I think Warren Buffett said that as a rule companies which pioneered most revolutionary technologies, those which changed our lives in profound ways, didn't make money for original investors...
Especially in transportation (think airlines, car companies etc.)
The problem is with alignment of partitions. With old partitioning (like the one XP uses) everything is off by one 512 byte sector. So it will be very messy when your clusters not align to 4k boundaries.
Seriously. If you download a lot, and I do, you see quite a few checksum mismatches in the log.
Especially if the torrent is old. Some of them may be sabotage activity, but I doubt that, considering kind of files.
They are not transmission errors: TCP-IP checks for that. Not hard drive errors - again checksums. They can be intrasystem transmission errors though.
I remember folks who did complete checkers wrote that they had a lot of them too.
So, if I could mathematically guarantee it'll take on average thousands of years with today's technology to break some encryption
Where is this coming from? Currently mathematically we can only calculate time of brute force attacks.
That's the thing with crypto - nobody can say if particular (regular, non OTP kind) encryption method is 100% safe. That's why they make them open standards just to make sure that as many people as possible look at them, thus improving chances that algorithm in question does not have flaws.
Again, nobody can be sure that AES, for example, was not broken by some genius sitting in an underground lab somewhere. All we can say is that probability of that is low.
Nope.
Look at your own post - guess how much that thing will weigh. Keep in mind - regenerative braking is not very efficient (damn physics!).
Frankly, hybrid cars do not make sense at all - they are financially disadvantageous to both regular cars and electrics. And don't give me that Volt crap - both GM and customers will lose money on them, for Priuses - just customers (well, majority of customers).
For regular cars it was proved many times already.
For modern electrics it goes like this: over the lifetime of the car, costs of electricity AND battery wear will roughly equal gas costs for regular car. But! Electrics gain significant advantage in low maintenance costs - really, no oil changes, nothing - just rotate the tires. That amounts to significant economy due to labor and parts costs. So even now, pure electrics are comparable to regulars and thus better than hybrids too.
The only problem is that people do not like to pay for the gas (i.e. battery) for many years in advance. That's why Nissan will try to sell electric cars but lease batteries they will come with (to soften the blow).
Reread my comment. And pay attention this time.
"guaranteed" only means that GM will replace it if needed. Guarantee does not say that one battery will last that long. What I said is that GM is preparing to make a gamble by pricing the car so that future replacement is already paid for.
And your Prius thing is just one of the ignorant arguments that need to die. Toyota uses different chemistry there (NiMH to be exact). That kind of battery is incredibly durable but the energy density is way too low. That's why Toyota is not in a hurry to introduce electric lithium-ion based models - it's too risky.
Eventually what will happen is the cost of electricity will rise (dramatically)
No, it will not.
You see, the price of electricity is capped by many things - like solar panels for example.
Plus, night recharging will balance day time consumption which in turn, improves efficiency (i.e. lowers costs).
Here's the thing: in the mode you described battery will last for 2 years max.
Experts speculate that GM priced battery replacement into that $40k figure.
This is sort of a gamble on GM part - they hope that "average" consumer will not run his car in such a punishable manner (such as you described) and also battery prices will go down.
Most points are valid, but please don't use Prius as an example. Chemistry is different.
Battery in Prius is much lower (like half) on energy density but much less prone to performance degradation due to aging, number of cycles, temperature etc. That's why Toyota is so careful on EV front.
The troubling aspect of it all is that SSD's controller is a kind of a black box.
As a result, reliability is application specific! Much more so than regular spinning drives.
And I'm not talking about "flash cell rewrite limit". The thing is, the controller uses undisclosed/patented/whatever algorithms to place your writes at particular addresses on flash. They need to be tricky because of 4k_write/512k_erase problem of the flash technology.
So if you do a "right" combination of small and large writes you will drive controller nuts, into "failsafe mode" with absolutely abysmal performance characteristics afterward (as been already demonstrated).
I personally would prefer a simple, stupid device, for which a "flash aware" file system could be created and used with minimum surprise occurrence.
Actually, surprisingly, you do need to run a kind of defragmentation.
Just not the usual one.
That's because writing in flash is in pages (4k?) but erase can be done only in blocks of 512k. So what happens is that controller have to do some insane job of joggling your writes and rewrites to spread or combine or whatever... on the fly...
As a result, after intensive use, the address space become fragmented, just like memory heap in regular software after lots of allocations/deletions.
Currently, the only way to restore performance is to issue low level format command - secure erase or some such.
I think AnandTech wrote a big piece on it.
The TRIM thing will help to delay (or even eliminate) the need for such drastic measures.
Re:Other "sightseeing" book
on
The Geek Atlas
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Ha-ha-ha!
While I always try to keep conversations civil, but I'm sorry, your message about "art and artists" is just, well, stupid.
Just to make a point: are bridges part of infrastructure? Yes! (answering myself to simplify it for idiots)
What about Millau Viaduct? Doesn't it look fantastic?! Isn't it beautiful?! Is it worth seeing?!
Other "sightseeing" book
on
The Geek Atlas
·
· Score: 5, Informative
As far as "travel" books for geeks go, I would recommend "Infrastructure: A Field Guide to the Industrial Landscape" by Brian Hayes.
The book is fantastic! Even the route you take to commute to work every day will suddenly become a sightseeing trip.
Highly recommended for geeks and others who still posses a spark of curiosity.
My objection is that the GP seems to think that Google is some kind of secure mail solution.
You making assumptions. No I don't "think that Google is some kind of secure mail solution".
That's why I wrote that one need additional encription on top if better security is needed.
My point was that gmail's https significantly complicates "drive-by", lazy wiretaps.
The concern is large-scale dragnets. Using a centralized system like Google makes that far *far* easier.
Here is the thing. You didn't look at the big picture. Technical issues aside, nobody in they right mind will go for large scale warrantless gmail tapping.
Here's why: to do that on a government side, you need to do paperwork. That's a major political risk after all recent shit storms.
On the google's side - they will fight tooth and nail against it. Why? Because as soon as it made public (and it will), google will take on a HUGE hit on all fronts. It will kill their "office in the cloud" thing for example.
We talking billions of dollars and congress action at stake here. Google is not a communication monopoly (like those involved in recent scandal) without which all infrastracture will collapse - others (e.g. Microsoft and Yahoo) will happily take their place with minimal disruption.
It goes like this:
A) Amazon does not want "bad karma points" for requirement that only amazon bought books could be used with their device (currently, with all kindles, you can upload your own content directly via USB)
B) But if Amazon does allow free personal uploads - they will have problem getting their money back via purchased content.
So, they have to charge closer to marginal costs...
Slashdot Mirror
Same story. But Unity reappeared after nvidia drivers were installed.
I tried it and switched back to gnome.
unfortunately rockets don't fly on pride. They fly on money...
you do understand that as soon as it's widely used, virus writers will add that "functionality"?
Look at the real time charts. By "real time" I mean what altitude, power and speed are NOW
How cool is that!
I think Warren Buffett said that as a rule companies which pioneered most revolutionary technologies, those which changed our lives in profound ways, didn't make money for original investors... Especially in transportation (think airlines, car companies etc.)
They could go bust, but how would that help anyone?
Actually it would help. For example as a lesson in corporate governance (proper risk assessment etc.)
The problem is with alignment of partitions. With old partitioning (like the one XP uses) everything is off by one 512 byte sector. So it will be very messy when your clusters not align to 4k boundaries.
I'm not offending and surely not jocking: Your mother needs to get intestinal worms.
Seriously. If you download a lot, and I do, you see quite a few checksum mismatches in the log.
Especially if the torrent is old. Some of them may be sabotage activity, but I doubt that, considering kind of files.
They are not transmission errors: TCP-IP checks for that. Not hard drive errors - again checksums. They can be intrasystem transmission errors though.
I remember folks who did complete checkers wrote that they had a lot of them too.
So, if I could mathematically guarantee it'll take on average thousands of years with today's technology to break some encryption
Where is this coming from? Currently mathematically we can only calculate time of brute force attacks.
That's the thing with crypto - nobody can say if particular (regular, non OTP kind) encryption method is 100% safe. That's why they make them open standards just to make sure that as many people as possible look at them, thus improving chances that algorithm in question does not have flaws.
Again, nobody can be sure that AES, for example, was not broken by some genius sitting in an underground lab somewhere. All we can say is that probability of that is low.
The irony is that hybrid diesels would be perfect
Nope.
Look at your own post - guess how much that thing will weigh. Keep in mind - regenerative braking is not very efficient (damn physics!).
Frankly, hybrid cars do not make sense at all - they are financially disadvantageous to both regular cars and electrics. And don't give me that Volt crap - both GM and customers will lose money on them, for Priuses - just customers (well, majority of customers).
For regular cars it was proved many times already.
For modern electrics it goes like this: over the lifetime of the car, costs of electricity AND battery wear will roughly equal gas costs for regular car. But! Electrics gain significant advantage in low maintenance costs - really, no oil changes, nothing - just rotate the tires. That amounts to significant economy due to labor and parts costs. So even now, pure electrics are comparable to regulars and thus better than hybrids too.
The only problem is that people do not like to pay for the gas (i.e. battery) for many years in advance. That's why Nissan will try to sell electric cars but lease batteries they will come with (to soften the blow).
will be guaranteed for 10 years/150,000 miles
Reread my comment. And pay attention this time.
"guaranteed" only means that GM will replace it if needed. Guarantee does not say that one battery will last that long. What I said is that GM is preparing to make a gamble by pricing the car so that future replacement is already paid for.
And your Prius thing is just one of the ignorant arguments that need to die. Toyota uses different chemistry there (NiMH to be exact). That kind of battery is incredibly durable but the energy density is way too low. That's why Toyota is not in a hurry to introduce electric lithium-ion based models - it's too risky.
Eventually what will happen is the cost of electricity will rise (dramatically)
No, it will not.
You see, the price of electricity is capped by many things - like solar panels for example.
Plus, night recharging will balance day time consumption which in turn, improves efficiency (i.e. lowers costs).
Assuming the car lasts 10 years
Here's the thing: in the mode you described battery will last for 2 years max.
Experts speculate that GM priced battery replacement into that $40k figure.
This is sort of a gamble on GM part - they hope that "average" consumer will not run his car in such a punishable manner (such as you described) and also battery prices will go down.
Most points are valid, but please don't use Prius as an example. Chemistry is different.
Battery in Prius is much lower (like half) on energy density but much less prone to performance degradation due to aging, number of cycles, temperature etc. That's why Toyota is so careful on EV front.
The troubling aspect of it all is that SSD's controller is a kind of a black box.
As a result, reliability is application specific! Much more so than regular spinning drives.
And I'm not talking about "flash cell rewrite limit". The thing is, the controller uses undisclosed/patented/whatever algorithms to place your writes at particular addresses on flash. They need to be tricky because of 4k_write/512k_erase problem of the flash technology.
So if you do a "right" combination of small and large writes you will drive controller nuts, into "failsafe mode" with absolutely abysmal performance characteristics afterward (as been already demonstrated).
I personally would prefer a simple, stupid device, for which a "flash aware" file system could be created and used with minimum surprise occurrence.
Actually, surprisingly, you do need to run a kind of defragmentation.
Just not the usual one.
That's because writing in flash is in pages (4k?) but erase can be done only in blocks of 512k. So what happens is that controller have to do some insane job of joggling your writes and rewrites to spread or combine or whatever... on the fly...
As a result, after intensive use, the address space become fragmented, just like memory heap in regular software after lots of allocations/deletions.
Currently, the only way to restore performance is to issue low level format command - secure erase or some such.
I think AnandTech wrote a big piece on it.
The TRIM thing will help to delay (or even eliminate) the need for such drastic measures.
Ha-ha-ha!
While I always try to keep conversations civil, but I'm sorry, your message about "art and artists" is just, well, stupid.
Just to make a point: are bridges part of infrastructure? Yes! (answering myself to simplify it for idiots)
What about Millau Viaduct? Doesn't it look fantastic?! Isn't it beautiful?! Is it worth seeing?!
As far as "travel" books for geeks go, I would recommend "Infrastructure: A Field Guide to the Industrial Landscape" by Brian Hayes.
The book is fantastic! Even the route you take to commute to work every day will suddenly become a sightseeing trip.
Highly recommended for geeks and others who still posses a spark of curiosity.
Oh shit, you were talking about Scotland... My bad. Sorry.
But US thing is true (I even bothered to recheck with Wikipedia). And indeed it was subdivided into quarters and quarter-quarters.
Here's the news for you.
The houses are so far apart because of Thomas Jefferson's 1785 "Land Ordinance Act".
That's because subdividing land using square, mile by mile plots was easier...
My objection is that the GP seems to think that Google is some kind of secure mail solution.
You making assumptions. No I don't "think that Google is some kind of secure mail solution". That's why I wrote that one need additional encription on top if better security is needed. My point was that gmail's https significantly complicates "drive-by", lazy wiretaps.
The concern is large-scale dragnets. Using a centralized system like Google makes that far *far* easier.
Here is the thing. You didn't look at the big picture. Technical issues aside, nobody in they right mind will go for large scale warrantless gmail tapping.
Here's why: to do that on a government side, you need to do paperwork. That's a major political risk after all recent shit storms.
On the google's side - they will fight tooth and nail against it. Why? Because as soon as it made public (and it will), google will take on a HUGE hit on all fronts. It will kill their "office in the cloud" thing for example. We talking billions of dollars and congress action at stake here. Google is not a communication monopoly (like those involved in recent scandal) without which all infrastracture will collapse - others (e.g. Microsoft and Yahoo) will happily take their place with minimal disruption.
That's why I explicitly pointed out that all the parties are on gmail too, and made assumption that google's internal traffic isn't tapped.
This whole point is moot.
It goes like this:
A) Amazon does not want "bad karma points" for requirement that only amazon bought books could be used with their device (currently, with all kindles, you can upload your own content directly via USB)
B) But if Amazon does allow free personal uploads - they will have problem getting their money back via purchased content.
So, they have to charge closer to marginal costs...
That probably explains recent Wall Street Journal price hike. It went from $9.99 per month to $14.99
Lot's of people were pissed enough to cancel their subscription through Kindle.
Weird kind of a price war...