potentially of interest to me.
http://www.google.com/search?q=wildview+cameras&hl=en&safe=off&client=safari&rls=en&prmd=imvns&source=univ&tbm=shop&tbo=u&sa=X&ei=wV90ULPTFNGgyAHboYCwAw&ved=0CDgQsxg&biw=1441&bih=902
they're fairly cheap and good. Run on 4 C batteries or can be hooked directly to a car battery. Different models take different capacity SD cards. I have two for my birdfeeder. One takes bursts of 3 pics when the PIR detects movement, it uses a visible strobe for night time. The other is more up your alley, it uses a pir also, but can take picture bursts OR video, and uses a grid of 35 IR LEDs, range is about 35 feet. The IR leds are visible but only if you really are looking for them. I have a 16 gb SD card in the video one, which is more than it says it supports, but you have to format it carefully for it to use it to full capacity.
Hunters strap them to trees, there's slots on them for that. There's also a locking latch to access the controls, battery, and sd card, but it's not really going to help much if they really want to take the evidence. Just camo it lightly and you'll be fine. I'd recommend getting two, one to watch the dumping area and one to watch the road (to try to get a plate #)
Resolution varies depending on model.
I'd bet it can technically cope with the loss of more than one engine, but may not have the thrust required to get to the necessary orbit. I don't know to what extent they can lengthen the burns to compensate for lost thrust earlier in the ascent.
I was also wondering what happens if there's a more catastrophic failure in the center engine. (being 9 engines in a 3x3 group) You'd think a failure there could cause problems for the surrounding engines moreso than if one of the outer engines went. The way the fairing shed, what would happen if that fairing sprayed out and damaged the fairing on several other engines? I wonder if they handle that engine any differently? Higher quality control for example? The odds of getting orbit if you lose one outer engine is probably different than if you lose the middle one. But it wouldn't require so much adjustment for course, so maybe the two factors balance out? And makes me wonder what sort of armor they have around the engines to protect them from each other in such an event?
Other thing of course is, if you lose two engines adjacent to each other. The way the fairing shed, and in the case of an explosion, there's significant risk of damage to adjacent engines. That may simply cause an imbalance that's difficult or impossible to manage while still making assigned orbit. (may have to dial down the opposing engines so far to balance the thrust, that you don't have sufficient total thrust to do what you need to?)
I don't see how a country with such a large workforce can have any traction in a strike? Foxconn is a huge employer over there. Their working conditions are what most westerners would describe as "sweatshops", but then so are 95% of the rest of the manufacturing plants over there, so despite being unusual for "us", it's not at all uncommon for "them".
I wonder how long it takes for Foxconn to find another 4,000 workers willing to do the job for the pay? I simply can't believe that any of those employees weren't fully aware of what was and could be asked of them. They just want more pay for what's probably more work, and certainly longer work weeks. But if there are three people lined up behind you waiting to do that job for that pay the moment you turn your back, a strike doesn't seem like a good idea.
Strikes and unions just don't make sense for unskilled labor. And just because it's electronics doesn't make it skilled - if you're doing something that could be replaced with a robotic arm, it's not "skilled", skilled refers to mental skills, not physical.
I wish I had more insight into this "chinese holiday" thing though. I get the impression they take it a lot more seriously than we're giving them credit for. I see a lot of the chinese stores going on holiday all at once, it's obviously a widespread thing, maybe that five day vacation is their unwind time for the rest of the year in the sweatshop? In that case I think I can start to understand where it becomes a big deal. Kinda stupid of Apple to expect them to launch a new production line at that time, they had to see that one coming. I would expect them to have had a conversation with foxconn, "can you DO this?" And foxconn either adding a premium to the cost during that time, or sniveling and saying they'll make it happen, to keep their biggest customer. Oh to be a fly on the wall...
Here's a quick example of an external single module LED floodlight that's visible.
http://product.madeinchina.com/Waterproof-Outside10W-LED-Light-HighPower-Flood_13240088.shtml
I don't get far enough into it to know what wavelength I need - something that people and animals can't see but (unfiltered) B&W digicams can see. I have a wildlife cam right now that uses a grid of 35 IR LEDs to illuminate for taking video, that works surprisingly well. It lights up well to about 25 feet but I'd like to do better.
But I also have a 1 million candle spotlight with a handmade IR filtering glass cover. Got REALLY lucky at a local glass shop, we dug through their scrap bin with a night vision monocular and a little IR LED on some batteries to see what was transparent, and found a single corner of completely black glass that was totally IR transparent. Made a 9" cover for the big light as well as a couple little covers for my maglights. Those covers are normally pretty expensive, I did finally find a military grade one for my spotlight later but it was $25, that scrap of glass was I think $4 and a friend cut it for free. Only problem with these is they get HOT fast and would probably shatter if I tried to use them for any length of time.
Shine that 1mil at you and you can see a dull red glow, but can FEEL the heat on your face, and it'll make your eyes water for no apparent reason. (probably not so good on the eyes either) Works very well as a floodlight for using a night vision monocular or many (even IR filtered) cameras, due to it's high output. Would like to find something a little more reasonable and portable though. Like changing that emitter in the above link to an IR module.
Energy production tends to be more efficient and easier to mange pollution on when it's on a larger scale. When you have a random spread of vehicles between good new (low pollution, 35mpg) and say, MINE at 12mpg, the average pollution and inefficiency per mile is easily overcome by changing those fossil fuels into electricity in bulk at a power plant, and charging vehicles to drive.
Efficiency and pollution controls on all those individual cars is just a lot less effective and cheap than it is even at your local coal burning plant. So while yes, you are moving the pollution, I think you're also reducing it at the same time. Increasing efficiency also reduces pollution, less energy has to be produced (with the pollution it creates) when efficiency (both in production and use) is improved.
Actually, in areas where I'm not an authority, I DO tend to rely on wikipedia, documentaries, and science articles I've read much more than a 3rd party account of some random person that's a tech in a completely unrelated area. High end gardeners are more likely to know about radiation than random HP techs.
And I was just pointing out one specific unusual exception to the "hollywood science" rule with Kahn there. Just sayin' you're going to pick up more accurate information on this topic from that movie than your "expert". And that's entertaining.
Though if they do file a counter-counter-claim, it'd still get taken down unjustly if you didn't have the money to buy back your justice with a lawyer. At least this will reduce the abuse of the system.
It's for reasons like this that I am occasionally happy to see processes get abused, publicly, to a degree that triggers change.
I hear you. I remember when blue LEDs were $8 each, and white were $5 each.
UV are popping up all over the place lately too. Everyone's selling little "cat piss finder" mini flashlights.
Now if you want some cheap white LEDs, buy a cheapo $4 trouble light that has 35 in it.
I still would like to find some POWERFUL IR LEDs. I'm surprised with all the 3W etc white flashlight LEDs they have out now that nobody is selling an IR module at that wattage for night vision illumination. At least none that I've seen. I just ran across a 35w single LED outdoor flood light today for $20. That would be an awesome night vision area light if it were IR. For now the cheapest way to do high power IR is to use an IR filter over a visible light. I got extremely lucky at a glass shop finding a piece of black glass in the scrap bin that was IR transparent, but you have to watch your temps even with glass.
Actually you know what, I take that back. There IS one reasonably accurate hollywood example. Star Trek - Wrath of Kahn. Spock's death by radiation exposure is probably the most clinically-accuarte portrayal of very intense radiation exposure to hit the big screen. He wore gloves so we didn't get to see him peel his skin off his hands trying to open the container. You got to see his voice getting horse, difficulty seeing, disorientation, skin blistering, and not 'dropping dead' the second he popped the cap. Tho he did go a bit faster than he should have, but at least they put in a little effort for authenticity. When I watched that I was thinking he ought to only last 20-30 minutes or so but of course I had no frame of reference on actual radiation type and dose ;)
Your "HP Tech" may have been referring to having received a fatal dose by the time you got to the rod. But if he was actually implying you'd drop dead before getting to the rod, he bought too far into someone's fantasy.
And that is complete BS btw. See subject.
MOST of the damage radiation does effectively fires a shotgun through your DNA, causing your cells to be unable to synthesize critical proteins and of course divide. Cells don't manufacture proteins the moment they need them, they keep a surplus. That's why even strong radiation isn't instant. It doesn't cause your organs to liquify or your blood to evaporate. Most often it just puts a lot of your cells within days, hours, or tens of minutes of cell death. Your body will still continue to function physically until too many cells have died. And even then it won't be "drop dead", your body will just start to wind down. It'll be more like "wow this is exhausting" followed by "I think I need to lie down for a minute" and then you don't have the strength to stand back up etc.
Radiation death is only going to approach "instant" if it makes a VERY severe hit on your nervous system. Even then unless it's incredibly intense t's more likely to make you dizzy and nauseated within a few minutes. If you start hurling within a few minutes of exposure, you'd better have a pencil and paper handy for your note to mom, and get busy while you can still write legibly. That's as intense as it usually gets, short of being at hiroshima etc. But then those people were dead instantly not due to radioactive decay, but due to exposure to face-melting xrays and thermal blast.
that certainly explains why they've gotten so cheap recently.
My initial reaction to this is "this isn't Hollywood, where two 9mm bullets makes a car explode." Radiation in fatal doses takes at leas hours and usually days or weeks to kill you. If it's extremely high it could give you a pounding headache, dizzy, very sick to your stomach, or possibly even pass out. But if you got to that point quickly you'd have been many times over the fatal dose. A high enough dose of xrays can knock you unconscious, but even that requires a more energetic source than decay.
Basically what I'm saying is radiation poisoning isn't instant. All but the most intense exposure will simply write your death sentence. It will take at least many hours to play out and actually stop you from breathing. You could probably swim down and grab a rod and try to muscle it to the surface. (it's very dense) By the time you got to the surface you might even be starting to show signs of blistering on your hand that is holding the rod, but even that is more likely to be in the 10 minute range. The heat the rod is producing without the water cooling it would probably be more of a bother for you. If it was radioactive enough, you'd be a dead man walking, but walking for sure, for awhile. (and setting off every radiation alarm you got near on your way out the door with the rod) Oh, and it might be messing with your vision when you got close to the rods. Some of the people that were cleaning up at chernobyl got their skin tingling and got to see the "fairy lights" sparkling around them, which had nothing to do with actual sparkles around them, it was messing with their nervous system at that point. A lot of those people died, a good chunk of them 2-20 weeks later.
Half credit for each of us. T'was not UV, they're using IR, and doubling it, not halving it. I'm not talking about gas lasers. There is currently no known semiconductor that will 'laze at a green light wavelength.
Wikipedia has some good material on green lasers.
hmmm guess they recently figured out more than just doubling too.
Last time I read up more on them (few years ago) the green lasers were really inefficient because the Ytterbium crystal had a poor conversion factor, so they had to dump in a LOT of IR to get out a little green. But my $156 green laser pointer now goes for about $12 so guess they figured it out huh.
I'm no optics expert so a lot of the advanced physics of lens flare give me a bit of a whoosh, but from what I've read the flare isn't a single pass issue. It's a matter of light bouncing back and forth at weird angles between lenses and covers etc in the optics, creating interference patterns that show up later. (and is a bigger problem when lenses are at near parallel angles or when there is a strong light source at the edge of an optic) So this doesn't necessarily have to originate at the color wavelength that's showing up. It could for example be starting out as UV or IR light and getting mixed down to this tint we're seeing. Think of how green lasers get their green by taking UV light and mixing it down by passing it through a crystal, maybe something like that is going on with the sapphire? *shrugs*
Color correction maybe, but not flare, you can't really do much with a picture when the yutz that took it decided to include the SUN somewhere in the frame, particularly around the edge, that's just asking for it.
It wouldn't surprise me though if they added something that identifies flares and goes in and neutralizes the purple on it a bit, giving the more natural and expected white flare.
From the actual camera site reviews it looks like the flaring is the same on the 5, but it's just causing more purple tinting of the usual white flare, which people are noticing more. Many are saying this has nothing to do with the sapphire lens covers they're using, but something's got to be causing the tint. Flares themselves will be purely the color of the flare source (white usually) unless altered by the material that's leading to the flare.
Compare the two pictures taken. With the 4 they had the sun edging right up next to the frame but not IN the frame. Then with the 5 they actually had a bit of the sun IN the frame. It's no wonder the 5 got a huge amount of lens flare. It's very difficult to include the sun in a picture and not get a nasty flare, especially on an edge like that. Compare the position of the grey sidewalk and the tree tops in the two pictures too... the shots were placed and zoomed differently. Complete loss of control on other variables in the comparison.
The important issue here has been the color of the flare - the 4's was more white and the 5's is more purple. But that "example" is completely misleading due to important other differences between the two shots. But I suppose that's just "sensational journalism" at work.