At the end he did mention that he was recording the conversation.
But, most likely, at the beginning of the call an automated voice lets the caller know that "this call may be recorded for quality assurance" or some other such phrase. That happens to work both ways, so he is entirely legal in recording this conversation (and is usually a very smart idea, in case someone decides to disagree with anything they said before).
I go to PSU as well, living in the dorms at University Park.
The reason you are seeing excessive speeds is because Napster has a local caching server on the PSU network. If you're living in the dorms they have only 10Mbit network connections, so what you were seeing is the maximum network bandwidth (I know this is true in West Halls, not sure about the others).
And yes, I use Napster all the time when I'm down there. They got a fairly big collection, although I'm starting to see a lot of more "pay only" tracks as time goes on. I also strip the DRM out of the songs with a nice little program called tunebite. You may want to check it out.;-)
They don't even use servo's anymore (though, servo's and stepper-motors are the same thing). Current hard drive technology (well, for the past 10 years or so) use voice-coils, much in the same way a speaker is moved. Servo drives often required a low-level format to recalibrate the tracks to the current position of the heads, since time/heat could position themselves outside the track boundry. The voice-coil system can do this all on the fly. (And yes, the clicking heard by today's drive is from the heads moving fast enough like a speaker to produce sounds).
More familiar than you may think. Some of the first Itanium compilers were spitting out nearly 40% NOP's, which are simply do-nothings. Because the IA-64 is explicilty parallel, instructions are generated and bundled together to be executed in parallel. The problem is branches, which destroy parallelism since they can change the code direction. On average, there are about 6 instructions between branches, so, such a design is very costly since the memory controller will be stuck getting inscructions that are empty. Of course, speculation and branch-prediction is generally a good way to increase performance, but like many things on the IA-64, that's left to the compilier to figure out. These are some of the exact same problems with the Cell, although, I wish I knew how the instruction set was. If it's more like Itanium, then they got all of the problems of the Itanium. If it's more of a direct approach, they may be able to pull it of because of the work in multi-processor systems that are done today. But, they simply can't expect the "super-computer" numbers Sony keeps flashing around. It may be good on certain tightly coded scientific calculations, but when it comes down to real-world code, it's stuck to the stripped-down Power4 that is coordinating the Cells.
Yes, I'm using XGL, right at this very moment. I'm running a Ubuntu beta release, DapperFlight4, to which compiz and XGL have been isntalled. The forum post on how to get it installed is here: http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=13126 7
It has also been reported to be working under Breezy Bager, but I'm not sure.
And let me say, it's damn slick. Not everything is working (or at least not enabled by default), such as trasnparency, and the top and bottom of the desktop cube are simply white. I'll try to figure out if they're broken or disabled. But what is working, is everything else.
Performance isn't the best. Theres some lagginess to DVDs, but only minor, and even less then expected when doing a wobbly-window move.
As a plug for Ubuntu, this is by far the best distro I have played with. Every other time I have tried to get myself to Linux I ran into unmovable road blocks. This thing, (a damn BETA release!) boots up first try with all hardware detected and running (even my Dell-supplied Broadcom wireless NIC). Then, I go install the nVidia 3D driver and an experimental windower and stuff works perfectly. Honestly, I don't think it could get much better than this.
The parent is of course refering to Colossus, which electronically replicated the Lorenze machine. (Lorenze machines worked on a similar mechanical-encryption principle as Enigma's, except they were larger, staionary machines intended for base-to-base encryption.) By the end of WWII there were ten Colossi in operation decrypting large spools of paper-tape recordings.
However, even if they may be the first true-digital computers, they were kept secret far after the war, so thier potential influence is moot.
That's not even entirely correct. Centrino is an extremely clever marketing tool. It consists of the processor, chipset, and wireless chipset. Only those who sport all three components from Intel get the little Centrino sticker on the outside.
Older itterations of the Centrino line used the Pentium M (such as the Dothan core) and the i855 chipset, amoungest one of several Intel wireless chips.
Only now are the newer Centrino models ship with the Core Duo (which are dual-core Pentium M's).
A lot of systems (particularly Dell) went with thier own, much cheaper, wireless solution. Their sticker was "downgraded" to the plain Pentium M. The i855 was used no mater what, although some certain ASUS motherboards can adapt the Pentium M to another chipset/motherboard combo, although that's limited to desktop machines. (The Pentium M borrowed the FSB from the Pentium 4, and largely, kept the same pin-outs. Pentium M sockets are 479 pins, compared to Pentium 4's 478.)
My guess this will not be well suited for automotive applications. Car alternators actually produce more like 13.8 volts while running, since lead-acid batteries require a higher voltage source to charge. Also, automotive electrical systems can swing wildly when kicking on power-draining devices such as headlights and air conditioners (the auto industry is starting to setup a 40V spec to help power these systems while keeping the voltage stable).
I believe current auto computers have a hefty filtering package to work under these varying conditions. The Pico-PSU doesn't seem to have enough filtering to be directly plugged in. However, a smaller external voltage regulator to handle the spikes/drops would probably do wonders for it.
The server is down to a crawl, so I have to ask the crowd. My high-school physics professor had a few of these. They're civilian gieger counters built for Civil Defense during the cold war. He had a few of them, and managed to scrap parts to get one to work. He was demonstrating it, and a newer model, on some very mild radioactive sources he stored wraped in lead.
Then he pointed both readers to the side of the old gieger counter, and both beeped with activity (far faster than the other pre-packadged samples he had). He went on to say how they kept radioactive samples on the side to both test and calibrate the sensors. They had to be near 50 years old, but they were putting out about twice the activity of the 5 year old samples.
Makes me wonder if his model had one, and if so, if he bothered to remove it. I doubt the radiation is harmful even in extended close-range contact, but methinks the hard drive won't appreciate it too much.
I suck at games, but generally I still like to play them. The Deadly Soccerball is intresting. I had to dig through the readme to determine the gameplay, but essentially you fire off missles to remove the spikes from other spikey balls, then dodge the spikes they drop to go in for the kill. (Note: not explaned, but your health bar is on the right side of the screen.)
Some intresting features in the engine. The "portal" system is totally seamless and you jump from one planet to the next. Even the snakes, which crawl very smoothly and rather realistically, go from one planet to the next. If you take a look around, you can clearly see the snakes crawling along the other planets.
Better yet, I only got one crash from it!:-) (Smashing too many buttons at once, methinks, but not sure.)
A mirror is of course a simple practical solution to the problem. But there are caveats. A mirror allows you to see around a corner, but it could also just as easily let the enemy know where you are (tilt it just wrong and it will be like a beacon). Not to mention a mirror is a tad bit fragile in a combat situation.
The military has used other solutions over the years. The use of a spit-shined combat knife worked extremely well for this (as it was standard issue to all soldiers). Newer technology has allowed the military to mount cameras onto the barrel of their M-16 and a small heads-up display (much like some helicopter head-up gear) is used to view. It allows them to reach the gun around a corner and view the area and even aim and return fire if needed. The camera is multi-purpose since it also could switch to night-vision.
The SWAT would probably like this more, as close combat allows them to bounce the ball around a corner and down a hall a little nicer. The ball itself is probably heavily weighted in one side (probably with the batteries) so that it would right-side-up.
A variable 40W grounded soldering iron with replaceable element and a 0.8mm tip? FOR $35?! Where do I sign up?
Maybe not for true professionals, but even this would be a nice iron for just thier home projects. I already have a dual-tempreture Radio Shack, but I want to give this to myself for Christmas.
This component is not malicious and does not compromise security.
Say WHAT?... I... This.... WOW.
I cannot belive that they can say this. They released a rootkit, bloody damn general purpose rootkit, and it doesn't comprimise security? IT HIDES AN ENTIRE SUBSET OF FILE NAMES! With this rootkit installed, ANY file or folder starting with $sys$ is immmedately hidden from the Windows API. People are already using it to hide hacks for WoW. What happens if someone distributes a trojan, tells them to run Sony's rootkit to make sure they don't get caught by Warden, and the thing disappears and the user never knows the better.
Sony screwed up beyond reproach with this, and that comment just makes me scream.
This is simply a depressing review of a unique product (in the sense it's ASUS's first attempt at a silence card cooler). The 6600GT is only compared to the new 7800GT (guess who wins?). There are no attempts at comparing the system to anyone elses silent cooling system (or active systems, for that matter). The whole review gives the feel that this is ExtremeTech's first 6600 to fall upon them.
What really bothers me, though, is they give no tempreature readings whatsoever. How much does the CPU temp go up with the radiator above the heatsink fan, or to the side? What are the temps on the card, with and without active cooling? Would you need to upgrade your CPU heatsink/fan to keep the processor from overheating?
They totally glossed over the shinning parts of the card and stamped out another reviewtisment.
Quite true. But how many PCI Express nVidia cards anymore DON'T support SLI? My point is, if you purchase a nVidia solution, you will require a SLI motherboard. Buy any middle-to-upper end nVidia card and it will support SLI. That means the other card is a drop-in solution.
This isn't true with ATi. You can buy a Crossfire motherboard and you can buy any middle-to-upper range ATi card without problem. If you want to use Crossfire, you have to purchase a specifically built Crossfire video card (which would cost more than a standard video card, for various marketing reasons).
ATi's system simply is more restrictive. ATi won't be making every video card they have Crossfire capable, since this would me more expensive than the plain-jane setup (that extra chip adds more than you think).
If I were to be ATi, I would have designed a new incompatable system (the limited compatability is practically the only benifit of Crossfire). I would have desinged the motherboard so that each PCI-E slot was selectably 15x or 16x wide. In Crossfire mode (that would be enabled by the BIOS, not by some stupid jumper-block setup), both video cards would run at 15x, and the remaining channel would be tunneled between each video card. (This is, of course, assuming that only one PCI-E lane would be needed. It surely could be expanded.) The next product cycle, I would make everone of my PCI-E cards Crossfire enabled, and crack-down on the specs so that even differnt generation/manufacture cards would work (Inter-manufacture would be far easier than inter-generation compatability, this I will admitt.)
What benifits would there be? For one, an external cable between video cards has been completely eliminated. A drop-in soultion would be gaurnteed without need for an extra product. It's clean, simple, elegant, and expandable (as more channels could be eaten up for inter-card bandwidth. PCI-E 16x has WAY more bandwidth than the cards need.)
But, this is dream land, and such things didn't happen.
PS: I love ATi. I was a first-adopter of the Radeon 9700 Pro. They messed up with Crossfire, methinks.
The Inquirer discussed this limitation before. The Crossfire system can do 1920x1200, but only at 52Hz. The SiI 1161 chip on the Crossfire card that merges the two data streams has this bandwidth limitation, and it appears ATi won't be fixing it for awhile.
Personally, I feel the Crossfire solution has far too many drawbacks for the benifits. Not only do you require a special motherboard, but now you also need a special Crossfire capable video card. The second card can be any card, but the RAM buffer should be the same size, otherwise it will defualt to the lowest value for both cards. The external cable adds some nice external heft to the system, as well.
So, what do you get over the SLI system? There are added antrisropic filtering methods and increased anti-ailising, but these are already appearing in the latest nVidia drivers. You can use your exisitng card to upgrade to a Crossfire system, but you can already do this with SLI. All in all, the system has it's flaws, too many I think to make it worthwhile.
People Can't Memorize Computer Industry Acronyms, and I honeslty don't remember the real definition of PCMCIA.
But, technobable has a purpose, as my one professors says. Just like every other inudstry, we make up acronyms so that other people have no idea what we're talking about.:-)
Re:Anti-Rejection drugs?
on
The New Face Lift
·
· Score: 2, Informative
People with large burns such as this would greatly benefit a surgery such as this, not just form an ethical point of view.
Scar tissue from the burns constantly contracts. It can become such a problem that people can have slurred speech (since their ability to move their lips has been greatly reduced by the tightening of the skin). There are traditional methods attempt to fix this (use under-skin saline balloons to grow new skin in some part of the body, and then graft that skin onto the burned areas), but they are not permanent since remaining scar tissue will continue to contract. It's a horrible cycle, and I bet some people would be willing to take such a risk as that.
The $40 price tag is probably just a roughly calculated cost of materials.
Few people realize it takes years of research and design to come up with one of this massive processors. Even a minor update can't be pushed. People also have to realize this manufacture plants (fabs) cost over $1 billion to build and fill with equipment (AMD's Fab 67 will cost $3 billion, all said and done). That is an absolutely massive investment for a corporation, just to have the fab needed to be upgraded a few months later for a smaller process.
Did we account for the cost of engineers? I'm a computer engineer in training; I want to be paid!:-)
The magnets are at a far enough distance (a cm is huge, in magnetic terms) that they offer little problems.
Second, magnetic fields of the driver magnets is orreinted almost exclusively in one axis. A normal refridgerator magnet will stick to the fridge with (almost) equal force no mater which way it was stuck (assuming, of course, it's semetric).
The voice-coil driver magents are orriented heavily on a north-south pole. If you manage to pull one of these out, you'll see what I mean. If you let it stuck to the fridge on the flat side, you would not be able to pull it off. If you tried it on it's edge, it couldn't hold itself there.
Those won't erase much, unless you move the magnet REALLY fast.
The changing of magnetic data doesn't so much rely on the strength of the magnetic field, but rather it's rate of change (magnetic flux). Wipping a neodymium-iron-boron (also known as rare-earth magents, the one that the voice-coil for the head assembly push against) magnet across the drive will practically nothing.
However, a Degaussing wand (the same circiut that causes CRT monitors to go fuzzy when they turn on) produce huge amounts of magnetic flux. Those are mostly intended to demagnatize a monior, but perhaps they would work on hard drives. Care to test it out?:-)
I've been using my cell phone (Mororola E815, care of Verizon) for awhile now as a MP3 player (a stop-gap solution until I can get a nano).
I had to hack the phone to get OBEX working across Bluetooth and file transfers between the phone memory and the TransT Flash card (currently only 128MB, damn those things are small) because Verizon decided those functions weren't needed. I also built had to build a headphone adapter to go up from the 1/32" connector on the phone up to a standard 1/8" jack. It looks ugly, but it works.
I even use iTunes to fill my phone. I use a smart playlist that limits the selection to about 115MB (to account for file size varaiances). I get rid of the songs I want, add the ones I like, and iTunes keeps the file size right. Then, I can select all the songs, and do a direct drag-and-drop onto the OBEX exchange window, and things copy over. Unfortunetly, there are some driver issues, as it will cough on certain file names and sometimes just stop transfering for no reason.
Simply, this gives me a MP3 player when I wouldn't have one. Of course, I didn't buy a cell phone just so it could be a MP3 player, but it gives me one on the cheap side.
Because it's a start. ATi and nVidia just didn't come out of nowhere with a card-to-rule-all-cards. It took them time, and I imagine, it will take S3 some time too.
The point is competition. Far too long have we been stuck in a dichotomy of two-superpowers.
But, this isn't their first try, either. The S3 Delta Chrome was just average at release, and even segmented off into integrated graphics by a few VIA chipsets.
Trident tried to dive back into the graphics realm. Their card didn't go up to the hype (mostly because of some major engineering cutbacks) and they haven't tried again. Maybe S3 will keep it up.
But also remember, the integrated graphics market isn't bad at all. Intel makes no stand-alone cards, but they rule the video market (in terms of sales) because of their integrated graphics.
I can see this being distributed as either a "good" worm or some piece of "good" spyware.
But then I wonder, just what is a "good worm" or "good spyware." Good, maybe to John Q. Public, but maybe not to Microsoft (as it would be showing the major flaws in IE).
Of course, the right of what software to install should be in the hands of the user, but what if this thing stopped zombies from being created? Would we be willing to break a few rules "for the better good?"
Slashdot Mirror
But, most likely, at the beginning of the call an automated voice lets the caller know that "this call may be recorded for quality assurance" or some other such phrase. That happens to work both ways, so he is entirely legal in recording this conversation (and is usually a very smart idea, in case someone decides to disagree with anything they said before).
I go to PSU as well, living in the dorms at University Park.
;-)
The reason you are seeing excessive speeds is because Napster has a local caching server on the PSU network. If you're living in the dorms they have only 10Mbit network connections, so what you were seeing is the maximum network bandwidth (I know this is true in West Halls, not sure about the others).
And yes, I use Napster all the time when I'm down there. They got a fairly big collection, although I'm starting to see a lot of more "pay only" tracks as time goes on. I also strip the DRM out of the songs with a nice little program called tunebite. You may want to check it out.
They don't even use servo's anymore (though, servo's and stepper-motors are the same thing). Current hard drive technology (well, for the past 10 years or so) use voice-coils, much in the same way a speaker is moved. Servo drives often required a low-level format to recalibrate the tracks to the current position of the heads, since time/heat could position themselves outside the track boundry. The voice-coil system can do this all on the fly. (And yes, the clicking heard by today's drive is from the heads moving fast enough like a speaker to produce sounds).
They didn't call it the Itanic for nothing...
It has also been reported to be working under Breezy Bager, but I'm not sure.
And let me say, it's damn slick. Not everything is working (or at least not enabled by default), such as trasnparency, and the top and bottom of the desktop cube are simply white. I'll try to figure out if they're broken or disabled. But what is working, is everything else.
Performance isn't the best. Theres some lagginess to DVDs, but only minor, and even less then expected when doing a wobbly-window move.
As a plug for Ubuntu, this is by far the best distro I have played with. Every other time I have tried to get myself to Linux I ran into unmovable road blocks. This thing, (a damn BETA release!) boots up first try with all hardware detected and running (even my Dell-supplied Broadcom wireless NIC). Then, I go install the nVidia 3D driver and an experimental windower and stuff works perfectly. Honestly, I don't think it could get much better than this.
However, even if they may be the first true-digital computers, they were kept secret far after the war, so thier potential influence is moot.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossus_computer
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorenz_SZ_40/42
Older itterations of the Centrino line used the Pentium M (such as the Dothan core) and the i855 chipset, amoungest one of several Intel wireless chips.
Only now are the newer Centrino models ship with the Core Duo (which are dual-core Pentium M's).
A lot of systems (particularly Dell) went with thier own, much cheaper, wireless solution. Their sticker was "downgraded" to the plain Pentium M. The i855 was used no mater what, although some certain ASUS motherboards can adapt the Pentium M to another chipset/motherboard combo, although that's limited to desktop machines. (The Pentium M borrowed the FSB from the Pentium 4, and largely, kept the same pin-outs. Pentium M sockets are 479 pins, compared to Pentium 4's 478.)
I believe current auto computers have a hefty filtering package to work under these varying conditions. The Pico-PSU doesn't seem to have enough filtering to be directly plugged in. However, a smaller external voltage regulator to handle the spikes/drops would probably do wonders for it.
Then he pointed both readers to the side of the old gieger counter, and both beeped with activity (far faster than the other pre-packadged samples he had). He went on to say how they kept radioactive samples on the side to both test and calibrate the sensors. They had to be near 50 years old, but they were putting out about twice the activity of the 5 year old samples.
Makes me wonder if his model had one, and if so, if he bothered to remove it. I doubt the radiation is harmful even in extended close-range contact, but methinks the hard drive won't appreciate it too much.
Some intresting features in the engine. The "portal" system is totally seamless and you jump from one planet to the next. Even the snakes, which crawl very smoothly and rather realistically, go from one planet to the next. If you take a look around, you can clearly see the snakes crawling along the other planets.
Better yet, I only got one crash from it! :-) (Smashing too many buttons at once, methinks, but not sure.)
The military has used other solutions over the years. The use of a spit-shined combat knife worked extremely well for this (as it was standard issue to all soldiers). Newer technology has allowed the military to mount cameras onto the barrel of their M-16 and a small heads-up display (much like some helicopter head-up gear) is used to view. It allows them to reach the gun around a corner and view the area and even aim and return fire if needed. The camera is multi-purpose since it also could switch to night-vision.
The SWAT would probably like this more, as close combat allows them to bounce the ball around a corner and down a hall a little nicer. The ball itself is probably heavily weighted in one side (probably with the batteries) so that it would right-side-up.
For example, this is neat.
A variable 40W grounded soldering iron with replaceable element and a 0.8mm tip? FOR $35?! Where do I sign up?
Maybe not for true professionals, but even this would be a nice iron for just thier home projects. I already have a dual-tempreture Radio Shack, but I want to give this to myself for Christmas.
Say WHAT? ... I ... This.... WOW.
I cannot belive that they can say this. They released a rootkit, bloody damn general purpose rootkit, and it doesn't comprimise security? IT HIDES AN ENTIRE SUBSET OF FILE NAMES! With this rootkit installed, ANY file or folder starting with $sys$ is immmedately hidden from the Windows API. People are already using it to hide hacks for WoW. What happens if someone distributes a trojan, tells them to run Sony's rootkit to make sure they don't get caught by Warden, and the thing disappears and the user never knows the better.
Sony screwed up beyond reproach with this, and that comment just makes me scream.
What really bothers me, though, is they give no tempreature readings whatsoever. How much does the CPU temp go up with the radiator above the heatsink fan, or to the side? What are the temps on the card, with and without active cooling? Would you need to upgrade your CPU heatsink/fan to keep the processor from overheating?
They totally glossed over the shinning parts of the card and stamped out another reviewtisment.
This isn't true with ATi. You can buy a Crossfire motherboard and you can buy any middle-to-upper range ATi card without problem. If you want to use Crossfire, you have to purchase a specifically built Crossfire video card (which would cost more than a standard video card, for various marketing reasons).
ATi's system simply is more restrictive. ATi won't be making every video card they have Crossfire capable, since this would me more expensive than the plain-jane setup (that extra chip adds more than you think).
If I were to be ATi, I would have designed a new incompatable system (the limited compatability is practically the only benifit of Crossfire). I would have desinged the motherboard so that each PCI-E slot was selectably 15x or 16x wide. In Crossfire mode (that would be enabled by the BIOS, not by some stupid jumper-block setup), both video cards would run at 15x, and the remaining channel would be tunneled between each video card. (This is, of course, assuming that only one PCI-E lane would be needed. It surely could be expanded.) The next product cycle, I would make everone of my PCI-E cards Crossfire enabled, and crack-down on the specs so that even differnt generation/manufacture cards would work (Inter-manufacture would be far easier than inter-generation compatability, this I will admitt.)
What benifits would there be? For one, an external cable between video cards has been completely eliminated. A drop-in soultion would be gaurnteed without need for an extra product. It's clean, simple, elegant, and expandable (as more channels could be eaten up for inter-card bandwidth. PCI-E 16x has WAY more bandwidth than the cards need.)
But, this is dream land, and such things didn't happen.
PS: I love ATi. I was a first-adopter of the Radeon 9700 Pro. They messed up with Crossfire, methinks.
Personally, I feel the Crossfire solution has far too many drawbacks for the benifits. Not only do you require a special motherboard, but now you also need a special Crossfire capable video card. The second card can be any card, but the RAM buffer should be the same size, otherwise it will defualt to the lowest value for both cards. The external cable adds some nice external heft to the system, as well.
So, what do you get over the SLI system? There are added antrisropic filtering methods and increased anti-ailising, but these are already appearing in the latest nVidia drivers. You can use your exisitng card to upgrade to a Crossfire system, but you can already do this with SLI. All in all, the system has it's flaws, too many I think to make it worthwhile.
People Can't Memorize Computer Industry Acronyms, and I honeslty don't remember the real definition of PCMCIA. But, technobable has a purpose, as my one professors says. Just like every other inudstry, we make up acronyms so that other people have no idea what we're talking about. :-)
Oh no! Here come the GUILD WARS!
Scar tissue from the burns constantly contracts. It can become such a problem that people can have slurred speech (since their ability to move their lips has been greatly reduced by the tightening of the skin). There are traditional methods attempt to fix this (use under-skin saline balloons to grow new skin in some part of the body, and then graft that skin onto the burned areas), but they are not permanent since remaining scar tissue will continue to contract. It's a horrible cycle, and I bet some people would be willing to take such a risk as that.
This is a detailed medical article on the skin grafting procedure with burn victims: Tissue expansion in The Treatment of Burn Scars
The $40 price tag is probably just a roughly calculated cost of materials.
Few people realize it takes years of research and design to come up with one of this massive processors. Even a minor update can't be pushed. People also have to realize this manufacture plants (fabs) cost over $1 billion to build and fill with equipment (AMD's Fab 67 will cost $3 billion, all said and done). That is an absolutely massive investment for a corporation, just to have the fab needed to be upgraded a few months later for a smaller process.
Did we account for the cost of engineers? I'm a computer engineer in training; I want to be paid! :-)
The magnets are at a far enough distance (a cm is huge, in magnetic terms) that they offer little problems.
Second, magnetic fields of the driver magnets is orreinted almost exclusively in one axis. A normal refridgerator magnet will stick to the fridge with (almost) equal force no mater which way it was stuck (assuming, of course, it's semetric). The voice-coil driver magents are orriented heavily on a north-south pole. If you manage to pull one of these out, you'll see what I mean. If you let it stuck to the fridge on the flat side, you would not be able to pull it off. If you tried it on it's edge, it couldn't hold itself there.
The changing of magnetic data doesn't so much rely on the strength of the magnetic field, but rather it's rate of change (magnetic flux).
Wipping a neodymium-iron-boron (also known as rare-earth magents, the one that the voice-coil for the head assembly push against) magnet across the drive will practically nothing.
However, a Degaussing wand (the same circiut that causes CRT monitors to go fuzzy when they turn on) produce huge amounts of magnetic flux. Those are mostly intended to demagnatize a monior, but perhaps they would work on hard drives. Care to test it out?
Links of intrest:
Rare earth magnets
Various professional degaussers
Ask/. about hard drive eraser system
I had to hack the phone to get OBEX working across Bluetooth and file transfers between the phone memory and the TransT Flash card (currently only 128MB, damn those things are small) because Verizon decided those functions weren't needed. I also built had to build a headphone adapter to go up from the 1/32" connector on the phone up to a standard 1/8" jack. It looks ugly, but it works.
I even use iTunes to fill my phone. I use a smart playlist that limits the selection to about 115MB (to account for file size varaiances). I get rid of the songs I want, add the ones I like, and iTunes keeps the file size right. Then, I can select all the songs, and do a direct drag-and-drop onto the OBEX exchange window, and things copy over. Unfortunetly, there are some driver issues, as it will cough on certain file names and sometimes just stop transfering for no reason.
Simply, this gives me a MP3 player when I wouldn't have one. Of course, I didn't buy a cell phone just so it could be a MP3 player, but it gives me one on the cheap side.
The point is competition. Far too long have we been stuck in a dichotomy of two-superpowers.
But, this isn't their first try, either. The S3 Delta Chrome was just average at release, and even segmented off into integrated graphics by a few VIA chipsets.
Trident tried to dive back into the graphics realm. Their card didn't go up to the hype (mostly because of some major engineering cutbacks) and they haven't tried again. Maybe S3 will keep it up.
But also remember, the integrated graphics market isn't bad at all. Intel makes no stand-alone cards, but they rule the video market (in terms of sales) because of their integrated graphics.
But then I wonder, just what is a "good worm" or "good spyware." Good, maybe to John Q. Public, but maybe not to Microsoft (as it would be showing the major flaws in IE).
Of course, the right of what software to install should be in the hands of the user, but what if this thing stopped zombies from being created? Would we be willing to break a few rules "for the better good?"