I'll leave it to others to pay top dollar for a shiny silver box that you have to turn on its side with its little feet dangling... just so the drives don't die early:-)
From one of the other comments regarding shared controller failures, I'd personally go with four 250GB external drives for $920, saving nearly $300, and allowing for easy content categorization:-)
It would seem from the case dimensions that the drives are mounted vertically.
From what I've heard from hard drive technicians, when drives are mounted vertically they tend to have more mechanical problems than with horizontal mounting.
I would certainly not spend $1200 on "1 TB" of storage that used vertically mounted drives.
Individual 250GB drives are going for $150 on sale, so that leaves $600 for a drive enclosure ($100), power supply (included with the enclosure), and dual USB2/Firewire interface chip ($50). Unless there is a 5 year warranty or some other feature, I'd rather put something together myself using horizontal mounting and save at least a few hundred dollars.
Alternatively, one could buy four USB2/Firewire 250GB 8MB cache external drives for $230 each and still save money that way -- as well as reducing the chance of failure.
Pardon me, but there's not much I can do if someone is unwilling to read the link!
If you read the link I originally posted, there are excerpts from many medical publications. No, the references are not hyperlinked. But they are in text form, so it is a small step for the reader to highlight any particular publication reference and right click "Web search" (in Mozilla). Thus with a miniscule effort, the nasty naysayer could have explored all the medical publications. Note that many online medical journals require registration and/or subscription which may be why the author of the page I linked to does not have hyperlinks. Some of the references can be tracked down using the method I described above at other sites, though.
For example, one of the referenced publications on misdiagnosed atypical dementias is available on the NIH site.
Additionally in a later post, I provided a link to a site that contained 66 citations regarding CDJ and Alzheimer's. I am certainly not going to go through all 66 publications and find all the appropriate bits and pieces, compile them, and then post them here all because someone is too lazy to read through the supplied links (all of which are hyperlinked).
As I have said before, it is Stanley Prusiner, the Nobel prize winning scientist who discovered prions, who first suspected the linkage between BSE and CJD. There has been a lot of research, including the findings that CDJ is being misdiagnosed as Alzheimer's and other dementias. So if for some reason you think it is all a hoax, I would suggest looking into Prusiner's research as well as the research of other scientists in this subject area.
In sum, I have provided links or text references to nearly 100 pieces of information supporting what I originally posted. I would invite you (and any others) to do the reading and then continue on with research sufficient to your needs.
I don't make any claims to being a prion/Alzheimer's scientist, so please chill out on whatever harcore "proved from quantum theory and up" version of "science" that is running around in your head.
There was violent resistance to the very concept of "mad cow" in the first place... resistance that caused many more people and cows to die.
No one understands 100% how Alzheimer's works or how people get CJD. Initial reports have shown that CJD does come from mad cow and that CJD does have many of the same symptoms as Alzheimer's.
Of course what is going on is not 100% known and understood at this time. However, being dismissive of new ideas in the absence of full knowledge is even more stupid than being assertive of them. Many discoveries in science come from looking into things that don't make complete sense -- or any sense. If you think all "science" happens in a 100% provable at all times manner, you are sadly mistaken.
Prusiner, the Nobel winner for discovering prions, believes the linkages between NSE/CJD and Alzheimer's are worth looking into. If you want the "science" version of what I'm trying to discuss, talk to him or another qualified scientist.
What happened with mad cow / BSE / CJD in Great Britain and Europe was that it was very difficult to get any information at first. The information was being censored by the government and industry. It wasn't until more people died that the people forced the government to abandon their cover up.
Rather than having people in the US suffer from that same sort of cover up abuse, I am pointing out something that beef eaters should look into for their own safety.
You are making a defense of a person who was insulting and demeaning without any need to be so:
"not the drivel that appears on that website you linked to, which I can only presume is your own."
"I'm convinced that you're a hysterical idiot without the first bloody idea what you're on about."
"You might just convince me that your brains aren't completely rotted..."
"...or better, don't come back at all."
Additionally this person hypocritically didn't offer any information herself, didn't put an ounce of effort into making anything better, just into making insults and complaints. You don't just slam someone for bringing up a potentially critical issue, especially early on when not all the facts are known.
If you look at the other responses, people did actually use Google and look into what was referenced on the site that "Antimony" had an issue with. At least in Mozilla the amount of effort to do that is miminal, less than 5 seconds of work to get the search going. Of course to do a proper research paper on CJD/mad cow/Alzheimer's is out of the scope of a Slashdot comment. Prusiner and others are funded with many millions of dollars to do that work.
As for your own comment... calling me a "troll" because I point out a maddened complainer who also happens to be a hypocrite... is just classic. Anyone who doesn't agree with you is a "troll", eh? I may not have been "nice" in my answer, but being "nice" to "not nice" people is merely giving positive reinforcement to abusive behavior. That may be your gig, but it ain't mine.
Here's a recap from December 2003 of what is happening with CJD.
As the article says, it's possible that tens of thousands of cases of CJD in the US are going unrecognized.
Modern research is showing that prion-like proteins are involved with memory according to this article (note the links to Cell at the end).
There's a lot more information out there. It's not to say that everything is 100% understood at this point in time. What we do know...
(1) Alzheimer's is on an incredibly fast ramp to the point where there is something called "early onset Alzheimer's".
(2) It is likely that CJD is vastly underdiagnosed in the US.
(3) There is a possibility that Alzheimer's may be caused, at least in part, by CJD. I am not alone in this assertion. Stanley Prusiner, awarded the Nobel prize for the discovery of prions, has similar suspicions and there is currently research being funded that is investigating the role of prions in memory and Alzheimer's.
If you are a beef eater, I'd suggest looking into the matter. Life is precious and as the British and Europeans found out the hard way... better not left solely in the hands of governments and industry.
If you have an authentic desire to understand what is going on, go and do the research yourself. Very few posts on Slashdot are intended to be self-contained proofs. Do the research instead of throwing a silly temper tantrum and dumping your anger on me. That's just the act of an emotionally immature little girl.
As you are going into some sort of medical field, I hope you learn how to be a pro-active thinking sort of person, not just a reactive "lose your rag" naysayer.
Let me remind you from your study of the history of science that you know many ideas that turned out to be right at first met violent opposition from the scientific community. History has shown us that many scientists do very poorly at considering and accepting new ideas. At least in your ability to reject new ideas, you seem well on the way to being a good run of the mill mediocre scientist.
Stanley Prusiner, the scientist who coined the term prion, originally speculated that Alzheimer's may in fact turn out to be a prion disease. This speculation came in the mid 1980's.
Of course you know that Stanley Prusiner was award the Nobel prize for his work with prions, don't you?
I would at least consider the ideas of a Nobel prize-winning scientist, not reject them outright. It may not be that 100% mad cow = Alzheimer's as the body is a very complex system. However, mad cow could certainly be a leading factor in why Alzheimer's is growing at an amazing pace and being found in many younger people.
In today's most modern research, we are finding evidence that prion-like structures are involved with how memory works. Here's some information from a dementia site, note the links to Cell at the end.
Here's a December 29, 2003 recap from a government website of some of what is going on.
I could provide you with many many links and sources, but I suspect you will be a closed-minded doubter until either CJD rears its ugly in your life or you go ahead and do the research yourself.
No, the simplest and most logical assumption is that there is indeed mad cow in the system.
Over 13% of Alzheimer's deaths in the US are actually caused by mad cow. Using simple logic, one can see that there must be quite a bit of mad cow in the system to cause that many deaths.
Also, that there is mad cow in the USA on the loose is the simplest assumption because close to zero testing has been done in the US -- making the situation very similar to what happened in Britain/Europe before they found major BSE/mad cow infections.
Years ago in Britain and Europe, the same thing happened. The cows were not being tested, industry asserted for a long time that the meat was safe, time went by, people got CJD, there was a public uproar, the cows were tested, many cows were found to have BSE/mad cow, many cows were killed, and testing was finally implemented.
Great Britain and Europe learned the hard way. I've seen major resistance to testing American cows from the beef industry even though the extra cost would be very small. As with Britain, there can only be one reason that there is such resistance -- high mad cow infection rates.
The US has imported tens of millions of animals from countries that are known to have mad cow. The US has not done any real testing for mad cow. A certain percentage of female mad cows give birth to calves that have mad cow, thus producing domestic mad cow. Which again is not tested for.
Check the facts and you will see that there is a high likelihood that Americans have eaten millions of pounds of BSE/mad cow infected beef. Just the last tiny alert (from *one* cow) caused a recall of over 13,000 lbs of meat, some of which had already been eaten by a Seattle family that has come forward. It is not unreasonable to think that hundreds of families were exposed to mad cow just from the last tiny alert.
From a risk management perspective, it is very dangerous to be eating beef in the US. Not only are the cows not tested for mad cow/BSE, but it has been shown that over 13% of Alzheimer's fatalities are actually mad cow/CDJ deaths. The situation is very similar to what happened in both Britain and Europe, so there is little reason to doubt it will also happen in the US. Which means many infections and many deaths are on the way.
It's been known for the past few years that Alzheimer's and Creutzfeld-Jacobs Disease (CJD) are eerily similar, especially considering that the symptoms of Alzheimer's and CJD are also eerily similar.
In fact, at least 13% of Alzheimer's cases are indeed CJD caused by mad cow. If larger studies were done, this percentage could end up much higher.
It may turn out that Alzheimer's is due to mad cow, or its predecessor, mad sheep (scrapie).
I hope that any new studies of this drug also focus on how it works in people versus CJD.
All over the beef-eating world, we are seeing CJD very early in people. Italy's only known case of CJD was a man who was merely 27 years old. Given CJD's incubation time, it would indicate that mad cow/BSE/CJD has been in Italy anywhere from 5 to 15 years.
For transmission between people, CJD is a blood borne disease, similar to HIV in how it spreads. This would explain why the ramp on Alzheimer's is so rapid and why so many young people are getting Alzheimer's.
Almost all the medical news regarding mad cow/BSE/CJD has been killed in the US. The simplest assumption would be that there is far more mad cow in the system than anyone wants to say. Only a ingenuous imbecile would think that out of over 35 million cows that are killed every year in the US, over the past 10 years or more, only 1 cow from Canada had BSE/mad cow. Especially considering that the US imports 1.7 million cows from Canada every year. And 1 million from Mexico. In both countries, Canada and Mexico, they have followed the US lead and perform near zero mad cow/BSE testing.
Anyhow, that is a lot on the crazy cow. I am hoping a fool's hope that Alzheimer's does not turn out to be caused by crazy cow. For if it is, there will be an epidemic of dementia in the USA unless a cure is found in the immediate future.
Of course an upcoming unstoppable Alzheimer's epidemic... would clearly explain the sudden and massive urge to offshore all jobs that require brain power to India, land of the sacred cow:-)
Portable music players are in their infancy. There are over a billion PC's out there, yet merely a paltry few million music players have been sold.
We've got many millions of new customers coming into the market which will drive new music players, new music formats, new music distribution systems, etc.
So far all we've seen is the early adopters playing around with iTunes. By no means has iTunes "crossed the chasm". Once mainstream people really understand DRM music and how it is "resolutionally challenged" crippleware that sells for full price, there are likely going to be big changes in the online music world.
By "crippleware" I mean that you, the buyer, cannot do what you want to do with it. That is why people are using funny workarounds like snagging the temp files from Toast so they can get the unencrypted versions of their songs.
The rate of broadband adoption is slowing in the US. And for the most part, all affordable broadband is very low bandwidth compared to the rest of the world. So at least in the USA as disc-based music gets better and better (DVD-Audio, SACD), the value delivered by the disc will continue to improve vs. what is delivered via the wire.
Finally, at least vs iTunes, actual CD's seem like they are cheaper and easier. You get full songs, no DRM, any/all formats, and to top it off... you get a readymade CD, already printed cover art, already printed track listings, and a jewelbox. All for just about the same price as iTunes, especially if you buy used CD's or Universal's new more affordable CDs.
All in all, it is too early in the portable music player market to worry about the small moves that are being made today. WMA will never be popular in Asia, so it will never be a world standard. There is nothing to fear there. The RIAA-friendly abd special-interest friendly USA and EU are a different matter, though, where Microsoft can use their mu$cle to drive adoption of their format.
If IBM ends up being viewed as the world's savior -- by doing the most to topple the MICROSOFT MONOPOLY-- IBM will have karma beyond measure. And that means revenue will flow into IBM for a long long time.
Inside IBM, the MICROSOFT MONOPOLY is viewed as a strategic threat to IBM. Because of MICROSOFT's OS and OFFICE MONOPOLIES and $60+ billion in cash and growing, the MICROSOFT MONOPOLY can wield vast power over IBM.
IBM, and indeed every other company in the industry, would like to get rid of the MICROSOFT MONOPOLY if only to be able to sleep at night.
It is very immature to respond in way which is just dumping a bunch of anger and hate on someone and then walking away.
I had some hope for you regarding personal attacks, but I see I must temper it. I can only be optimistic and think that you are not like this in other parts of your life, just when it comes to your precious Macintosh.
Just out of curiosity, do you eat a lot of beef? I see a lot of angry people eat beef frequently and it may be mad cow that makes you so angry and filled with hate.
I'll skip your hate-filled response to my original message and again ask --
(1) Do you have objections to making all of "Mac OS X" open source? If so, what are they?
(2) Is there ANY digital rights management in "Mac OS X" that is not in an application? If I delete the various programs you mentioned, will that get rid of all DRM? Can you point me to anywhere on Apple's public website where they discuss what DRM is in "Mac OS X" and what it is used for?
If you don't answer, that's okay. You seem like a person who is more interested in cathartic release of repressed rage than addressing the key issues I have put on the table.
It is not just the Space Shuttle that destroys ozone, although the Space Shuttle is one of the most destructive launch vehicles ever made.
In the next 10,000 years, the impact will not be negligible. Yes, it will take that long for the planet to make more ozone -- provided that we somehow magically don't destroy more ozone. Thus we see that every rocket launch causes serious problems for life on Earth as the Earth simply cannot replenish ozone. What we destroy today is effectively gone.
You ridicule me, but look around and do some simple data correlation and you should be worried. Life on this planet is under severe threat by global warming and UV radiation. This is not a joke, not something from crazy world. It is here and now --
Group Says Space Shuttle Damages Earth's Ozone, by David Sylvester
Every time the space shuttle is launched, 250 tons of hydrochloric acid is released into the air. With each launch,.25 percent of the ozone is destroyed. So far, the space shuttle has destroyed 10 percent of the ozone.
Dr. Helen Caldicott, world renowned physician and environmentalist stuns audiences when she makes that statement in her talks across the country. A brief article, in a small-circulation environmental publication, supports Dr. Caldicott's charges.
Two Soviet rocket scientists have warned that the solid fuel rocket boosters used on the space shuttle release 187 tons of ozone destroying chlorine molecules into the atmosphere with every launch. Valery Burdakov, co-designed of the Russian "Energiya" rocket engine, also noted that each shuttle launch produces seven tons of nitrogen (another ozone depleter), 387 tons of carbon dioxide (a major contributor to the "greenhouse effect") and 177 tons of aluminum oxide (linked to Alzheimer's Disease) before reaching an altitude of 31 miles.
Burdakov also notes that the history of ozone depletion correlates closely with the increase of chlorine discharged by solid fuel rockets since 1981. Soviet rockets employ a fuel combination that is 2000 times less damaging than the shuttle's but which still destroys 1500 tons of ozone per launch. According to Burdakov and his colleague, Vyacheslav Filin, a single shuttle launch can destroy as much as 10 million tons of ozone. This means that 300 total shuttle flights will completely destroy the Earth's protective ozone shield.
All other solid fuel rockets also contribute to ozone destruction. Near the top of the list are the U.S. Delta rocket (which destroys eight million tons per launch), the U.S. Titan, and the French Ariane V.In an article published originally in South, Burdakov warned that, at present rates of increase, rockets will soon be pouring 100,000 tons of chlorine and nitrogen into the atmosphere annually. Burdakov has called for international controls and a phase out of solid fuel rocket technology as well as a ban on supersonic aircraft flights into the stratosphere. The extraordinary charges by the Russian scientists were supported by research done by the Military Toxics Network, headquartered in San Francisco. Working with the Russian figures and data obtained from NASA, the Network concluded that significant damage was being done to the ozone layer by the space shuttle launches.
I'd rather have a cave and the wonderful world of nature outside my cave door and live a happy life in harmony with the world vs. build a million tin cans and blast them to the moon so I can say "I helped human beings spread their stupid wars into space (and killed the planet at the same time)".
There is no proof that the Moon is covered with easily utilized Helium 3. So far, it's just a theory.
However, it's been well proven that launching rockets destroys the ozone layer.
Even if there is Helium 3... and we ship up all the machinery to do something with it... via hundreds if not thousands of rockets... you will sacrifice life on Earth to build a big fusion reactor on the Moon.
BRILLIANT!
I'm sure Cameron will have a blast making "Titanic II: Ghosts of the Dead Planet".
And all the while you didn't realize THE SUN is already a BIG FUSION REACTOR that is supplying Earth with endless clean energy.
I take it you haven't read the news for the past 10+ years about falling educational test scores, that most teachers in the USA can't past basic proficiency tests, the dumbing down of America, etc ?
Look at the world situation with HIV. Is it any different? Most people in the world until they see someone die -- in front of them -- and the autopsy confirms it was HIV... they don't believe it exists.
We see today that HIV is once again on the rise in America... because young people don't believe it's real. And in the rest of the world, HIV is a global epidemic because their education isn't sufficient for them to understand reality.
It's no surprise that ignorant young Americans (and other young people) scoff at global warming. The education of the average young person is insufficient to understand reality, including the vast amount of black and white data that shows indisputable global warming.
I know it's a tough thing to accept, but most young people, even the geeks, are severely undereducated. And what they have been taught is mostly brainwashing designed to make them a good worker focused on the small picture. The literacy of young people is almost zero.
If you have the motivation to look into the matter, I would recommend reading "Pedagogy of the Oppressed" by Paulo Friere --
The methodology of the late Paulo Freire, once considered such a threat to the established order that he was "invited" to leave his native Brazil, has helped to empower countless impoverished and illiterate people throughout the world. Freire's work has taken on especial urgency in the United States and Western Europe, where the creation of a permanent underclass among the underprivileged and minorities in cities and urban centers is increasingly accepted as the norm.
Excerpted from The Catalyst Centre, a Canadian organization that promotes cultures of learning for positive social change.
Obviously things are going to get a lot lot worse before they get better.
Corporations are the dominant force in modern life, surpassing even church and state. The largest are richer than entire nations, and courts have given these entities more rights than people. To many Americans, corporate power seems out of control. According to a Business Week/Harris poll released in September 2000, 82 percent of those surveyed agreed that "business has too much power over too many aspects of our lives." And the recent revelations of corporate scandal and political influence have only added to such concerns.
Bravo! I appreciate that you made some progress sticking to facts this time around the platformloveberry bush:-) Maybe one day you'll be able to have a conversation with another human being without attacking him personally.
I stand corrected about saying "most" Apple apps that deal with "content" have DRM in them. I should have been more specific in my statement and said "multimedia content playback".
<I am not addressing some of what you wrote because as I have stated before, I am not going to engage in any discussion that is based on personal attacks. FYI, I did read the entire article. Move on.>
The first link you mention says the following --
"Darwin includes the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) and the GNU Project Debugger (GDB)."
At the "most", Apple created the GNU compiler backend for the PPC. Apple certainly didn't create any substantive part of the GNU Compiler Collection or the debugger. A compiler backend, especially one written to a pre-existing framework, is not similar in scope to SAMBA or JBOSS.
Secondly, you talk about Apple contributing "XNU" to the open source community. You didn't mention that the open source community had to fight Apple as Apple's original license was horribly one-sided. It is only very recently (Sept-12-2003) that Apple changed their license and had it approved by the OSI.
While the current APSL 2.0 license is going in a good direction, none of that direction is due to Apple's innate desire or inherent corporate philosophy.
This has always been the case with Apple. The company makes the least possible effort to work with their customers or partners and people have to threaten them with massive public shaming or lawsuits to get any sort of improvement out of the company.
I'm sure you recall "www.ipodsdirtysecret.com" and the current pending class action lawsuits against Apple regarding problems with the iBook. Apple is legendary for being a nasty horrible company to work with. I would think that in practice, using their source code license would be more of the same. I notice there is nobody using Apple's XNU for anything. And I wonder if Apple Legal has crushed them or silenced them in some way.
BTW, don't worry, I spent much more than 10 seconds with Google trying to find evidence of any third party using Darwin for their own projects/products and couldn't find anything. Do you have more information?
Looking at the list of "open source projects" on Apple's website, most of code was not written by Apple.
Darwin -- major parts taken from university work (Mach/BSD) Streaming Server -- mostly Apple code??? Compiler Tools -- mostly GNU code Kerberos -- mostly MIT code Open Directory -- mostly outside code OpenPlay -- ??? Printing -- mostly outside code Rendezvous -- ??? Security -- ??? WebCore -- mostly KDE code X11 -- mostly outside code
So far on the list above, I don't see Apple's major contributions. While it's great Apple is putting Darwin out there as open source, most of it began as open source funded by the American taxpayer in the first place.
The Free Software Foundation is mostly of the same mind on the matter:
http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/apsl.html
"...we must remember that only part of Mac OS X is being released under the APSL. Even though the fatal flaws of the APSL were fixed, and even if the practical problems were addressed, that does no good for the other parts of Mac OS X whose source code is not being released at all. We must not judge all of a company by just part of what it does."
What is your objection to making all of "Mac OS X" open source? Why do you champion DRM and its invasion of personal privacy?
These were my key concerns in my first post and it would be good to stay focused. I still haven't heard any of your thoughts. You've been too busy attacking me, I think:-)
Whenever someone focuses on delivering personal attacks vs. discussing the issues, it is usually due to the fact that they have no factual argument to present and must rely on emotional attacks to confuse the issues. Thus when you throw one of your personal jibes or attacks at me, all it does is show me that you are coming from a position of weakness.
To get back to the facts --
First, there is indeed a lot of DRM in Mac OS X. Most every Apple app that deals with content has DRM code in it. While you, as a techie, are making distinctions between the Mach kernel and other parts of "Mac OS X", most people, especially Mac users, do not make such distinctions. Most Mac users don't even know that there is another way to play a DVD other than using what came on the machine as part of "Mac OS X". BTW, did you ever notice those two letters "OS" in "Mac OS X"? Your technical view of the OS is certainly not what Apple considers the "OS".
Second, Apple themselves admit that Darwin is not the same as "Mac OS X". Unless you work at Apple on the OS, it is impossible to know what the differences are between Darwin and "Mac OS X".
Third, in terms of how much open source code Apple has included with OS X compared to how much code Apple has contributed back to the OSS community, the difference is gigantic.
There is no substantial application that Apple has contributed to the open source community. There is not even one body of code similar in size and complexity to Samba or JBoss that Apple has contributed to the open source community. Yet Apple includes both as part of "Mac OS X".
No matter how you quibble over word meanings, Apple is a net "taker" from the community. I used the word parasite because this word accurately describes how Apple works with the open source community:
"One who habitually takes advantage of the generosity of others without making any useful return."
The OSS/Linux community would be far better off without any more parasites, especially those as big and hungry and vicious as Apple.
Apple's current policy of taking open source software and mixing it with their closed source OS and then selling the combined product for outrageous prices with all sorts of strange licensing requirements doesn't sit well with many people in the open source community.
Fortunately, most of the world doesn't agree with your opinion of the Linux community. Linux happens to be the fastest growing OS. In many countries, Linux is growing up to 20 times faster than Mac. And if you look at the popularity of open source software vs. closed source software, you will see similar numbers.
Maybe you should push for Apple to make OS X fully open source. That would make everyone happy and restore Apple to a position of trust.
"It is sometimes asserted that competition in a context of free trade and free circulation of capital is reactivating Ricardo's Iron Law of Wages, according to which wages will automatically tend to stabilise at the minimal subsistence level. This did not happen before now, as this reasoning goes, because, contrary to the assumption of Malthus, population growth was curbed in the societies experiencing the industrial revolution and workers were able to protect their interests, albeit through fierce struggle, riots, and revolutions. Subsequently, workers were able to organise themselves in trade-unions and political parties. Today, however, through free trade, the free circulation of capital and the resulting competition, workers and employees are in a global competitive situation with consequences not only for employment but also for wages and security."
A modern version of the Iron Law of Wages?
The CEOs of HP and Intel are trying to convince the American people that subsistence level wages are a good thing. They are, if you are the CEO of HP or Intel. If you are the CEO, you get paid millions of dollars when you reduce labor costs by offshoring jobs and bribing politicans to create all sorts of free trade laws. If you are a middle class worker in the US, you get to sacrifice your job and life for a CEO's mansions and "rich and famous" lifestyle.
US companies are using offshoring to inflate their short term profits. However, it is not something that will last. As more and more jobs are offshored, the consumption economy of the US will falter and start moving to the where the jobs were moved to -- India, China, etc.
Never mind that this relentless and amoral pursuit of profits causes global environmental devastation on a scale that was previously unimaginable -- global warming, poisoned oceans, mad cow, etc. It is no understatement to say that corporate greed is putting the lives of every human being at risk. Obviously if the planet, including man, is to survive and flourish, something must change.
Slashdot Mirror
I'll leave it to others to pay top dollar for a shiny silver box that you have to turn on its side with its little feet dangling... just so the drives don't die early :-)
From one of the other comments regarding shared controller failures, I'd personally go with four 250GB external drives for $920, saving nearly $300, and allowing for easy content categorization :-)
From what I've heard from hard drive technicians, when drives are mounted vertically they tend to have more mechanical problems than with horizontal mounting.
I would certainly not spend $1200 on "1 TB" of storage that used vertically mounted drives.
Individual 250GB drives are going for $150 on sale, so that leaves $600 for a drive enclosure ($100), power supply (included with the enclosure), and dual USB2/Firewire interface chip ($50). Unless there is a 5 year warranty or some other feature, I'd rather put something together myself using horizontal mounting and save at least a few hundred dollars.
Alternatively, one could buy four USB2/Firewire 250GB 8MB cache external drives for $230 each and still save money that way -- as well as reducing the chance of failure.
If you read the link I originally posted, there are excerpts from many medical publications. No, the references are not hyperlinked. But they are in text form, so it is a small step for the reader to highlight any particular publication reference and right click "Web search" (in Mozilla). Thus with a miniscule effort, the nasty naysayer could have explored all the medical publications. Note that many online medical journals require registration and/or subscription which may be why the author of the page I linked to does not have hyperlinks. Some of the references can be tracked down using the method I described above at other sites, though.
For example, one of the referenced publications on misdiagnosed atypical dementias is available on the NIH site.
Additionally in a later post, I provided a link to a site that contained 66 citations regarding CDJ and Alzheimer's. I am certainly not going to go through all 66 publications and find all the appropriate bits and pieces, compile them, and then post them here all because someone is too lazy to read through the supplied links (all of which are hyperlinked).
As I have said before, it is Stanley Prusiner, the Nobel prize winning scientist who discovered prions, who first suspected the linkage between BSE and CJD. There has been a lot of research, including the findings that CDJ is being misdiagnosed as Alzheimer's and other dementias. So if for some reason you think it is all a hoax, I would suggest looking into Prusiner's research as well as the research of other scientists in this subject area.
In sum, I have provided links or text references to nearly 100 pieces of information supporting what I originally posted. I would invite you (and any others) to do the reading and then continue on with research sufficient to your needs.
Cheers.
There was violent resistance to the very concept of "mad cow" in the first place... resistance that caused many more people and cows to die.
No one understands 100% how Alzheimer's works or how people get CJD. Initial reports have shown that CJD does come from mad cow and that CJD does have many of the same symptoms as Alzheimer's.
Of course what is going on is not 100% known and understood at this time. However, being dismissive of new ideas in the absence of full knowledge is even more stupid than being assertive of them. Many discoveries in science come from looking into things that don't make complete sense -- or any sense. If you think all "science" happens in a 100% provable at all times manner, you are sadly mistaken.
Prusiner, the Nobel winner for discovering prions, believes the linkages between NSE/CJD and Alzheimer's are worth looking into. If you want the "science" version of what I'm trying to discuss, talk to him or another qualified scientist.
What happened with mad cow / BSE / CJD in Great Britain and Europe was that it was very difficult to get any information at first. The information was being censored by the government and industry. It wasn't until more people died that the people forced the government to abandon their cover up.
Rather than having people in the US suffer from that same sort of cover up abuse, I am pointing out something that beef eaters should look into for their own safety.
Additionally this person hypocritically didn't offer any information herself, didn't put an ounce of effort into making anything better, just into making insults and complaints. You don't just slam someone for bringing up a potentially critical issue, especially early on when not all the facts are known.
If you look at the other responses, people did actually use Google and look into what was referenced on the site that "Antimony" had an issue with. At least in Mozilla the amount of effort to do that is miminal, less than 5 seconds of work to get the search going. Of course to do a proper research paper on CJD/mad cow/Alzheimer's is out of the scope of a Slashdot comment. Prusiner and others are funded with many millions of dollars to do that work.
As for your own comment... calling me a "troll" because I point out a maddened complainer who also happens to be a hypocrite... is just classic. Anyone who doesn't agree with you is a "troll", eh? I may not have been "nice" in my answer, but being "nice" to "not nice" people is merely giving positive reinforcement to abusive behavior. That may be your gig, but it ain't mine.
As the article says, it's possible that tens of thousands of cases of CJD in the US are going unrecognized.
Modern research is showing that prion-like proteins are involved with memory according to this article (note the links to Cell at the end).
There's a lot more information out there. It's not to say that everything is 100% understood at this point in time. What we do know...
If you are a beef eater, I'd suggest looking into the matter. Life is precious and as the British and Europeans found out the hard way... better not left solely in the hands of governments and industry.
As you are going into some sort of medical field, I hope you learn how to be a pro-active thinking sort of person, not just a reactive "lose your rag" naysayer.
Let me remind you from your study of the history of science that you know many ideas that turned out to be right at first met violent opposition from the scientific community. History has shown us that many scientists do very poorly at considering and accepting new ideas. At least in your ability to reject new ideas, you seem well on the way to being a good run of the mill mediocre scientist.
Stanley Prusiner, the scientist who coined the term prion, originally speculated that Alzheimer's may in fact turn out to be a prion disease. This speculation came in the mid 1980's.
Of course you know that Stanley Prusiner was award the Nobel prize for his work with prions, don't you?
I would at least consider the ideas of a Nobel prize-winning scientist, not reject them outright. It may not be that 100% mad cow = Alzheimer's as the body is a very complex system. However, mad cow could certainly be a leading factor in why Alzheimer's is growing at an amazing pace and being found in many younger people.
In today's most modern research, we are finding evidence that prion-like structures are involved with how memory works. Here's some information from a dementia site, note the links to Cell at the end.
Here's a December 29, 2003 recap from a government website of some of what is going on.
I could provide you with many many links and sources, but I suspect you will be a closed-minded doubter until either CJD rears its ugly in your life or you go ahead and do the research yourself.
Here are a few more places to start exploring --
#123400 CREUTZFELDT-JAKOB DISEASE; CJD
variant Creutzfeld-Jakob Disease Citations 1-10 of 66 total displayed.
That's all. If you eat beef, I would strongly urge you to do the research. Your life and the lives of people you care about may be at stake :-)
Over 13% of Alzheimer's deaths in the US are actually caused by mad cow. Using simple logic, one can see that there must be quite a bit of mad cow in the system to cause that many deaths.
Also, that there is mad cow in the USA on the loose is the simplest assumption because close to zero testing has been done in the US -- making the situation very similar to what happened in Britain/Europe before they found major BSE/mad cow infections.
Years ago in Britain and Europe, the same thing happened. The cows were not being tested, industry asserted for a long time that the meat was safe, time went by, people got CJD, there was a public uproar, the cows were tested, many cows were found to have BSE/mad cow, many cows were killed, and testing was finally implemented.
Great Britain and Europe learned the hard way. I've seen major resistance to testing American cows from the beef industry even though the extra cost would be very small. As with Britain, there can only be one reason that there is such resistance -- high mad cow infection rates.
The US has imported tens of millions of animals from countries that are known to have mad cow. The US has not done any real testing for mad cow. A certain percentage of female mad cows give birth to calves that have mad cow, thus producing domestic mad cow. Which again is not tested for.
Check the facts and you will see that there is a high likelihood that Americans have eaten millions of pounds of BSE/mad cow infected beef. Just the last tiny alert (from *one* cow) caused a recall of over 13,000 lbs of meat, some of which had already been eaten by a Seattle family that has come forward. It is not unreasonable to think that hundreds of families were exposed to mad cow just from the last tiny alert.
From a risk management perspective, it is very dangerous to be eating beef in the US. Not only are the cows not tested for mad cow/BSE, but it has been shown that over 13% of Alzheimer's fatalities are actually mad cow/CDJ deaths. The situation is very similar to what happened in both Britain and Europe, so there is little reason to doubt it will also happen in the US. Which means many infections and many deaths are on the way.
In fact, at least 13% of Alzheimer's cases are indeed CJD caused by mad cow. If larger studies were done, this percentage could end up much higher.
It may turn out that Alzheimer's is due to mad cow, or its predecessor, mad sheep (scrapie).
I hope that any new studies of this drug also focus on how it works in people versus CJD.
All over the beef-eating world, we are seeing CJD very early in people. Italy's only known case of CJD was a man who was merely 27 years old. Given CJD's incubation time, it would indicate that mad cow/BSE/CJD has been in Italy anywhere from 5 to 15 years.
For transmission between people, CJD is a blood borne disease, similar to HIV in how it spreads. This would explain why the ramp on Alzheimer's is so rapid and why so many young people are getting Alzheimer's.
Almost all the medical news regarding mad cow/BSE/CJD has been killed in the US. The simplest assumption would be that there is far more mad cow in the system than anyone wants to say. Only a ingenuous imbecile would think that out of over 35 million cows that are killed every year in the US, over the past 10 years or more, only 1 cow from Canada had BSE/mad cow. Especially considering that the US imports 1.7 million cows from Canada every year. And 1 million from Mexico. In both countries, Canada and Mexico, they have followed the US lead and perform near zero mad cow/BSE testing.
Anyhow, that is a lot on the crazy cow. I am hoping a fool's hope that Alzheimer's does not turn out to be caused by crazy cow. For if it is, there will be an epidemic of dementia in the USA unless a cure is found in the immediate future.
Of course an upcoming unstoppable Alzheimer's epidemic... would clearly explain the sudden and massive urge to offshore all jobs that require brain power to India, land of the sacred cow :-)
Portable music players are in their infancy. There are over a billion PC's out there, yet merely a paltry few million music players have been sold.
We've got many millions of new customers coming into the market which will drive new music players, new music formats, new music distribution systems, etc.
So far all we've seen is the early adopters playing around with iTunes. By no means has iTunes "crossed the chasm". Once mainstream people really understand DRM music and how it is "resolutionally challenged" crippleware that sells for full price, there are likely going to be big changes in the online music world.
By "crippleware" I mean that you, the buyer, cannot do what you want to do with it. That is why people are using funny workarounds like snagging the temp files from Toast so they can get the unencrypted versions of their songs.
The rate of broadband adoption is slowing in the US. And for the most part, all affordable broadband is very low bandwidth compared to the rest of the world. So at least in the USA as disc-based music gets better and better (DVD-Audio, SACD), the value delivered by the disc will continue to improve vs. what is delivered via the wire.
Finally, at least vs iTunes, actual CD's seem like they are cheaper and easier. You get full songs, no DRM, any/all formats, and to top it off... you get a readymade CD, already printed cover art, already printed track listings, and a jewelbox. All for just about the same price as iTunes, especially if you buy used CD's or Universal's new more affordable CDs.
All in all, it is too early in the portable music player market to worry about the small moves that are being made today. WMA will never be popular in Asia, so it will never be a world standard. There is nothing to fear there. The RIAA-friendly abd special-interest friendly USA and EU are a different matter, though, where Microsoft can use their mu$cle to drive adoption of their format.
If IBM ends up being viewed as the world's savior -- by doing the most to topple the MICROSOFT MONOPOLY-- IBM will have karma beyond measure. And that means revenue will flow into IBM for a long long time.
Inside IBM, the MICROSOFT MONOPOLY is viewed as a strategic threat to IBM. Because of MICROSOFT's OS and OFFICE MONOPOLIES and $60+ billion in cash and growing, the MICROSOFT MONOPOLY can wield vast power over IBM.
IBM, and indeed every other company in the industry, would like to get rid of the MICROSOFT MONOPOLY if only to be able to sleep at night.
I take it you are upset that Linux is more popular than Mac?
It is very immature to respond in way which is just dumping a bunch of anger and hate on someone and then walking away.
I had some hope for you regarding personal attacks, but I see I must temper it. I can only be optimistic and think that you are not like this in other parts of your life, just when it comes to your precious Macintosh.
Just out of curiosity, do you eat a lot of beef? I see a lot of angry people eat beef frequently and it may be mad cow that makes you so angry and filled with hate.
I'll skip your hate-filled response to my original message and again ask --
(1) Do you have objections to making all of "Mac OS X" open source? If so, what are they?
(2) Is there ANY digital rights management in "Mac OS X" that is not in an application? If I delete the various programs you mentioned, will that get rid of all DRM? Can you point me to anywhere on Apple's public website where they discuss what DRM is in "Mac OS X" and what it is used for?
If you don't answer, that's okay. You seem like a person who is more interested in cathartic release of repressed rage than addressing the key issues I have put on the table.
In the next 10,000 years, the impact will not be negligible. Yes, it will take that long for the planet to make more ozone -- provided that we somehow magically don't destroy more ozone. Thus we see that every rocket launch causes serious problems for life on Earth as the Earth simply cannot replenish ozone. What we destroy today is effectively gone.
You ridicule me, but look around and do some simple data correlation and you should be worried. Life on this planet is under severe threat by global warming and UV radiation. This is not a joke, not something from crazy world. It is here and now --
I'd rather have a cave and the wonderful world of nature outside my cave door and live a happy life in harmony with the world vs. build a million tin cans and blast them to the moon so I can say "I helped human beings spread their stupid wars into space (and killed the planet at the same time)".
And the Senate also voted for the Patriot Act. Does that make it "good"?
Next, are you going to stand up and tell us how the government is not run by special interests?
Oh please Daddy, please tell us another fairy tale!
There is no proof that the Moon is covered with easily utilized Helium 3. So far, it's just a theory.
However, it's been well proven that launching rockets destroys the ozone layer.
Even if there is Helium 3... and we ship up all the machinery to do something with it... via hundreds if not thousands of rockets... you will sacrifice life on Earth to build a big fusion reactor on the Moon.
BRILLIANT!
I'm sure Cameron will have a blast making "Titanic II: Ghosts of the Dead Planet".
And all the while you didn't realize THE SUN is already a BIG FUSION REACTOR that is supplying Earth with endless clean energy.
BRILLIANT!
Don't fuck over all life on Earth to play "cowboys in space".
Bush wants to make a little city -- "Plan B" -- on the Moon -- an exclusive space bunker for the billionaires.
It has been well known for many years that sending rockets into space destroys the ozone layer.
So a revitalized space program is perfectly aligned with Bush's other anti-environment programs.
Look at the world situation with HIV. Is it any different? Most people in the world until they see someone die -- in front of them -- and the autopsy confirms it was HIV... they don't believe it exists.
We see today that HIV is once again on the rise in America... because young people don't believe it's real. And in the rest of the world, HIV is a global epidemic because their education isn't sufficient for them to understand reality.
It's no surprise that ignorant young Americans (and other young people) scoff at global warming. The education of the average young person is insufficient to understand reality, including the vast amount of black and white data that shows indisputable global warming.
I know it's a tough thing to accept, but most young people, even the geeks, are severely undereducated. And what they have been taught is mostly brainwashing designed to make them a good worker focused on the small picture. The literacy of young people is almost zero.
If you have the motivation to look into the matter, I would recommend reading "Pedagogy of the Oppressed" by Paulo Friere --
The methodology of the late Paulo Freire, once considered such a threat to the established order that he was "invited" to leave his native Brazil, has helped to empower countless impoverished and illiterate people throughout the world. Freire's work has taken on especial urgency in the United States and Western Europe, where the creation of a permanent underclass among the underprivileged and minorities in cities and urban centers is increasingly accepted as the norm.
Excerpted from The Catalyst Centre, a Canadian organization that promotes cultures of learning for positive social change.
Obviously things are going to get a lot lot worse before they get better.
Gangs of America : The Rise of Corporate Power and the Disabling of Democracy
You can download a PDF of the book and there are also several chapters online in HTML.
Bravo! I appreciate that you made some progress sticking to facts this time around the platformloveberry bush :-) Maybe one day you'll be able to have a conversation with another human being without attacking him personally.
:-)
I stand corrected about saying "most" Apple apps that deal with "content" have DRM in them. I should have been more specific in my statement and said "multimedia content playback".
<I am not addressing some of what you wrote because as I have stated before, I am not going to engage in any discussion that is based on personal attacks. FYI, I did read the entire article. Move on.>
The first link you mention says the following --
"Darwin includes the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) and the GNU Project Debugger (GDB)."
At the "most", Apple created the GNU compiler backend for the PPC. Apple certainly didn't create any substantive part of the GNU Compiler Collection or the debugger. A compiler backend, especially one written to a pre-existing framework, is not similar in scope to SAMBA or JBOSS.
Secondly, you talk about Apple contributing "XNU" to the open source community. You didn't mention that the open source community had to fight Apple as Apple's original license was horribly one-sided. It is only very recently (Sept-12-2003) that Apple changed their license and had it approved by the OSI.
While the current APSL 2.0 license is going in a good direction, none of that direction is due to Apple's innate desire or inherent corporate philosophy.
This has always been the case with Apple. The company makes the least possible effort to work with their customers or partners and people have to threaten them with massive public shaming or lawsuits to get any sort of improvement out of the company.
I'm sure you recall "www.ipodsdirtysecret.com" and the current pending class action lawsuits against Apple regarding problems with the iBook. Apple is legendary for being a nasty horrible company to work with. I would think that in practice, using their source code license would be more of the same. I notice there is nobody using Apple's XNU for anything. And I wonder if Apple Legal has crushed them or silenced them in some way.
BTW, don't worry, I spent much more than 10 seconds with Google trying to find evidence of any third party using Darwin for their own projects/products and couldn't find anything. Do you have more information?
Looking at the list of "open source projects" on Apple's website, most of code was not written by Apple.
Darwin -- major parts taken from university work (Mach/BSD)
Streaming Server -- mostly Apple code???
Compiler Tools -- mostly GNU code
Kerberos -- mostly MIT code
Open Directory -- mostly outside code
OpenPlay -- ???
Printing -- mostly outside code
Rendezvous -- ???
Security -- ???
WebCore -- mostly KDE code
X11 -- mostly outside code
So far on the list above, I don't see Apple's major contributions. While it's great Apple is putting Darwin out there as open source, most of it began as open source funded by the American taxpayer in the first place.
The Free Software Foundation is mostly of the same mind on the matter:
http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/apsl.html
"...we must remember that only part of Mac OS X is being released under the APSL. Even though the fatal flaws of the APSL were fixed, and even if the practical problems were addressed, that does no good for the other parts of Mac OS X whose source code is not being released at all. We must not judge all of a company by just part of what it does."
What is your objection to making all of "Mac OS X" open source?
Why do you champion DRM and its invasion of personal privacy?
These were my key concerns in my first post and it would be good to stay focused. I still haven't heard any of your thoughts. You've been too busy attacking me, I think
To get back to the facts --
First, there is indeed a lot of DRM in Mac OS X. Most every Apple app that deals with content has DRM code in it. While you, as a techie, are making distinctions between the Mach kernel and other parts of "Mac OS X", most people, especially Mac users, do not make such distinctions. Most Mac users don't even know that there is another way to play a DVD other than using what came on the machine as part of "Mac OS X". BTW, did you ever notice those two letters "OS" in "Mac OS X"? Your technical view of the OS is certainly not what Apple considers the "OS".
Second, Apple themselves admit that Darwin is not the same as "Mac OS X". Unless you work at Apple on the OS, it is impossible to know what the differences are between Darwin and "Mac OS X".
Third, in terms of how much open source code Apple has included with OS X compared to how much code Apple has contributed back to the OSS community, the difference is gigantic.
There is no substantial application that Apple has contributed to the open source community. There is not even one body of code similar in size and complexity to Samba or JBoss that Apple has contributed to the open source community. Yet Apple includes both as part of "Mac OS X".
No matter how you quibble over word meanings, Apple is a net "taker" from the community. I used the word parasite because this word accurately describes how Apple works with the open source community:
"One who habitually takes advantage of the generosity of others without making any useful return."
The OSS/Linux community would be far better off without any more parasites, especially those as big and hungry and vicious as Apple.
Apple's current policy of taking open source software and mixing it with their closed source OS and then selling the combined product for outrageous prices with all sorts of strange licensing requirements doesn't sit well with many people in the open source community.
Fortunately, most of the world doesn't agree with your opinion of the Linux community. Linux happens to be the fastest growing OS. In many countries, Linux is growing up to 20 times faster than Mac. And if you look at the popularity of open source software vs. closed source software, you will see similar numbers.
Maybe you should push for Apple to make OS X fully open source. That would make everyone happy and restore Apple to a position of trust.
The CEOs of HP and Intel are trying to convince the American people that subsistence level wages are a good thing. They are, if you are the CEO of HP or Intel. If you are the CEO, you get paid millions of dollars when you reduce labor costs by offshoring jobs and bribing politicans to create all sorts of free trade laws. If you are a middle class worker in the US, you get to sacrifice your job and life for a CEO's mansions and "rich and famous" lifestyle.
US companies are using offshoring to inflate their short term profits. However, it is not something that will last. As more and more jobs are offshored, the consumption economy of the US will falter and start moving to the where the jobs were moved to -- India, China, etc.
Never mind that this relentless and amoral pursuit of profits causes global environmental devastation on a scale that was previously unimaginable -- global warming, poisoned oceans, mad cow, etc. It is no understatement to say that corporate greed is putting the lives of every human being at risk. Obviously if the planet, including man, is to survive and flourish, something must change.