The whole world has moved on now that we've all figured out that our hard drives are going to be a tad bit smaller than we thought.
A "tad" smaller? Are you kidding? With the hard drive capacities today, that "tad" has become huge! For example, take a 750 MB drive. The difference in capacity between what people would expect (i.e., 750*2^30 bytes) and what the drive actually has (i.e., 750*10^9 bytes) is (750*2^30)-(750*10^9) = 55306368000 bytes. Or in other words, 51.5 GB (binary) or 55.3 GB (decimal). So, your "750 GB" drive is really only 700! Still think it's only a "tad?"
You think you can squeeze a profit while the spammer is cashing out and the price is falling, good luck. They know the game, you don't.
Sure you could, by shorting the stock while the spammer is trying to cash out. Unfortunately (as I learned the last time this was discussed on Slashdot) you're not actually allowed to short-sell penny stocks (or something like that).
No, it makes sense -- I bet the majority of "qualified" ones teach the lower grades. It's easier to be qualified to teach arithmetic than it is to be qualified to teach calculus, after all.
Well then my Ph.D. in Linguistics is more "useful" than your MBA. Just because you're good at differential equations doesn't mean that the world needs to pay more for math and science than art. I can influence the masses a hell of a lot better with good writing than with a carefully deduced solution to a differential equation.
Psst... "MBA" stands for "Master of Business Administration," a.k.a. "management." Managers don't understand differential equations (unless they also have math/science/engineering degree too), so your argument would have been more effective if you had used a different example.
Besides, linguistics is still much more "science-y" then literature (or management, for that matter!), you know.
Having said that, if a student told me they had to write long papers I would probably advise them to use MSO. OO has some outlining abilities but its pretty poor compared to Microsoft's. Otherwise I don't see much justification, even for cheap.
For that, students ought to be using LaTeX, not OpenOffice or MS Office!
In a sense its like compiling a program, when its compiled it isn't code, its executable data.
FYI, GNU software that does stuff like that (e.g. GNU Bison, which is the GNU implementation of yacc) has an exception so that the problem you mention does not apply.
Heh, now you're conflating three -- superfetch is yet another separate thing. : )
Anyway, here's how it is: Vista has three technologies, superfetch, readyboost, and readydrive.
Superfetch preloads frequently-used stuff into RAM. It does not require any extra hardware, apparently. Readyboost basically acts as a cache between RAM and the paging file on the hard disk, so stuff that gets swapped out can get swapped in a bit quicker. It uses external (i.e., not part of a hybrid hard drive) flash, such as on a USB drive or in a CF or SD slot. Readydrive caches writes to the hard disk so that it doesn't have to spin up as often, which saves battery life. This is what's used with the hybrid hard drives.
These three technologies are related, but exactly the same.
I think you're conflating two different (but related) technologies: the former function is designed to be used on separate flash disks that are about the same size as the system RAM; the latter uses 128-256 MB and is what these "hybrid hard drives" are for.
...in a 3.5" form factor. You can't get that for a laptop.
Sadly, flash just isn't practical at all in it's current form for anythig OTHER than small devices that only need a small number of gig in a tiny form factor.
In other words, such as on (thin-and-light or ultraportable) laptops. Although I agree it has no chance of replacing big discs on fileservers, desktops, or PVRs, I think it does have a decent chance of replacing them in portable machines.
That would fail with continuous use of less than 100k per second. That's remarkably close to the amount of paging that the machine in question does, not counting any other I/O.
If your server is paging that much, why haven't you added more RAM?
All in all, I wouldn't touch a drive with this tech unless I could permanently disable it with a jumper if the flash parts started acting up. Even then, I wouldn't pay a penny more than I'd pay for a drive without this tech. It's a lot of hype for no real purpose. Just my $0.02.
You're forgetting the primary purpose of this: increasing buttery life in laptops. Even if it rears out after a few years, it could still be worth it for that!
Pipe four of them in parallel to get the same total area (i.e., pi*(.5/2)^2 = 4*pi*(.25/2)^2). They'll still restrict the flow some (because the fluid has non-zero viscosity), but I'd guess it'd be pretty close.
Well, you could look at it this way: build it well enough, and by the time it becomes likely to leak the computer is obsolete anyway. For example, having a 1% chance of leak within the first 5 years could be "good enough," even if the probability increased exponentially after that.
No, it couldn't. Why? Because the nature of radio spectrum makes it such that you either regulate, or nothing works because everything is interfering with everything else. That's physical reality, Mister Libertarian, and no amount of economic theory will change it!
For those of us who do have actual iPods, having a dock connector is better than a minijack because it can be used to transmit control signals in addition to the audio.
...frankly if we live in a free market, don't we need to accept the bad with the good?
Radio spectrum is limited and regulated by the government. Therefore, -- and I want to make sure everyone gets this, because I'm tired seeing it needing to be repeated -- RADIO IS NOT, AND NEVER COULD BE, A FREE MARKET!
What you don't realize is that, according to their plan, all that doesn't matter. Marketing doesn't matter. Radio doesn't matter. "Customers" (What are they? Surely you mean "consumer whores," right? Or "sheeple," at the least...) don't matter.
So what does matter? Increasingly draconian copyright laws matter. DRM (especially ubiquitous DRM, like how Microsoft is pushing, e.g. WMP adding DRM to ripped tracks by default) matters. Payola between the labels, radio stations, and (DRM'd) hardware and software makers matters. So what is this goal? Why, it's simply to force everyone to pay them for music, because they have no other choice. This is accomplished by removing all access to independent music and (eventually) bribing the government enough that it institutes some kind of compulsory music tax so that you have to pay whether you're listening or not. And, of course, if you're not buying "enough" of their dreck, it obviously means you're a "pirate," which gives them grounds to sue...
That scenario, right there, gives record label execs wet dreams. It must be the goal they're working towards, because it's the only thing that makes sense (from their twisted perspective).
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When he said "Mac laptops," what he really meant was "newer Mac laptops." Both your G4 PowerBook and my G4 iBook predate that, unfortunately.
Turn off all the DOSBox hotkeys and use ctrl-alt-del to switch tasks. I can almost guarantee that WordPerfect doesn't have that combination trapped!
A "tad" smaller? Are you kidding? With the hard drive capacities today, that "tad" has become huge! For example, take a 750 MB drive. The difference in capacity between what people would expect (i.e., 750*2^30 bytes) and what the drive actually has (i.e., 750*10^9 bytes) is (750*2^30)-(750*10^9) = 55306368000 bytes. Or in other words, 51.5 GB (binary) or 55.3 GB (decimal). So, your "750 GB" drive is really only 700! Still think it's only a "tad?"
Sure you could, by shorting the stock while the spammer is trying to cash out. Unfortunately (as I learned the last time this was discussed on Slashdot) you're not actually allowed to short-sell penny stocks (or something like that).
Quite right; thank you for clarifying.
No, it makes sense -- I bet the majority of "qualified" ones teach the lower grades. It's easier to be qualified to teach arithmetic than it is to be qualified to teach calculus, after all.
Psst... "MBA" stands for "Master of Business Administration," a.k.a. "management." Managers don't understand differential equations (unless they also have math/science/engineering degree too), so your argument would have been more effective if you had used a different example.
Besides, linguistics is still much more "science-y" then literature (or management, for that matter!), you know.
What does an "architectural engineer" do? I've heard of civil engineers and I've heard of architects, but never an "architectural engineer..."
For that, students ought to be using LaTeX, not OpenOffice or MS Office!
Sure, the GPL FAQ explains this sort of thing:
FYI, GNU software that does stuff like that (e.g. GNU Bison, which is the GNU implementation of yacc) has an exception so that the problem you mention does not apply.
Damn it! Stupid handwriting recognition -- sometimes it changes words on me without me realizing (my "u" and "a" can look rather similar).
Heh, now you're conflating three -- superfetch is yet another separate thing. : )
Anyway, here's how it is: Vista has three technologies, superfetch, readyboost, and readydrive.
Superfetch preloads frequently-used stuff into RAM. It does not require any extra hardware, apparently. Readyboost basically acts as a cache between RAM and the paging file on the hard disk, so stuff that gets swapped out can get swapped in a bit quicker. It uses external (i.e., not part of a hybrid hard drive) flash, such as on a USB drive or in a CF or SD slot. Readydrive caches writes to the hard disk so that it doesn't have to spin up as often, which saves battery life. This is what's used with the hybrid hard drives.
These three technologies are related, but exactly the same.
I think you're conflating two different (but related) technologies: the former function is designed to be used on separate flash disks that are about the same size as the system RAM; the latter uses 128-256 MB and is what these "hybrid hard drives" are for.
In other words, such as on (thin-and-light or ultraportable) laptops. Although I agree it has no chance of replacing big discs on fileservers, desktops, or PVRs, I think it does have a decent chance of replacing them in portable machines.
If your server is paging that much, why haven't you added more RAM?
You're forgetting the primary purpose of this: increasing buttery life in laptops. Even if it rears out after a few years, it could still be worth it for that!
Yes, actually. Nobody even tries to understand the Microsoft EULA!
Pipe four of them in parallel to get the same total area (i.e., pi*(.5/2)^2 = 4*pi*(.25/2)^2). They'll still restrict the flow some (because the fluid has non-zero viscosity), but I'd guess it'd be pretty close.
Well, you could look at it this way: build it well enough, and by the time it becomes likely to leak the computer is obsolete anyway. For example, having a 1% chance of leak within the first 5 years could be "good enough," even if the probability increased exponentially after that.
Is there a WRT54G firmware that can do that? I wouldn't trust anything like that running on a Windows host...
No, it couldn't. Why? Because the nature of radio spectrum makes it such that you either regulate, or nothing works because everything is interfering with everything else. That's physical reality, Mister Libertarian, and no amount of economic theory will change it!
For those of us who do have actual iPods, having a dock connector is better than a minijack because it can be used to transmit control signals in addition to the audio.
Radio spectrum is limited and regulated by the government. Therefore, -- and I want to make sure everyone gets this, because I'm tired seeing it needing to be repeated -- RADIO IS NOT, AND NEVER COULD BE, A FREE MARKET!
What you don't realize is that, according to their plan, all that doesn't matter. Marketing doesn't matter. Radio doesn't matter. "Customers" (What are they? Surely you mean "consumer whores," right? Or "sheeple," at the least...) don't matter.
So what does matter? Increasingly draconian copyright laws matter. DRM (especially ubiquitous DRM, like how Microsoft is pushing, e.g. WMP adding DRM to ripped tracks by default) matters. Payola between the labels, radio stations, and (DRM'd) hardware and software makers matters. So what is this goal? Why, it's simply to force everyone to pay them for music, because they have no other choice. This is accomplished by removing all access to independent music and (eventually) bribing the government enough that it institutes some kind of compulsory music tax so that you have to pay whether you're listening or not. And, of course, if you're not buying "enough" of their dreck, it obviously means you're a "pirate," which gives them grounds to sue...
That scenario, right there, gives record label execs wet dreams. It must be the goal they're working towards, because it's the only thing that makes sense (from their twisted perspective).