I've only had 1 non-Flash related crash on my Mac. The other 3 times it has crashed have been due to Flash (running in Chrome, incidentally). I know that's just a sample size of 1 but Flash is rather unstable and buggy on Macs (it works most of the time but not as well as it does in Windows). It's the same with Flash in Linux - it's crashed Linux distros because of some random bugs and poor performance.
As someone who gives IQ tests nearly every week, brain damage has to be pretty bad before it affects a person's IQ. IQ is very stable. You can get slight reductions if you have speed of processing slowing but other than that, your brain damage has to be bad (and affecting specific areas of the brain) in order to decrease IQ.
They're a real IT department - they are very good - they are just under-staffed due to budget constraints (that's one problem with being at a public university). We could let them manage our systems (they do whatever we ask them to do) but we actually wanted to manage our own computers and IT, being reluctant in the first place to add Macs to the infrastructure, is fine with us doing (most of) the managing.
Thanks for the comment. I've tested the HFS+ set up and it seems to be working very well.
I'll have to take the business plan under consideration. As far as breaking up the files - yes we could but the issue is with multiple IT departments and storage on either end of the transfer. Plus, I didn't include this in my initial question post but much of the time the transferring isn't permanent meaning that it is more of "showing" the files than giving the files. In other words, our collaborators want to see the files (images) but not hang on to them, which is why it seems to make more sense just to use external HDDs. Plus, it only takes us 5 minutes to walk over there so it's no big deal to run back and forth should we need to.
That's actually what we will probably do since you can take the raw files and (at least on our Macs with i7 processors) recreate the fiber tracking files in about 20 to 60 minutes. Because of this, we might not even hang on to these large files because they can be recreated easily. However, it's always nice to have the "original" file with research should anyone want to see it (and not just a recreated file), which is why we probably will hang on to them (plus, it does take time to run the tracking).
Hmm, those are good suggestions. We'll (I'll) have to give them a shot. Most of our smaller image files are gzipped but these large files have not been (largely because not only would they take a long time to gzip with probably only minimal benefits but also we're just starting to create them and haven't had to "store" them much). Anyway, you make some great suggestions.
Yeah, I was trying to not write too much in the original post because most Slashdotters don't read it anyway.:) Yes, these large files are intermediary and end-stage analyses.
We would love to have that infrastructure at our institution; we're working that way but we don't have it yet. If our lab could afford it we'd do something like that but our funding isn't that high. The other issue is that we use Macs because they are the best for neuroimaging work (Linux is great but things work better in OS X) and our IT department is reluctant to support them so we're doing most of the support for them ourselves. So for now we fly by the seat of our pants a bit.
There is no way for names to be connected with the data without someone hacking our managed filesystem (it's possible, but that is IT's responsibility, not ours) or having direct access to our lab space (but if we are not there they would have to get through multiple locked doors and break into a locked cabinet).
We opted to go with local, portable storage because only 4 people need or have access to these particular image files on three computers (we have 2 more collaborators that might need access but we can get them the raw data and they can recreate what we did on their computers). We would love to have the managed storage but it our grant only has so much funding so we want the most bang for our (your - assuming you live in the U.S. and pay taxes) buck.
We've talked with our privacy office and our files do not have to be encrypted because they are deidentified from the start. The privacy office of course still prefers that they are encrypted (which we will do) but in our case with our scans (the ones going on these drives are impossible to identify someone with and do not strictly count as personal health information). Everything is kept secure and we will encrypt just to be super safe.
Our large files are not DICOM or ANALYZE or NIfTI files. All of those are small; if that's all we dealt with we would not have this issue. Our large files are fiber tracking files that are a particular format for a particular visualization and analyzation program. In any case, the only files going on these drives are easily re-creatable should the drives explode or something like that (it would take time but we only want to put end-result files and keep all the other files that are used to create them on our managed storage).
We would if it was easy but alas we have to deal with multiple IT departments in order to do that plus a lot of other red tape. The biggest issue is the file sizes (we're on gigabit but our colleagues are not), otherwise we would not use portable drives (well, money is a factor too; government grants only provide a limited amount of money).
All of our scans are natively anonymized: we make up the birthdate and we never include the research participants' names. Our images are high enough quality that you can do nice 3D reconstructions of people's heads (and faces) but there is virtually no chance that anyone would recognize the faces unless they knew a person really well (even then it is hard). We have checked with the privacy office and our drives do not have to be encrypted because the images that will be on these drives are de-identified. We probably will encrypt the drives but wanted to nail down a filesystem first before we deal with encryption.
Anyway, we only rarely will need to use the sneakernet but need the option. HIPAA is only a minor issue. The biggest issue comes in dealing with multiple IT departments and setting up network access to our materials. Plus our images are so large that for these processed files (not the originals) we are opting for local storage instead of storage managed by our IT staff (who are wonderful but not cheap; we just purchased 4TB of local storage for 1/4 the cost of 1TB from IT).
Yes, the raw files from the scanner are quite small. A whole series of scans (7 or 8 high quality sequences) is only about 450MB. We get 80GB files when we do post-processing (fiber tracking) of a diffusion scan.
There are two types of creativity - divergent and convergent. Divergent creativity is what some of these other companies do (Apple does it too) when they come up with the cool new tech. Convergent creativity is what happens when someone (e.g., Apple) comes along and put it together in a novel and/or meaningful manner. So while other companies might come up with the ideas (although, that is short-changing Apple a bit), Apple makes them useful and introduces them to the masses. That is a skill that is just as important (if not more so) than actually inventing the technology.
It's because Apple is good at marketing, plus they make good products (usually), and people care. Companies are all about marketing, whether it is by word of mouth (as much of Apple is) or slick presentations (which Apple does too) or just good performance (which Apple does as well). I'm not saying Apple is perfect but you should be amazed at their marketing; they are as good as it gets, marketing-wise.
I too have experienced a lot of Chrome crashes but on OS X. I switched to Chrome a couple months ago and loved it; it had everything I needed to leave Firefox. However, it started crashing, a lot. A lot more than Firefox did and Firefox crashed a lot on my computer. Chrome also was terrible with memory usage; I've seen it using well above 1GB of RAM with only 10 tabs open. Finally I got fed up with it and switched to Safari. It's been much more stable and usable.
Investing is not necessarily gambling. Gambling is based on odds and randomness. Investing is usually based on performance of companies, which is not random. Yes there is speculation in investing but at its foundation most (traditional) investing is based on how well companies do. Gambling is based on chance.
You cannot overwork a brain. Too much stress is bad but mental exercise is != stress. As long as you get the proper amount of sleep you will never hurt your brain by working it too much. The lack of sleep won't necessarily hurt your brain, you just cannot benefit from sleep if you don't sleep.
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I've only had 1 non-Flash related crash on my Mac. The other 3 times it has crashed have been due to Flash (running in Chrome, incidentally). I know that's just a sample size of 1 but Flash is rather unstable and buggy on Macs (it works most of the time but not as well as it does in Windows). It's the same with Flash in Linux - it's crashed Linux distros because of some random bugs and poor performance.
As someone who gives IQ tests nearly every week, brain damage has to be pretty bad before it affects a person's IQ. IQ is very stable. You can get slight reductions if you have speed of processing slowing but other than that, your brain damage has to be bad (and affecting specific areas of the brain) in order to decrease IQ.
They're a real IT department - they are very good - they are just under-staffed due to budget constraints (that's one problem with being at a public university). We could let them manage our systems (they do whatever we ask them to do) but we actually wanted to manage our own computers and IT, being reluctant in the first place to add Macs to the infrastructure, is fine with us doing (most of) the managing.
Thanks for the comment. I've tested the HFS+ set up and it seems to be working very well.
I'll have to take the business plan under consideration. As far as breaking up the files - yes we could but the issue is with multiple IT departments and storage on either end of the transfer. Plus, I didn't include this in my initial question post but much of the time the transferring isn't permanent meaning that it is more of "showing" the files than giving the files. In other words, our collaborators want to see the files (images) but not hang on to them, which is why it seems to make more sense just to use external HDDs. Plus, it only takes us 5 minutes to walk over there so it's no big deal to run back and forth should we need to.
That's actually what we will probably do since you can take the raw files and (at least on our Macs with i7 processors) recreate the fiber tracking files in about 20 to 60 minutes. Because of this, we might not even hang on to these large files because they can be recreated easily. However, it's always nice to have the "original" file with research should anyone want to see it (and not just a recreated file), which is why we probably will hang on to them (plus, it does take time to run the tracking).
Your comment is well made and insightful.
Hmm, those are good suggestions. We'll (I'll) have to give them a shot. Most of our smaller image files are gzipped but these large files have not been (largely because not only would they take a long time to gzip with probably only minimal benefits but also we're just starting to create them and haven't had to "store" them much). Anyway, you make some great suggestions.
Yeah, I was trying to not write too much in the original post because most Slashdotters don't read it anyway. :) Yes, these large files are intermediary and end-stage analyses.
Thanks for your comments and advice.
We would love to have that infrastructure at our institution; we're working that way but we don't have it yet. If our lab could afford it we'd do something like that but our funding isn't that high. The other issue is that we use Macs because they are the best for neuroimaging work (Linux is great but things work better in OS X) and our IT department is reluctant to support them so we're doing most of the support for them ourselves. So for now we fly by the seat of our pants a bit.
There is no way for names to be connected with the data without someone hacking our managed filesystem (it's possible, but that is IT's responsibility, not ours) or having direct access to our lab space (but if we are not there they would have to get through multiple locked doors and break into a locked cabinet).
We opted to go with local, portable storage because only 4 people need or have access to these particular image files on three computers (we have 2 more collaborators that might need access but we can get them the raw data and they can recreate what we did on their computers). We would love to have the managed storage but it our grant only has so much funding so we want the most bang for our (your - assuming you live in the U.S. and pay taxes) buck.
We've talked with our privacy office and our files do not have to be encrypted because they are deidentified from the start. The privacy office of course still prefers that they are encrypted (which we will do) but in our case with our scans (the ones going on these drives are impossible to identify someone with and do not strictly count as personal health information). Everything is kept secure and we will encrypt just to be super safe.
Our large files are not DICOM or ANALYZE or NIfTI files. All of those are small; if that's all we dealt with we would not have this issue. Our large files are fiber tracking files that are a particular format for a particular visualization and analyzation program. In any case, the only files going on these drives are easily re-creatable should the drives explode or something like that (it would take time but we only want to put end-result files and keep all the other files that are used to create them on our managed storage).
We would if it was easy but alas we have to deal with multiple IT departments in order to do that plus a lot of other red tape. The biggest issue is the file sizes (we're on gigabit but our colleagues are not), otherwise we would not use portable drives (well, money is a factor too; government grants only provide a limited amount of money).
FAT32 has a 4GB file size limit. We have 80GB+ files (and could, if we wanted, have 250GB files but RAM becomes a limiting factor).
All of our scans are natively anonymized: we make up the birthdate and we never include the research participants' names. Our images are high enough quality that you can do nice 3D reconstructions of people's heads (and faces) but there is virtually no chance that anyone would recognize the faces unless they knew a person really well (even then it is hard). We have checked with the privacy office and our drives do not have to be encrypted because the images that will be on these drives are de-identified. We probably will encrypt the drives but wanted to nail down a filesystem first before we deal with encryption.
Anyway, we only rarely will need to use the sneakernet but need the option. HIPAA is only a minor issue. The biggest issue comes in dealing with multiple IT departments and setting up network access to our materials. Plus our images are so large that for these processed files (not the originals) we are opting for local storage instead of storage managed by our IT staff (who are wonderful but not cheap; we just purchased 4TB of local storage for 1/4 the cost of 1TB from IT).
Yes, the raw files from the scanner are quite small. A whole series of scans (7 or 8 high quality sequences) is only about 450MB. We get 80GB files when we do post-processing (fiber tracking) of a diffusion scan.
The invitation is for early testers. The service doesn't go live for the general public until 2011.
There are two types of creativity - divergent and convergent. Divergent creativity is what some of these other companies do (Apple does it too) when they come up with the cool new tech. Convergent creativity is what happens when someone (e.g., Apple) comes along and put it together in a novel and/or meaningful manner. So while other companies might come up with the ideas (although, that is short-changing Apple a bit), Apple makes them useful and introduces them to the masses. That is a skill that is just as important (if not more so) than actually inventing the technology.
It's because Apple is good at marketing, plus they make good products (usually), and people care. Companies are all about marketing, whether it is by word of mouth (as much of Apple is) or slick presentations (which Apple does too) or just good performance (which Apple does as well). I'm not saying Apple is perfect but you should be amazed at their marketing; they are as good as it gets, marketing-wise.
God never told them to rape; kill, yes, but not rape.
I too have experienced a lot of Chrome crashes but on OS X. I switched to Chrome a couple months ago and loved it; it had everything I needed to leave Firefox. However, it started crashing, a lot. A lot more than Firefox did and Firefox crashed a lot on my computer. Chrome also was terrible with memory usage; I've seen it using well above 1GB of RAM with only 10 tabs open. Finally I got fed up with it and switched to Safari. It's been much more stable and usable.
Investing is not necessarily gambling. Gambling is based on odds and randomness. Investing is usually based on performance of companies, which is not random. Yes there is speculation in investing but at its foundation most (traditional) investing is based on how well companies do. Gambling is based on chance.
Sounds like what happened to Pres. George W. Bush. Being the president is a losing situation now, no matter how competent you might be.
You cannot overwork a brain. Too much stress is bad but mental exercise is != stress. As long as you get the proper amount of sleep you will never hurt your brain by working it too much. The lack of sleep won't necessarily hurt your brain, you just cannot benefit from sleep if you don't sleep.
Civil engineers do set the speed limit in practice when they design the roads. :)