Their statistics on temperature seem very unusual. I'm surprised they didn't explore this more. For example, is the high failure rate associated with low temperatures because the drives were more likely to be inactive due to failure?
I don't even know what that means, now I'm gonna have to look it up:-] I just offered it as a minimal way to change the original text. I prefer the second version, but I had to reorder some words.
That should be "as I could honestly not care less" or "as I honestly could not care less". This is one of those things that is often written/read wrong since you rarely see it in print.
This article has more details; they say that a nurse had called during the contest to warn them about it:
During the contest, a nurse called in to the station warn of the dangers of drinking too much water quickly. Her worries were dismissed by the disc jockey, The Bee reported.
They also mention that the winner felt pretty sick afterwards as well.
I'm guessing that you can't read binary. Hint: 10 in binary = 2 in decimal. 10000000000 in binary = 1024 in decimal. These units originated from working with binary numbers -- everyone either understood or was unaware that the units were based on powers of two until some hard drive makers decided to inflate their numbers by using powers of ten. Since software displaying capacity uses powers of two for their units, the numbers didn't match up and that's when people noticed.
If those marketing assholes had just stuck with powers of two like every one else, all would be well. Hell, using powers of two skews the numbers in the customer's favor -- 67,108,864 bytes is called 64MB, which is smaller than the inflated 67MB figure a marketeer would use. If all the units are based on powers of two, then everything works well together and these weird inconsistencies won't be present.
And FYI, I do use hard drives for backups here (1-2TB) because it's cheaper for our requirements. But that doesn't mean tapes are stupid and everyone should use hard drives for backup. I'm still aware of its limitations and situations where tapes will work better. Hybrid solutions are also needed sometimes, look up D2D2T (disk to disk to tape).
It's not any different. Kilo, Mega, Giga etc are factors of 10... in binary. Factors of 10000000000 to be exact. Fundamentally, memory is addressed in binary, so storage related to memory will come out to a number related to a power of two. When you buy a 64MB stick of RAM, it means 64 * 2^20, which is simply 100000000000000000000000000 in binary (or 4000000 in hex). By using powers of two for the units, you know precisely, to the last byte, how much memory that is. If you were to write it in decimal, that's 67108864 bytes. Saying 67MB would simply be an estimate.
If you make one backup, that'd be true. But if you rotate through a set of backups, then tape is much more economical. Tapes are also more durable than hard drives. You need to think beyond the needs of your home PC.
So instead of the repairman coming out and tearing apart the entire press; taking days and tens of thousands of dollars; he would come out and replace one simple part in just a matter of minutes.
I wonder if there could ever be a similar way of engineering electronics.
Fuses and MOVs serve this purpose. Fuses open when too much current pass through them. A MOV will short when the voltage is too high, which in turn opens the fuse. A lot of electronics are cheap enough that the whole board/product gets replaced though.
Also, a lot of electronics break not due to a sudden surge, but through slow but continual wear. Heat and miniscule but damaging spikes slowly degrade ICs. And since modern electronics are pushing the limits of the technology, you can't use "tougher" materials (like the steel vs aluminum gear example) without using slower/larger/power-hungry components. Some equipment won't have a problem doing this, but in the case of portable electronics, these are the main areas of competition. Integrating all the components tightly reduces the size of a device, making it harder to replace a component. If you look at the circuit board of a new MP3 player, you'll see very few components, maybe a couple ICs and some tiny SMT parts, and that's it. It's difficult to come up with an similar example in the mechanical world, but imagine if you took a printing press and simplified it down to just 5 parts that somehow did everything that the hundreds of parts in it now do. There are no longer small, inexpensive pieces to replace, just large expensive components.
While there are a lot of comments about this being a well-known device for fusion, it seems the practical application of this is a neutron source. The experience of actually building the machine is invaluable. If you've ever built something complex, you know that simply knowing about how something is built and actually having built it are very different things. By building, he's likely gained a lot of practical knowledge that can be applied to future projects. He could describe the process, drawing from his own experience instead of just what he's read.
Newsorthy? Not necessarily, but that's no reason to make it seem like what he's done is without merit.
This comment made me realize another key thing to look at when deciding whether to hire a former blackhat. Were their activities motivated by money, a desire to explore, or to just defy security? A jewel thief would fall almost exclusively in the first. It'd be difficult to really trust a blackhat that fell into the first category as well. But the second category is a good quality, and the third is more likely to fade with age, and overlaps with the second.
That's a valid analogy for script kiddies. If a blackhat has serious skills (like finding and exploiting holes), these same skills can be used to find and block holes. The surgeon analogy falls apart here. How about if you were infected with an engineered biological agent. Someone who had experience making them would have some useful skills to offer you. The bank fraud example cited earlier is another good analogy.
Which isn't to say that hiring former blackhats is always a good choice. It's a matter of judgement -- has the person really reformed?
It acts like a scanner. At 1/20000s exposure, scanning takes 1 second. I would guess it scales, so that at 1/60s exposure, it may take roughly 5.5 minutes.
I finally got the install to start clean with 5782. Initially, I kept getting the "A required cd/dvd drive driver" message. I tried using VMWare's ISO mounting and D-Tools, and tried the legacy option on both. Finally I just physically burned the disc, and suddenly it worked fine. WTF.
If the sound file is signed, I think any easy way to remove the sound would be to just find the file and corrupt it. No longer valid, so it won't play. If it plays anyway, then it could just be replaced with a custom sound. Now if Vista decided not to boot because a "system file" was corrupt... that would be funny.
Slashdot Mirror
Their statistics on temperature seem very unusual. I'm surprised they didn't explore this more. For example, is the high failure rate associated with low temperatures because the drives were more likely to be inactive due to failure?
Score!
I don't even know what that means, now I'm gonna have to look it up :-] I just offered it as a minimal way to change the original text. I prefer the second version, but I had to reorder some words.
They also mention that the winner felt pretty sick afterwards as well.
I'm guessing that you can't read binary. Hint: 10 in binary = 2 in decimal. 10000000000 in binary = 1024 in decimal. These units originated from working with binary numbers -- everyone either understood or was unaware that the units were based on powers of two until some hard drive makers decided to inflate their numbers by using powers of ten. Since software displaying capacity uses powers of two for their units, the numbers didn't match up and that's when people noticed.
If those marketing assholes had just stuck with powers of two like every one else, all would be well. Hell, using powers of two skews the numbers in the customer's favor -- 67,108,864 bytes is called 64MB, which is smaller than the inflated 67MB figure a marketeer would use. If all the units are based on powers of two, then everything works well together and these weird inconsistencies won't be present.
And FYI, I do use hard drives for backups here (1-2TB) because it's cheaper for our requirements. But that doesn't mean tapes are stupid and everyone should use hard drives for backup. I'm still aware of its limitations and situations where tapes will work better. Hybrid solutions are also needed sometimes, look up D2D2T (disk to disk to tape).
200GB is nothing. Many people regularly backup 5-10TB and far more. If you think everyone can get months of backups out of 1TB, you're a fool.
The off-site backup thing is irrelevant -- the same can be done with tapes.
It's not any different. Kilo, Mega, Giga etc are factors of 10... in binary. Factors of 10000000000 to be exact. Fundamentally, memory is addressed in binary, so storage related to memory will come out to a number related to a power of two. When you buy a 64MB stick of RAM, it means 64 * 2^20, which is simply 100000000000000000000000000 in binary (or 4000000 in hex). By using powers of two for the units, you know precisely, to the last byte, how much memory that is. If you were to write it in decimal, that's 67108864 bytes. Saying 67MB would simply be an estimate.
If you make one backup, that'd be true. But if you rotate through a set of backups, then tape is much more economical. Tapes are also more durable than hard drives. You need to think beyond the needs of your home PC.
Also, a lot of electronics break not due to a sudden surge, but through slow but continual wear. Heat and miniscule but damaging spikes slowly degrade ICs. And since modern electronics are pushing the limits of the technology, you can't use "tougher" materials (like the steel vs aluminum gear example) without using slower/larger/power-hungry components. Some equipment won't have a problem doing this, but in the case of portable electronics, these are the main areas of competition. Integrating all the components tightly reduces the size of a device, making it harder to replace a component. If you look at the circuit board of a new MP3 player, you'll see very few components, maybe a couple ICs and some tiny SMT parts, and that's it. It's difficult to come up with an similar example in the mechanical world, but imagine if you took a printing press and simplified it down to just 5 parts that somehow did everything that the hundreds of parts in it now do. There are no longer small, inexpensive pieces to replace, just large expensive components.
While there are a lot of comments about this being a well-known device for fusion, it seems the practical application of this is a neutron source. The experience of actually building the machine is invaluable. If you've ever built something complex, you know that simply knowing about how something is built and actually having built it are very different things. By building, he's likely gained a lot of practical knowledge that can be applied to future projects. He could describe the process, drawing from his own experience instead of just what he's read.
Newsorthy? Not necessarily, but that's no reason to make it seem like what he's done is without merit.
On the contrary, motivation is a very important factor. Look at the legal system and sentencing.
This comment made me realize another key thing to look at when deciding whether to hire a former blackhat. Were their activities motivated by money, a desire to explore, or to just defy security? A jewel thief would fall almost exclusively in the first. It'd be difficult to really trust a blackhat that fell into the first category as well. But the second category is a good quality, and the third is more likely to fade with age, and overlaps with the second.
That's a valid analogy for script kiddies. If a blackhat has serious skills (like finding and exploiting holes), these same skills can be used to find and block holes. The surgeon analogy falls apart here. How about if you were infected with an engineered biological agent. Someone who had experience making them would have some useful skills to offer you. The bank fraud example cited earlier is another good analogy.
Which isn't to say that hiring former blackhats is always a good choice. It's a matter of judgement -- has the person really reformed?
It acts like a scanner. At 1/20000s exposure, scanning takes 1 second. I would guess it scales, so that at 1/60s exposure, it may take roughly 5.5 minutes.
I finally got the install to start clean with 5782. Initially, I kept getting the "A required cd/dvd drive driver" message. I tried using VMWare's ISO mounting and D-Tools, and tried the legacy option on both. Finally I just physically burned the disc, and suddenly it worked fine. WTF.
Time to adjust your sarcasm detector.
Good analogy!
Yuri Kageyama is a she, not a he.
WTF was that!?! My head asplode
The patch only applies to Windows 2000 SP4. Also, it happens when you create files -- it does not proactively seek out and corrupt existing files.
If the sound file is signed, I think any easy way to remove the sound would be to just find the file and corrupt it. No longer valid, so it won't play. If it plays anyway, then it could just be replaced with a custom sound. Now if Vista decided not to boot because a "system file" was corrupt... that would be funny.