Why? HDDs don't have that advantage today, I don't see why they would in the future. Don't confuse current chassis size and capacities for what is technologically possible. There's nothing stopping somebody from making a 4TB 3.5" SSD today (or even more, 8TB wouldn't be impossible) except for economics (they'd be crazy expensive) and performance (controllers have a fixed number of channels, putting several times more NAND would be slower than a comparable amount of storage in multiple drives).
Thing is, everything else doesn't have to follow Moore's Law - spinning rust has been growing faster than Moore's Law for a little while now.
Have they been? WD announced 2TB drives in early January 2009. WD announced 4TB drives in late November 2012. That's a period of 34.5 months to double capacity, and launch pricing was roughly $400 in both cases.
Moore's Law as it is currently accepted says we should see doublings every 18-24 months (18 months is for doubled performance, 24 months is for doubled transistor count), so it's clear that HDDs are improving at a rate much slower than Moore's Law, not faster as you claim.
SSDs, on the other hand... The Intel x25-m came out in late 2008 at an MSRP of $1,190 for the 160GB model. Today I've seen the Intel 330 180GB as low as $90. Per-gig, that's $7.4375/GB -> $0.50/GB, or 14.875x improvement in price.
That's 3.9 doublings over the course of 4 years. So SSDs are improving much faster than Moore's law, while HDDs are improving much slower than Moore's law.
Without significant changes in the improvement rates, SSDs will become cheaper per-gig than HDDs in less than four years.
Except they're already dropped lower than $0.90/GB on sales.
When I bought my first SSD, an Intel x25-m G1, I paid $700 for a 160GB drive ($4.375/GB) I recently saw the Intel 330 180GB on sale for $90 ($0.50/GB)
So if we compare to a regular drive, like say a 2TB WD Black for $180, we get (90/180) / (180/2000) = 5.6x
So we've already gotten to 5.6x, which is pretty impressive! Compared to 4TB drives, it's actually at 5x flat.
The price of SSDs is dropping much faster than the capacity of HDDs is improving (otherwise the ratio wouldn't be decreasing). Considering that my first SSD something like three ago was ~49x (or worse, HDDs were cheaper before the flood) and now it's down to under 6x, I don't see why you'd think it will be years before SSDs are affordable for bulk storage...
Quebec is neither a country (but a province of Canada) nor densely populated (5.24 people per square kilometer on average). The last bit is because most people live in large cities, and the vast majority of Quebec is uninhabited. Most people live about a thousand kilometers away from the place the power is generated.
Meh. Quebec has been producing pretty close to 100% of its power from renewable resources for like a century (HydroQuebec itself is only ~7 decades old). Quebec has a larger population than Scotland, and particularly during the winter, much higher electricity usage. And Quebec also produces a great deal more than it needs, since it sells a ton to surrounding provinces/states. Something like a third of all of Vermont's power is supplied by HydroQuebec. Which makes sense, since HydroQuebec is the single largest producer of hydroelectric power in the world.
It's worth noting that the LDP has been in control of Japan for roughly 53 of the past 57 years. There is obviously a pretty high tolerance for what they do to keep getting re-elected when they've formed the government in the Diet except for two segments...
Having much tighter gun control hasn't stopped school shootings in Canada. We've had multiple school shootings in Montreal (I can remember at least three), despite our much tighter gun control than the US.
It's worth noting that there are offline navigation apps available for most major smartphone platforms, and they often cost significantly less than a dedicated GPS unit. Often they're even from the companies that make the dedicated GPS units.
Montreal, but I can guarantee you that Apple Maps doesn't work brilliantly in London if you take public transit. This was my primary and frequent use of the Maps app in previous versions of iOS, so Apple Maps removing this feature made it pretty much useless. I've used Apple Maps on a few trips where I wasn't the driver, but we're talking about once or twice a year here.
Does the Android version support at least minor route recalculations? Apple Maps was able to recalculate our route without an internet connection when we deviated by a few blocks by missing a turn, but we never tested it for major detours.
Apple maps is missing transit directions, streetview, most information, and has inaccurate destinations, but turn-by-turn actually does work pretty well. I was particularly happy with how it works when it has no internet connection.
I took a trip to the US not long ago, and my data plan stops working when I cross the border. However, it turns out that Apple Maps will continue providing turn-by-turn directions without issue so long as it had an Internet connection when you started; it will cache the entire route, and enough site-routes to accommodate a bit of rerouting.
When using Apple Maps turn-by-turn in a foreign country, you can get your phone on the hotel wifi, enter your destination, give it a few seconds to download all the data it requires, and then leave the hotel (and wifi coverage) without issue.
I don't yet know if Google Maps has similar behaviour. I hope it does, because Apple Maps seems useless for anything but driving directions, and I don't have a car. Whatever possessed them to remove public transit directions is beyond me. They took out all the features I used, and put in features I either don't use or use extremely infrequently.
Not long, since it would instantly begin accelerating away, and I doubt the RCS thrusters would even remotely be able to counteract the thrust from the main engine. However, the process could be repeated in bursts.
If the debris is in a stable orbit, it heads everywhere, spreading out and increasing the chance of impact on Chinese satellites and spacecraft just as much as American.
Except North Korea's dangerous attempts at spaceflight endanger China's interests in space just as much as they damage the US'. Massive amounts of debris in orbit aren't good for anybody.
Assuming it's tumbling out of control, it has a predictable orbit and safe distance. Could they not maneuver the X-37B close to it with the main engine pointed towards the satellite (oriented in the direction opposite of the orbit), and fire the thruster, slowing down the satellite and hastening re-entry?
This is assuming the primary concern is that it shouldn't hit anything before re-entering, not the re-entry itself. After all, a random re-entry has incredibly low chances of doing any damage, while an in-orbit collision is pretty disastrous in terms of debris.
I would imagine that the X-37B would have to consume a great deal of fuel just to reach and match orbits with the satellite, if it were even possible.
The relevant portion isn't what is illegal or legal, however, but the damages. According to Michael Geist (a leading legal authority on such matters), the new rules from the new law would be in effect for any new lawsuits. I believe this is because the rules cover how the judge would award damages, so when determining damages the judge would have to use the rules as the exist at the time of the ruling.
So it's unlikely that Voltage would manage to secure anything more than the minimum statutory damage of $100.
Well, I did not enjoy Hurt Locker, much for the same reasons as that reviewer you were mentioning earlier, and that doesn't lead me to believe I would enjoy Zero Dark Thirty, but none of that (on anybody's part) is really relevant to the topic at hand (Voltage Pictures attempting mass lawsuits in Canada).
It's an interesting scenario. The Canadian government has indicated that it crafted our new copyright laws (which just entered into effect) specifically to discourage exactly what Voltage Pictures is attempting to do. There's also the question of if the alleged infringement would fall under the old law or the new law, since the law went into effect only a few days ago. Voltage Pictures' claims indicate they're seeking damages far in excess of what is allowable under the law, so that would seem to indicate that they're either intending to try to get damages under the old law, or that they're going to try to claim the alleged infringement was commercial rather than personal (different limits, above what Voltage Pictures is threatening, apply to commercial infringement under the new laws).
Nobody on any side really knows what's going to happen (because Canada's new copyright law is only days old), so this really is virgin territory in every respect.
It's worth noting that Hurt Locker is not one of the films that Voltage Pictures is threatening to sue TekSavvy customers over. I'm not sure why nobody else has picked up on this.
Opera Mini does not use Presto. It operates through a server-side proxy that renders the page (on the server) to OBML (Opera Binary Markup Language), which is sent to the user.
Apple does not block third party browsers. They block third party javascript engines. Chrome has an iOS port, and it's a pretty nice improvement over Safari in many ways. Completely different interface and usage paradigm, no max-tab limit, sync with your Google stuff... The only shortcoming is that it has to use Apple's version of webkit. That itself isn't a big deal, since both Safari and Chrome are webkit browsers, the downside comes in Apple preventing third-party apps from using the faster of the two javascript engines built into iOS webkit.
From the user's perspective, though, none of that really matters. What you get in the end is a different browser that works quite differently. The unlimited-tabs is the killer feature for me. It makes it very easy to browse a blog-style site (like, say, io9), opening stories of interest in a new tab as I go, and then reading through the individual stories tab by tab. You can't really do that with Safari and its 8-tab limit.
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Intel didn't have any existing OEM agreements for HDDs either, that didn't stop them from getting OEM agreements for their SSDs.
There's a reason why OCZ never managed to secure any new OEM agreements, while Intel did.
Why? HDDs don't have that advantage today, I don't see why they would in the future. Don't confuse current chassis size and capacities for what is technologically possible. There's nothing stopping somebody from making a 4TB 3.5" SSD today (or even more, 8TB wouldn't be impossible) except for economics (they'd be crazy expensive) and performance (controllers have a fixed number of channels, putting several times more NAND would be slower than a comparable amount of storage in multiple drives).
Thing is, everything else doesn't have to follow Moore's Law - spinning rust has been growing faster than Moore's Law for a little while now.
Have they been? WD announced 2TB drives in early January 2009. WD announced 4TB drives in late November 2012. That's a period of 34.5 months to double capacity, and launch pricing was roughly $400 in both cases.
Moore's Law as it is currently accepted says we should see doublings every 18-24 months (18 months is for doubled performance, 24 months is for doubled transistor count), so it's clear that HDDs are improving at a rate much slower than Moore's Law, not faster as you claim.
SSDs, on the other hand... The Intel x25-m came out in late 2008 at an MSRP of $1,190 for the 160GB model. Today I've seen the Intel 330 180GB as low as $90. Per-gig, that's $7.4375/GB -> $0.50/GB, or 14.875x improvement in price.
That's 3.9 doublings over the course of 4 years. So SSDs are improving much faster than Moore's law, while HDDs are improving much slower than Moore's law.
Without significant changes in the improvement rates, SSDs will become cheaper per-gig than HDDs in less than four years.
Except they're already dropped lower than $0.90/GB on sales.
When I bought my first SSD, an Intel x25-m G1, I paid $700 for a 160GB drive ($4.375/GB)
I recently saw the Intel 330 180GB on sale for $90 ($0.50/GB)
So if we compare to a regular drive, like say a 2TB WD Black for $180, we get (90/180) / (180/2000) = 5.6x
So we've already gotten to 5.6x, which is pretty impressive! Compared to 4TB drives, it's actually at 5x flat.
The price of SSDs is dropping much faster than the capacity of HDDs is improving (otherwise the ratio wouldn't be decreasing). Considering that my first SSD something like three ago was ~49x (or worse, HDDs were cheaper before the flood) and now it's down to under 6x, I don't see why you'd think it will be years before SSDs are affordable for bulk storage...
Quebec is neither a country (but a province of Canada) nor densely populated (5.24 people per square kilometer on average). The last bit is because most people live in large cities, and the vast majority of Quebec is uninhabited. Most people live about a thousand kilometers away from the place the power is generated.
Meh. Quebec has been producing pretty close to 100% of its power from renewable resources for like a century (HydroQuebec itself is only ~7 decades old). Quebec has a larger population than Scotland, and particularly during the winter, much higher electricity usage. And Quebec also produces a great deal more than it needs, since it sells a ton to surrounding provinces/states. Something like a third of all of Vermont's power is supplied by HydroQuebec. Which makes sense, since HydroQuebec is the single largest producer of hydroelectric power in the world.
It's worth noting that the LDP has been in control of Japan for roughly 53 of the past 57 years. There is obviously a pretty high tolerance for what they do to keep getting re-elected when they've formed the government in the Diet except for two segments...
Having much tighter gun control hasn't stopped school shootings in Canada. We've had multiple school shootings in Montreal (I can remember at least three), despite our much tighter gun control than the US.
It's worth noting that there are offline navigation apps available for most major smartphone platforms, and they often cost significantly less than a dedicated GPS unit. Often they're even from the companies that make the dedicated GPS units.
Montreal, but I can guarantee you that Apple Maps doesn't work brilliantly in London if you take public transit. This was my primary and frequent use of the Maps app in previous versions of iOS, so Apple Maps removing this feature made it pretty much useless. I've used Apple Maps on a few trips where I wasn't the driver, but we're talking about once or twice a year here.
Does the Android version support at least minor route recalculations? Apple Maps was able to recalculate our route without an internet connection when we deviated by a few blocks by missing a turn, but we never tested it for major detours.
Apple maps is missing transit directions, streetview, most information, and has inaccurate destinations, but turn-by-turn actually does work pretty well. I was particularly happy with how it works when it has no internet connection.
I took a trip to the US not long ago, and my data plan stops working when I cross the border. However, it turns out that Apple Maps will continue providing turn-by-turn directions without issue so long as it had an Internet connection when you started; it will cache the entire route, and enough site-routes to accommodate a bit of rerouting.
When using Apple Maps turn-by-turn in a foreign country, you can get your phone on the hotel wifi, enter your destination, give it a few seconds to download all the data it requires, and then leave the hotel (and wifi coverage) without issue.
I don't yet know if Google Maps has similar behaviour. I hope it does, because Apple Maps seems useless for anything but driving directions, and I don't have a car. Whatever possessed them to remove public transit directions is beyond me. They took out all the features I used, and put in features I either don't use or use extremely infrequently.
Not long, since it would instantly begin accelerating away, and I doubt the RCS thrusters would even remotely be able to counteract the thrust from the main engine. However, the process could be repeated in bursts.
If the debris is in a stable orbit, it heads everywhere, spreading out and increasing the chance of impact on Chinese satellites and spacecraft just as much as American.
Except North Korea's dangerous attempts at spaceflight endanger China's interests in space just as much as they damage the US'. Massive amounts of debris in orbit aren't good for anybody.
Assuming it's tumbling out of control, it has a predictable orbit and safe distance. Could they not maneuver the X-37B close to it with the main engine pointed towards the satellite (oriented in the direction opposite of the orbit), and fire the thruster, slowing down the satellite and hastening re-entry?
This is assuming the primary concern is that it shouldn't hit anything before re-entering, not the re-entry itself. After all, a random re-entry has incredibly low chances of doing any damage, while an in-orbit collision is pretty disastrous in terms of debris.
I would imagine that the X-37B would have to consume a great deal of fuel just to reach and match orbits with the satellite, if it were even possible.
ASCII? An extravagance. Real men had an Altair 8800 that flashed its lights suggestively.
The relevant portion isn't what is illegal or legal, however, but the damages. According to Michael Geist (a leading legal authority on such matters), the new rules from the new law would be in effect for any new lawsuits. I believe this is because the rules cover how the judge would award damages, so when determining damages the judge would have to use the rules as the exist at the time of the ruling.
So it's unlikely that Voltage would manage to secure anything more than the minimum statutory damage of $100.
Well, I did not enjoy Hurt Locker, much for the same reasons as that reviewer you were mentioning earlier, and that doesn't lead me to believe I would enjoy Zero Dark Thirty, but none of that (on anybody's part) is really relevant to the topic at hand (Voltage Pictures attempting mass lawsuits in Canada).
It's an interesting scenario. The Canadian government has indicated that it crafted our new copyright laws (which just entered into effect) specifically to discourage exactly what Voltage Pictures is attempting to do. There's also the question of if the alleged infringement would fall under the old law or the new law, since the law went into effect only a few days ago. Voltage Pictures' claims indicate they're seeking damages far in excess of what is allowable under the law, so that would seem to indicate that they're either intending to try to get damages under the old law, or that they're going to try to claim the alleged infringement was commercial rather than personal (different limits, above what Voltage Pictures is threatening, apply to commercial infringement under the new laws).
Nobody on any side really knows what's going to happen (because Canada's new copyright law is only days old), so this really is virgin territory in every respect.
It's worth noting that Hurt Locker is not one of the films that Voltage Pictures is threatening to sue TekSavvy customers over. I'm not sure why nobody else has picked up on this.
No, CERN invented the web, and released the relevant tools under an open source license later.
Opera Mini does not use Presto. It operates through a server-side proxy that renders the page (on the server) to OBML (Opera Binary Markup Language), which is sent to the user.
Chrome is a webkit browser to begin with. So, wouldn't the desktop version of Chrome then just be a "webkit skin"?
Does it really matter what API is used to communicate between the UI and the rendering engine if the end-result is more or less the same?
What's to prevent Apple from setting a flag that would run the third-party browser under the more restrictive account?
Apple does not block third party browsers. They block third party javascript engines. Chrome has an iOS port, and it's a pretty nice improvement over Safari in many ways. Completely different interface and usage paradigm, no max-tab limit, sync with your Google stuff... The only shortcoming is that it has to use Apple's version of webkit. That itself isn't a big deal, since both Safari and Chrome are webkit browsers, the downside comes in Apple preventing third-party apps from using the faster of the two javascript engines built into iOS webkit.
From the user's perspective, though, none of that really matters. What you get in the end is a different browser that works quite differently. The unlimited-tabs is the killer feature for me. It makes it very easy to browse a blog-style site (like, say, io9), opening stories of interest in a new tab as I go, and then reading through the individual stories tab by tab. You can't really do that with Safari and its 8-tab limit.