But I really fail to see how this is interesting on Slashdot. This is obviously not a privacy issue. The black box records information about the last five seconds before a collision. That's hardly a privacy concern.
So where do you draw the line? 10 seconds, 30 seconds? 5 minutes? 5 hours? 72 hours?
Silicon gets larger and cheaper every year. Heck, don't be surprised if 3-5 years down the road, GM can't buy recording devices that only hold 5 seconds of data. Instead, they'll have to buy the 5 minute version just because nobody makes anything small enough anymore.
Personally, I agree that 5 seconds ain't an issue... and I start to get uncomfortable once we're talking about anything more then 60 seconds.
The ridiculous level is imagining a system that records 100-300 hours of use and has to be submitted to your insurance company periodically.
Those kind of shows are so cheap to make and draw such high ratings that they will completely take over the airwaves in a year or two.
What? You mean they haven't completely taken over yet?
Gee! Maybe I should fire up that old tube-based TV and watch some of the remaining non-reality shows before they fade away forever! It'll only take me an hour or so to get the old beast down out of the attic...
My only complaint is that it's very sensitive about what make of memory you use in it. Even with backing off the memory timings, Prime95 still throws an error every week or two.
Oh well, at least it's not crashing hourly like it did prior to backing the CL value off from 2.0 to 2.5.
Re:Fight back!
on
Paid To Spam
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
In short, after you sell your soul and your internet access, you get nothing in return. Zero, zilch, nada. Find someone who has received a nickel from these guys, if you can.
I'll bet you get a free gift!
Identity theft! Especially since they'll probably ask for account information where they can deposit your ill-gotten gains.
(Never try to out-scam a scammer... it's like trying to argue with an idiot.)
Dream on... Windows Update was pretty much hosed over an hour ago. (Which was about 30 minutes after I got the e-mail from our hosting service about the latest update.)
5400rpm 160Gb drives are now only $105. Add a $35 external USB enclosure and your costs are still below $1.00 per gigabyte.
(There are 7200rpm drives that are only $92, but I prefer the slower, cooler, quieter 5400rpms when mounting in not-the-greatest for cooling external enclosures.)
If they can drop the media costs to $15-$20 per cartridge, I think they'd have a winner.
I know you were modded funny, but, why would servers need anti-virus software, even if they were Windows servers? Do we have sysops that configure servers to execute binaries off of their own shares?
Servers (especially mail/ftp/file servers, but not so much database/app servers) are a good spot to catch viruses that got past the anti-virus software that is installed on the user's desktops. Especially since user's have a bad habit of disabling or just simply breaking their anti-virus software.
A good admin even uses a different A/V package then what is installed on the desktop PCs to provide more variety in their defensive posture.
Not a bad combination when you're planning on having half-a-dozen or so of them sitting in the room with you.
Rack-mount gear is not small, a roll-about rack is roughly 18" wide, 24-27" deep (add 3" for cabling on the back), and maybe 36-42" high. And as someone else mentioned, it tends to be hot (designed for air-conditioned rooms which cool the ambient temp down to 65F/20C), noisy (due to size of fans, rpms needed, and quiet-is-not-a-design-constraint), and power-hungry. Great if you have a dedicated server closet with it's own cooling system, not so great if you have to live in the same room as the gear.
Convert them, and keep the 8mm tapes in a cool, dark, dry place.
One trick for DVDs is to stick PAR2 recovery data on them using QuickPar. Then, once the ECC on the disc can't keep up with the scratches, you have a window of opportunity during which you can repair the damage using the recovery data. The more recovery data there is on the disc, the more damage that can be sustained and still repaired. Only a scratched ToC track is difficult to recover from (have to use a professional service).
Basic steps:
1. Create the VIDEO_TS folder using your DVD authoring program. Leaving 50-250Mb of space on the DVD instead of aiming for the abolute max is probably a reasonable amount.
2. Create recovery data (PAR2) files in the VIDEO_TS folder, using a block size of 1/2/4Mb with enough recovery blocks to fill out the rest of the DVD's capacity.
3. Create an ISO file using ImgTools Classic.
4. Burn the ISO file to DVD.
I haven't had any issues leaving the PAR2 files in the VIDEO_TS folder, but YMMV. (Leaving them there makes it easy to verify the discs a year or two down the road when you suspect damage.)
(ones that I know off-hand)
AIT-2 (50Gb uncompressed)
- $60/tape, $1000/drive
AIT-3 (100Gb uncompressed)
- $60/tape, $3500/drive
Yeah, tape prices suck for the home, mostly because the drives with decent per-gigabyte tape prices are expensive.
Force Windows users to understand that (with file extensions visible),.bat,.com,.exe,.scr, etc are things that should not be run from email attachments unless they are DEFINITELY trusted sources.
Better to have the mail server reject any e-mails containing attachments with those extensions. There's no legitmate reason that files with those extensions should be floating around the e-mail system.
We have a list of about 20 extensions that we block... which puts a decent dent in the problem before it even hits the user's machine.
In this case, why are programs like Gator not removed by anti-virus software? By all definitions, Gator (or is it now Claria) and similar programs are Trojans. If the user knew what it would do to their system, they would have never installed it. Then there are the reports of "drive by downloading". If this isn't trojan activity, then what is?
Follow the money... Gator/Claria has money, virus/worm/trojan authors don't.
State by state... Last time I checked in Florida, it was a max of 8, BUT for 8 total, at least one had to be a space or dash. Otherwise you could use 7 or fewer alphanumerics.
Probably because the real limit is still 7, the space/dash just gets silently dropped when it gets put into the key field. e.g. you can't have two license plates that only differe in where the space/dash is located. Since license numbers are usually reported/communicated verbally, this helps avoid confusion. (Was that "1IO0 O1I0" or "1IO0O1I0"?)
Until you can provide a tool to do simple database, query, forms, and reports all in one package, then you're not going to get the masses to migrate, even if you provide a solution by combining 2 or more technologies.
In addition, you need to provide a way for people to trade data sets around without dumping them into spreadsheets or hiring a full-time DBA.
MSAccess is extremely useful in that scenario because everything is self-contained in a single file. Want to work on a temp copy? Create a copy of the MDB just like you'd create a copy of a spreadsheet file or a document file. Send it to a co-worker? Again, works just like spreadsheet/document files. Make a backup copy to disk? No need to learn arcane commands, just drag-n-drop the MDB file.
Yes it sucks for multi-user situations or bajillion row recordsets... but for dealing with low-end database tasks that don't require central storage, it's good enough to do the job. Simple enough to be usable by the average user and meets 90%+ of their needs. Tough combination to beat unless you build an MSAccess clone.
Incidentally "meteor" can refer either to the incandescence of a meteoroid burning up in the atmosphere or it can refer to the object itself (in which case it is a perfect synonym for "meteoroid").
How about we just call it "stuff that falls down and goes boom"?
Unless it happens within a short time-frame (e.g. less then 6 months) where we suddenly go from 100% production to 0% production (which is highly unlikely), there should be plenty of reaction time to make the adjustment. You'll have at least a few years where the cost of raw oil slowly rises, probably with periodic price shocks. Perhaps as long as a decade or two.
During the adjustment time, as oil gets more expensive, it will become more cost-efficient to use oil to make alternative energy sources rather then directly burning oil. This, of course, will drive down the manufacturing/deployment costs of alternative energy sources (mass production instead of one-ofs). Which will re-inforce the cycle and make oil-based energy even less cost-effective.
So yes, there will be a period of adjustment, but barring global catastrophes, it won't be the end of the world as we know it.
So it's not fair to say that nobody watches comercials with a TiVo... it's just that the ad sponsors have to come up with comercials people will want to watch when given the ability to "gong" them off the stage with a fast forward button.
That's right on the mark... while I don't have a TIVO, I do record around 10 episodes per week off the tube for transfer to DVD-R (3 eps/disc).
If I see a good commercial, a lot of times I'll snip it out and put a few of them in an extra menu on the disc. Usually there's 1 or 2 commercials per hour that I'll snag (ending up with around 6 commercials on each disc).
150dpi is the resolution of "fine" mode on a fax machine, IIRC. My current laptop screen is 128dpi (looks nice when using large-fonts and the clear-type) and my next upgrade is a 142dpi screen.
While 300dpi would be ideal (you probably wouldn't notice stuck pixels), 170dpi is pretty nice.
(Now, if I could only find a 15" or 17" LCD monitor with the same DPI as my laptop...)
On of the great health threats facing North Americans today is that we overload our childrens' backpacks. They fardles bear, to grunt and sweat under a weary life.
Okay, I give up... what does "fardles bear" mean?
Oh, and nice spin on "... but won't someone think of the children?"!
The reason is simple, human fingers and hands aren't going to shrink. SDRAM cards are about as small as most people can handle comfortably. SDRAM chips for CPUs work very well not at holding chips but at being easy to install and make positive contact with a large number of contacts on a relatively small edge. The design factors for these things are many, the chips they carry are only a single one of them.
I think you're missing something... SDRAM is not designed to be handled on a day-to-day basis (or even month-to-month). Remember back when RAM came in discrete dual-inline packaging? Those little buggers were about 3/8" x 7/8" and you had to install 8 or 9 of them at a time with special tools. (Unless you were brave about risking bent pins.) That's a lot smaller then SDRAM packaging and folks did just fine.
SDRAM and SO-DIMM package is not size-constrained yet due to human factors, but rather due to the precise tolerances required to manufacture something that has to match up oodles of tiny pins. (SO-DIMM connections make SDRAM connectors look fat...)
The only problem that I have now is that my music collection has reached a critical mass where it's no longer feasible to rip all my CDs should I lose my hard drive, but it's also not feasible to back up my collection to traditional recordable media. So, I either need a tape backup drive, or I need to devise a solution to back up my collection onto my linux box. Any suggestions?
External USB/firewire enclosure ($30) + cheap IDE drive ($100) + mirroring software (e.g. Second Copy 2000, $25 or so).
Bonus points if you get software that also keeps copies of deleted files, and multiple revisions of changed files (ala Second Copy 2000).
still 4G of data is a lot and I don't like hanging them with a thin rope. So after awhile I par all the files to create a 10%~20% backup. Backup the backup. I am curious if anyone else does this.
Not so much backup the backup, but instead I create PAR2 files and put them in the VIDEO_TS folder (in the case of video DVDs), or put everything in ZIP files in the root folder and then create a PAR2 set (using QuickPar) for them.
For data, I usually shoot for 10-15% recovery data on the disk (maybe more).
For video, 1-3% is plenty. So far I've not had any problems leaving the PAR2 files in the VIDEO_TS folder. When the disc starts to show errors, I have the option of using ISO Buster and the PAR2 recovery data to restore the corrupted data prior to burning it to new media.
Still not as secure as a second physical copy, but beats finding out a disc is going bad and not being able to do anything about it.
As soon as you start pushing DVD ISO images or AV files around like you used to push CD ISO and MP3 files around on your LAN, you'll quickly see the need for GigE. (Granted, it'll just move the bottleneck to a different point, but it's still a worthwhile upgrade.)
100Mbps LAN is capable of moving 17.5 to 26.0 gigabytes per hour across the network (at a roaring 5.0 to 7.5 Mb/sec). That means a DVD ISO image is going to take 10-15 minutes and a 50Gb tape backup will take 2-3 hours to move from A to B.
GigE, of course, can easily multiply that performance level by 5 or 7 (doubt you'll see 10x improvement, but you might). Hitting the disks on the server is almost as fast as hitting the local disks in my workstation. Pretty much a no-brainer upgrade now with 8-port workgroup switches for $150 on the street, managed 24-port switches around $1800, and GigE server NICs around $120.
The upgrade to PCI-X might be relatively smooth since it appears that a card can be designed to work in both style systems. (e.g. the website for 3com's GigE Server NIC indicates that it works with both PCI-X and 64-bit PCI.)
Slashdot Mirror
But I really fail to see how this is interesting on Slashdot. This is obviously not a privacy issue. The black box records information about the last five seconds before a collision. That's hardly a privacy concern.
So where do you draw the line? 10 seconds, 30 seconds? 5 minutes? 5 hours? 72 hours?
Silicon gets larger and cheaper every year. Heck, don't be surprised if 3-5 years down the road, GM can't buy recording devices that only hold 5 seconds of data. Instead, they'll have to buy the 5 minute version just because nobody makes anything small enough anymore.
Personally, I agree that 5 seconds ain't an issue... and I start to get uncomfortable once we're talking about anything more then 60 seconds.
The ridiculous level is imagining a system that records 100-300 hours of use and has to be submitted to your insurance company periodically.
Those kind of shows are so cheap to make and draw such high ratings that they will completely take over the airwaves in a year or two.
What? You mean they haven't completely taken over yet?
Gee! Maybe I should fire up that old tube-based TV and watch some of the remaining non-reality shows before they fade away forever! It'll only take me an hour or so to get the old beast down out of the attic...
oooh, shiny new PC game box!
Wait, what was I supposed to be watching again?
I have the A7N8X Deluxe as well...
My only complaint is that it's very sensitive about what make of memory you use in it. Even with backing off the memory timings, Prime95 still throws an error every week or two.
Oh well, at least it's not crashing hourly like it did prior to backing the CL value off from 2.0 to 2.5.
In short, after you sell your soul and your internet access, you get nothing in return. Zero, zilch, nada. Find someone who has received a nickel from these guys, if you can.
I'll bet you get a free gift!
Identity theft! Especially since they'll probably ask for account information where they can deposit your ill-gotten gains.
(Never try to out-scam a scammer... it's like trying to argue with an idiot.)
I think we /.ed microsoft!!
Dream on... Windows Update was pretty much hosed over an hour ago. (Which was about 30 minutes after I got the e-mail from our hosting service about the latest update.)
5400rpm 160Gb drives are now only $105. Add a $35 external USB enclosure and your costs are still below $1.00 per gigabyte.
(There are 7200rpm drives that are only $92, but I prefer the slower, cooler, quieter 5400rpms when mounting in not-the-greatest for cooling external enclosures.)
If they can drop the media costs to $15-$20 per cartridge, I think they'd have a winner.
I know you were modded funny, but, why would servers need anti-virus software, even if they were Windows servers? Do we have sysops that configure servers to execute binaries off of their own shares?
Servers (especially mail/ftp/file servers, but not so much database/app servers) are a good spot to catch viruses that got past the anti-virus software that is installed on the user's desktops. Especially since user's have a bad habit of disabling or just simply breaking their anti-virus software.
A good admin even uses a different A/V package then what is installed on the desktop PCs to provide more variety in their defensive posture.
Or even the mini-ITX boards...
Less power, less noise, less heat... and tiny.
Not a bad combination when you're planning on having half-a-dozen or so of them sitting in the room with you.
Rack-mount gear is not small, a roll-about rack is roughly 18" wide, 24-27" deep (add 3" for cabling on the back), and maybe 36-42" high. And as someone else mentioned, it tends to be hot (designed for air-conditioned rooms which cool the ambient temp down to 65F/20C), noisy (due to size of fans, rpms needed, and quiet-is-not-a-design-constraint), and power-hungry. Great if you have a dedicated server closet with it's own cooling system, not so great if you have to live in the same room as the gear.
Convert them, and keep the 8mm tapes in a cool, dark, dry place.
One trick for DVDs is to stick PAR2 recovery data on them using QuickPar. Then, once the ECC on the disc can't keep up with the scratches, you have a window of opportunity during which you can repair the damage using the recovery data. The more recovery data there is on the disc, the more damage that can be sustained and still repaired. Only a scratched ToC track is difficult to recover from (have to use a professional service).
Basic steps:
1. Create the VIDEO_TS folder using your DVD authoring program. Leaving 50-250Mb of space on the DVD instead of aiming for the abolute max is probably a reasonable amount.
2. Create recovery data (PAR2) files in the VIDEO_TS folder, using a block size of 1/2/4Mb with enough recovery blocks to fill out the rest of the DVD's capacity.
3. Create an ISO file using ImgTools Classic.
4. Burn the ISO file to DVD.
I haven't had any issues leaving the PAR2 files in the VIDEO_TS folder, but YMMV. (Leaving them there makes it easy to verify the discs a year or two down the road when you suspect damage.)
(ones that I know off-hand) AIT-2 (50Gb uncompressed) - $60/tape, $1000/drive AIT-3 (100Gb uncompressed) - $60/tape, $3500/drive Yeah, tape prices suck for the home, mostly because the drives with decent per-gigabyte tape prices are expensive.
3com's 24-port managed switch is only $1800.
The $4000 price level is older hardware. (Over a year old at this point?) The newer managed switches are a lot cheaper.
Force Windows users to understand that (with file extensions visible), .bat, .com, .exe, .scr, etc are things that should not be run from email attachments unless they are DEFINITELY trusted sources.
Better to have the mail server reject any e-mails containing attachments with those extensions. There's no legitmate reason that files with those extensions should be floating around the e-mail system.
We have a list of about 20 extensions that we block... which puts a decent dent in the problem before it even hits the user's machine.
In this case, why are programs like Gator not removed by anti-virus software? By all definitions, Gator (or is it now Claria) and similar programs are Trojans. If the user knew what it would do to their system, they would have never installed it. Then there are the reports of "drive by downloading". If this isn't trojan activity, then what is?
Follow the money... Gator/Claria has money, virus/worm/trojan authors don't.
State by state... Last time I checked in Florida, it was a max of 8, BUT for 8 total, at least one had to be a space or dash. Otherwise you could use 7 or fewer alphanumerics.
Probably because the real limit is still 7, the space/dash just gets silently dropped when it gets put into the key field. e.g. you can't have two license plates that only differe in where the space/dash is located. Since license numbers are usually reported/communicated verbally, this helps avoid confusion. (Was that "1IO0 O1I0" or "1IO0O1I0"?)
Until you can provide a tool to do simple database, query, forms, and reports all in one package, then you're not going to get the masses to migrate, even if you provide a solution by combining 2 or more technologies.
In addition, you need to provide a way for people to trade data sets around without dumping them into spreadsheets or hiring a full-time DBA.
MSAccess is extremely useful in that scenario because everything is self-contained in a single file. Want to work on a temp copy? Create a copy of the MDB just like you'd create a copy of a spreadsheet file or a document file. Send it to a co-worker? Again, works just like spreadsheet/document files. Make a backup copy to disk? No need to learn arcane commands, just drag-n-drop the MDB file.
Yes it sucks for multi-user situations or bajillion row recordsets... but for dealing with low-end database tasks that don't require central storage, it's good enough to do the job. Simple enough to be usable by the average user and meets 90%+ of their needs. Tough combination to beat unless you build an MSAccess clone.
Incidentally "meteor" can refer either to the incandescence of a meteoroid burning up in the atmosphere or it can refer to the object itself (in which case it is a perfect synonym for "meteoroid").
How about we just call it "stuff that falls down and goes boom"?
Unless it happens within a short time-frame (e.g. less then 6 months) where we suddenly go from 100% production to 0% production (which is highly unlikely), there should be plenty of reaction time to make the adjustment. You'll have at least a few years where the cost of raw oil slowly rises, probably with periodic price shocks. Perhaps as long as a decade or two.
During the adjustment time, as oil gets more expensive, it will become more cost-efficient to use oil to make alternative energy sources rather then directly burning oil. This, of course, will drive down the manufacturing/deployment costs of alternative energy sources (mass production instead of one-ofs). Which will re-inforce the cycle and make oil-based energy even less cost-effective.
So yes, there will be a period of adjustment, but barring global catastrophes, it won't be the end of the world as we know it.
So it's not fair to say that nobody watches comercials with a TiVo... it's just that the ad sponsors have to come up with comercials people will want to watch when given the ability to "gong" them off the stage with a fast forward button.
That's right on the mark... while I don't have a TIVO, I do record around 10 episodes per week off the tube for transfer to DVD-R (3 eps/disc).
If I see a good commercial, a lot of times I'll snip it out and put a few of them in an extra menu on the disc. Usually there's 1 or 2 commercials per hour that I'll snag (ending up with around 6 commercials on each disc).
150dpi is the resolution of "fine" mode on a fax machine, IIRC. My current laptop screen is 128dpi (looks nice when using large-fonts and the clear-type) and my next upgrade is a 142dpi screen.
While 300dpi would be ideal (you probably wouldn't notice stuck pixels), 170dpi is pretty nice.
(Now, if I could only find a 15" or 17" LCD monitor with the same DPI as my laptop...)
On of the great health threats facing North Americans today is that we overload our childrens' backpacks. They fardles bear, to grunt and sweat under a weary life.
Okay, I give up... what does "fardles bear" mean?
Oh, and nice spin on "... but won't someone think of the children?"!
8-port workgroup switches are $149 now...
You won't be waiting much longer (and even if you only ever user 100Mbps NICs, it's worth it).
The reason is simple, human fingers and hands aren't going to shrink. SDRAM cards are about as small as most people can handle comfortably. SDRAM chips for CPUs work very well not at holding chips but at being easy to install and make positive contact with a large number of contacts on a relatively small edge. The design factors for these things are many, the chips they carry are only a single one of them.
I think you're missing something... SDRAM is not designed to be handled on a day-to-day basis (or even month-to-month). Remember back when RAM came in discrete dual-inline packaging? Those little buggers were about 3/8" x 7/8" and you had to install 8 or 9 of them at a time with special tools. (Unless you were brave about risking bent pins.) That's a lot smaller then SDRAM packaging and folks did just fine.
SDRAM and SO-DIMM package is not size-constrained yet due to human factors, but rather due to the precise tolerances required to manufacture something that has to match up oodles of tiny pins. (SO-DIMM connections make SDRAM connectors look fat...)
The only problem that I have now is that my music collection has reached a critical mass where it's no longer feasible to rip all my CDs should I lose my hard drive, but it's also not feasible to back up my collection to traditional recordable media. So, I either need a tape backup drive, or I need to devise a solution to back up my collection onto my linux box. Any suggestions?
External USB/firewire enclosure ($30) + cheap IDE drive ($100) + mirroring software (e.g. Second Copy 2000, $25 or so).
Bonus points if you get software that also keeps copies of deleted files, and multiple revisions of changed files (ala Second Copy 2000).
still 4G of data is a lot and I don't like hanging them with a thin rope. So after awhile I par all the files to create a 10%~20% backup. Backup the backup. I am curious if anyone else does this.
Not so much backup the backup, but instead I create PAR2 files and put them in the VIDEO_TS folder (in the case of video DVDs), or put everything in ZIP files in the root folder and then create a PAR2 set (using QuickPar) for them.
For data, I usually shoot for 10-15% recovery data on the disk (maybe more).
For video, 1-3% is plenty. So far I've not had any problems leaving the PAR2 files in the VIDEO_TS folder. When the disc starts to show errors, I have the option of using ISO Buster and the PAR2 recovery data to restore the corrupted data prior to burning it to new media.
Still not as secure as a second physical copy, but beats finding out a disc is going bad and not being able to do anything about it.
Except for GigE (who uses GigE anyway?)
As soon as you start pushing DVD ISO images or AV files around like you used to push CD ISO and MP3 files around on your LAN, you'll quickly see the need for GigE. (Granted, it'll just move the bottleneck to a different point, but it's still a worthwhile upgrade.)
100Mbps LAN is capable of moving 17.5 to 26.0 gigabytes per hour across the network (at a roaring 5.0 to 7.5 Mb/sec). That means a DVD ISO image is going to take 10-15 minutes and a 50Gb tape backup will take 2-3 hours to move from A to B.
GigE, of course, can easily multiply that performance level by 5 or 7 (doubt you'll see 10x improvement, but you might). Hitting the disks on the server is almost as fast as hitting the local disks in my workstation. Pretty much a no-brainer upgrade now with 8-port workgroup switches for $150 on the street, managed 24-port switches around $1800, and GigE server NICs around $120.
The upgrade to PCI-X might be relatively smooth since it appears that a card can be designed to work in both style systems. (e.g. the website for 3com's GigE Server NIC indicates that it works with both PCI-X and 64-bit PCI.)