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User: casualsax3

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  1. Re:until it crashes on Sandia's Floating, Dust-Free, Spinning Heatsink · · Score: 1

    Mechanical hard drives still rely on heads that float over the platter. These days they're built to operate an order of magnitude closer to the platter than 10-20 years ago - around 10 nanometers. The platters now spinning so fast that the head is also able to self regulate its height based solely on airflow dynamics and downforce. Small bumps and drops are not sufficient to break through the cushion of air created by the head moving over the platter at 80+ miles per our. Interestingly the force also works in the other direction, preventing the head from rising to high. You can picture it working like a magnet fixed in place over a superconductor, only this is obviously using a different force to accomplish the feat. For extreme bumps and drops, hard drives (particularly laptop hard drives) have accelerometers that can detect a drop or bump and call the head back to its resting place before it has a chance to smash into the platter.

  2. Re:Easy fix? on TSA 'Warning' Media About Reporting On Body Scanner Failures? · · Score: 4, Insightful

    No, I think the entire program should be scrapped both because of the health hazards, and because it's a gross invasion of privacy. If they're hell bent on keeping it around though, the least they could do is make it work properly. I'd rather be exposed to a double dose of radiation if it actually made me safer, as opposed to the status quo which is one shot for theater's sake.

  3. Easy fix? on TSA 'Warning' Media About Reporting On Body Scanner Failures? · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Aside from just scrapping them entirely, wouldn't this be a non-issue if they just had the traveler rotate 90 degrees and repeated the scan?

  4. Re:Dropbox shows it can be done on Why Freemium Doesn't Work · · Score: 1
  5. Re:US cell system on Leaked AT&T Letter Damages Case For T-Mobile Merger · · Score: 0

    I was a recent visitor to the USA and was astonished at the 3rd world nature of its cell system. I had never imagined it was so bad, before visiting.

    What exactly did you find so subpar? Service from just about any carrier should have been good considering you were in a city with a subway. My experience with world phones in Europe wasn't exactly thrilling. I bought a sim in London and then got to pay 2 pounds per day just to turn it on in Spain. What union/country/territory do you live in who's carriers have seemingly gotten it so right?

  6. Re:Translated on NASA Announces Discovery of Salty Water On Mars ... Maybe · · Score: 1

    What's the story really?

    I'm pretty sure it's the pictures.

  7. Re:aaaand... on iOS 4.3.4 Prevents Hacking and Jailbreaking · · Score: 0, Troll
    From TFA:

    Of course, you should still stick with 4.3.3 if you don't want to bother with re-jailbreaking anytime your phone shuts off.

    Or you should not buy an iPhone in the first place. Give your money to a vendor who deserves it.

  8. Re:Well done, Google on Google Incrementally Dropping Support For Older Browsers · · Score: 1

    What's preventing you from upgrading to IE8 on XP?

  9. Galileo has been orbiting Jupiter since 1995... on Jupiter's Moon Io Has a Volcanic Sub-Surface · · Score: 2

    ...and has been in the planet's atmosphere since 2003.

    That's a really interesting way of looking at it.

  10. Re:flash without flashblock is idiotic on Flash On Android Fails To Impress · · Score: 1

    All of the existing Android implementations of Flash behave like this. On my Viewsonic GTablet, Flash 10.2 defaults to loading On Demand (ie you click play) in both the default browser and alternate browsers like Opera Mobile.

  11. Re:I highly doubt the part about life not existing on Earth's Inner Core Rotation Slower Than Estimated · · Score: 1

    Just like Mars, Venus's atmosphere is 96% Carbon Dioxide, which is heavy enough not to get blown off into space by solar wind.

  12. Re:I highly doubt the part about life not existing on Earth's Inner Core Rotation Slower Than Estimated · · Score: 1

    It would just get carried off into space by the solar wind. See: Mars.

  13. Re:Liability? on SourceForge Removes Blanket Blocking · · Score: 2, Informative
    The distribution of source code (encryption in particular) is explicitly protected under the First Amendment:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernstein_v._United_States

  14. Re:You're complicating things. on Preventing My Hosting Provider From Rooting My Server? · · Score: 1

    They offer KVM access, at $35.00/day, which in this case I refuse to pay to fix what they broke, outside of the context of the server.

    Stop being stubborn - why not KVM in, prove it's their fault, and then make them reimburse you for it?

    Alternately, they want me to hand over the root password (not a privileged account, but THE root password), so they can do it themselves.

    Sounds like you're either incapable or unwilling to fix the problem yourself, but at the same time you refuse to let them do it? What exactly would make you happy here? And don't say "moving me back to the old hardware and datacenter that I was paying for!" Be realistic.

    Only a few days ago, they indicated that the NIC on the server may be causing the issues. I'm down 2-3 hours every other Sunday because of this.

    You said yourself that it's new hardware. It's completely reasonable for them to suggest you've got a bad NIC driver in there for whatever card you were moved to.

    ...every other Sunday between 7:00am and 8:00am EST, my server's load goes over 100 as incoming connections spike over 700/sec., sendmail refuses connections due to the load, and the box seizes up. The logs show that the connections are established and then hang.

    This is almost certainly a problem on the system itself. I've seen a handful of cases where hardware load balancers in DSR mode can lead to connection pileups under certain conditions, but 99% of the time it's a problem on the server itself. In any event, tuning should be able to prevent that from knocking the box over completely, allowing you to stay logged in and see what's going on.

    Also, by claiming that nothing has changed on the system, you're either lying, or you're a horrible sysadmin who doesn't apply updates. Another potential scenario I see here (obviously aside from new hardware using previously unused drivers...) is that you or your package management system installed a new kernel or NIC driver, but never rebooted. Then when the server was powered off and migrated to the new facility, it came back up with the new (and potentially problematic) driver/kernel.

  15. You're complicating things. on Preventing My Hosting Provider From Rooting My Server? · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Switch providers. Plenty offer remote reboot and serial console or KVM for both VMs or physical servers, which would allow you to go crazy with custom encrypted partitions etc. At the end of the day though, someone somewhere at the hosting company is still going to be able to reboot your server into a rescue environment and reset the root password. Go colocation if you're really that paranoid about it.

    You also have zero chance with litigation, unless you've somehow gotten them to sign something saying they specifically won't muck around in your server.

    I'd also like to know how you *know* it's a hardware or network issue outside of your server. How do you know it's not your NIC driver hanging up? Older e1000 drivers (super common card in the hosting industry) are quite flaky. What research have you done outside of your internal monitoring?

  16. Re:Speaking as a chemist on Most Detailed Photos of an Atom Yet · · Score: 1

    Out of curiosity, where did you go to school that you ended up calling college "University"?

  17. Re:About time! on iPhone Straining AT&T Network · · Score: 1

    Looks like you're correct. Perhaps Buster from Arrested Development was hired as their cartographer.

  18. Re:About time! on iPhone Straining AT&T Network · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Zoom in a bit and it starts to look not so good.

  19. Re:I don't get it on Replacements For Adobe Creative Suite 3 Apps? · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Yes, because Linux has put Microsoft out of business.

  20. Fedora 8? on Palm Pre Is Out, Time For Discussion · · Score: 4, Funny

    Please let me know if it syncs with your Windows 95 PC as well. It's the one thing that's kept me from buying one on launch day.

  21. Re:Ubuntu is not up to scratch on Shuttleworth Says Ubuntu Can't Just Be Windows · · Score: 1
    No, you're not being dumb. There's a known bug in network-manager that prevents it from remembering a static IP after reboot.

    http://www.ubuntugeek.com/how-to-set-a-static-ip-address-in-ubuntu-810-intrepid-ibex.html

    I'm not sure if it still exists in 9.04.

  22. Re:Vacuum your case out... on A $99 Graphics Card Might Be All You Need · · Score: 2, Informative

    That actually sounds more like a power issue. The 8x AGP cards were notoriously sensitive to fluctuations in one of the rails (I want to say 5v, but it's been forever...) Newer PCIe cards are better, but if you're running cool and your computer reboots for no reason (particularly during games) I'd put money on a poor quality or faulty PSU.

  23. Re:Tax Free NH on The End of Tax-Free Internet Shopping? · · Score: 1

    Yes but then you have to live in New Hampshire...

  24. Re:I never thought I'd say this with a straight fa on Digg Backs Down On DiggBar · · Score: 5, Funny
    The best of the best posts (the ones where someone drops a paragraph of science that just ends the argument, or blows you away) are still here at Slashdot, but the signal to noise ratio has been fading fast lately.

    Overall I find Reddit's comments are better and certainly more entertaining than Slashdot these days. The first 20 posts top level posts here are always a mixture of Off Topic, Troll, or +5 Funnies that aren't actually funny.

  25. Re:Unexplained Achievement "The Maker"? on Slashdot Launches User Achievements · · Score: 1

    Have you submitted any content that's been accepted?