In the case that a "normal" filesystem is used, such as FAT, it isn't written out to the chips. NAND flash has special requirements about how it is written that prevent a normal FS from being used on it. There is a software layer between the filesystem the operating system sees and the flash chips. The operating system does not directly write to the flash chips unless it is using a flash filesystem. FAT32, ext2, and other non-embedded filesystems are not written directly to the flash.
Here is a company that sells flash chips that can be used with normal filesystems:
On that diagram the DiskOnChip is the physical device. You can see that there is quite a bit going on between what the operating system "sees" and what actually gets written to the chips.
"Until recently, the common approach to using Flash memory technology in embedded devices has been to use a pseudo-filesystem on the flash chips to emulate a standard block device and provide wear levelling, and to use a normal file system on top of that emulated block device."
Next up was a device that measured my perscription. I had to stare at a little picture while it zoomed in and out of focus. Apparently this determines my exact perscription, none of that "Is this better, or that" lens swapping. I wonder why eye doctors don't use this all the time.
The doctor used one of these devices on me for my current lenses. The best glasses I've ever had. Evidently a machine can pick out my prescription better than me and a doctor playing the lens swap game.
Using models to make policy based on field-gathered data is substantially more "scientific" than using wishful thinking based on economic self-interest.
More scientific doesn't mean the results are fact. Scientists are not inherently less biased human beings because they work in the field. I am not particularly studied in climate change and all that, but I have googled around a bit and investigated some climate research. From what I have seen the computer models are just not that good.
One article from some scientific journal went like this: 10 or so computer climate models were all wildy inaccurate in their predictions (replaying past data and checking the results). In the end they averaged all the models together, and that produced the best result! What?! That is not exactly confidence inspiring.
Not everything under the sun should be patentable. All they did was take existing technology and put it to use in a very obvious way. If any Tivo engineers or programmers are reading this, don't get me wrong, you did a marvelous job. The product is amazing, I love it.
I think I missed your point. If your point is that Tivo probably doesn't have anything truly new under the sun, then I would agree completely. It doesn't seem to me like it should be patentable, for whatever that is worth.
1.) The breakthrough is that a Tivo (and other DVRs) can record and play at the same time. The same program or a different program. That is the key difference between a VCR and a DVR.
2.) The rest of it is just a very well designed interface on top, that pretty much exposes everything that it should be able do as a consequence of 1.
For myself, it wasn't until I used it first hand that I understood everything that is encompassed in 2. Here are a few main points:
Note: I have DirecTV, so I have two tuners in my Tivo.
I can: Pause live TV. The Tivo will keep recording "live TV." When I press play, it will continue playing where I was, all the while recording the incoming video stream on that channel. If I paused it for ten minutes, then I can fast forward through a couple commercial breaks. I can watch another show during a commercial break (on the other tuner), I don't have to worry about missing any program.
I never use the mute button on the TV. Why mute it, when I can just pause it? I can answer the phone, go outside and get some sunshine, whatever. All I have to do is click on the record button and it is taken care of.
All of this gets better if you are watching a recorded program. Then you are completely in control. A Tivo completely decouples the recording and viewing so that you can watch what you want, when you want. All you have to do is set it up to record the shows you want. On the whole I would say I watch less TV, but I enjoy what I watch much more.
1997 - Intel develops an asynchronous, Pentium-compatible test chip that runs three times as fast, on the half the power, as it synchronous equivalent. The device never makes it out of the lab."
So why didn't Intel's chip make it out of the lab? "It didn't provide enough of an improvement to justify a shift to a radical technology," Tristram says. "An asynchronous chip in the lab might be years ahead of any synchronous design, but the design, testing and manufacturing systems that support conventional microprocessor production still have about a 20-year head start."
I won't get into arguing against your points, because frankly, I think you make some good ones.
Please remember that God and religion are two different concepts. Just because some religious people claim to know about God, does not mean that they do.
It's not the job of the collective to ensure that everyone makes the "right" choice. We could spend the time, money and effort to repeat this study 1000 times, and still someone will refuse medical treatment.
There is nothing wrong with this. It is perfectly acceptable for people to refuse medical treatment. It may not be what you fulwould choose, but thank God you can make your choice and they can make theirs.
Why is everyone so hung up on: "Why aren't these machines inpenetrable to all sorts of physical attacks?"
Who cares how physically secure the machines are or aren't? Even if the machines were tamper proof (which they should be), who cares? The real problem here is that we have a closed vote counting and verification process. That is unacceptable.
Elections and the vote counting process should be completely and utterly transparent. I trust no machine to count votes. If we use any kind of machine, it should be verified by random human recounts.
This is not the kind of problem for a clever or slick solution. The only sane solution, IMHO, is to apply the KISS principle. Keep it Simple Stupid.
I have an iAudio M3l. Before I bought it a bit of googling revealed users reports that battery life was about 50% shorter using Ogg Vorbis vs. mp3 files. I have been too lazy to actually measure this as the battery life of the M3l is pretty good (around 20-30 hours playing a mix of ogg and mp3).
I would think that the devices themselves would also have to be controlled for. Different processors, amounts of ram, algorithms and all that good stuff. There are a lot of variables to take into account before generalizations can be made.
I'm not in the business of characterizing how businesses feel. That said, it is very obvious to see why corporations might love regulations.
Many (Most? 99.99%?) of regulations make it harder to enter a market. Have you ever given any thought to starting a business? Think about it for a second now, if you haven't. In many many markets the first thing to think about is obtaining the appropriate license from the appropriate governmental agency. Depending on the license there will be some cash up front, plus different various hoops to jump through. I overheard someone at the DMV talking about selling a liquor license (to sell). He was asking $35,000 (US).
You may be tempted to tell me how great or necessary these regulations are for the consumer, but that is a different debate for another day. The fact is that regulations make it harder for new competitors (they have to spend time and money) to enter a market. Thus the corporations already in that market probably like those regulations quite well.
My concern is that the US public will be even more hesitant to question a war that doesn't have US lives at stake.
We already are hesitant. Our government is very opaque. They point the finger at a bad guy, and then we go and attack. The partisans attack each other and the rest of us scratch our heads wondering what the hell is going on.
If there are no US lives at stake, I am afraid that we will be even less critical and less involved.
Thank you very much for the sources. I just looked over all 3 of them a bit. Very interesting. I don't have the energy or time to dig into those now, but I always appreciate a good nudge in the direction towards knowledge. They will be filed for future reference. Thanks.
It sounds like AMD and Intel are both choosing the designs that work. How can anyone blame them for that? Can you follow up with more evidence on your "carbon copy" claim? If AMD's designs are so uninspired, then why is AMD giving Intel so much trouble right now? This in spite of Intel's advantage in manufacturing technology and might.
I don't believe for a second that Intel's marketing department designed the p4. But I'm also not so naive as to think that Intel's marketing department didn't try to take advantage of high clock speeds in their advertising. They made their bed, now they get to lie in it.
AMD has delivered better speed performance at better power consumption than Intel. Kudos to Intel for trying a new design, too bad for them they stuck with it for so long. That is life in the big city. The company that delivers *results* gets rewarded. AMD has done just that.
Thanks for the response. I agree with what you are saying. I think this snippet from your post is the heart of the matter:
"The scientists, in this case, have every right to scream 'trust me I have the answer' - ok, I'll amend that, they should be screaming 'don't trust us, but we have very good answers you can check out yourself'. Point is, sometimes one side is simply right."
I could be wrong about this, but I don't think that the true scientists are screaming any thing. Science is science. People's beliefs are people's beliefs. When I hear someone who claims to be a scientist arguing that we should all think like him or accept his beliefs, that scientist sounds a lot more like a political or religious leader to me.
As far as my beliefs, I do believe in God, and I also believe that evolution is a fact of life. I have no problem reconciling the two. What I hear in some evolutionist's arguing sounds like they think that evolution disproves God, and that is just silly. Evolution is not anti-God just because it pisses of some stubborn folks who insist on taking every word in the Bible literally.
Thanks for the response. My own internal definition for faith is more along the lines of belief in the absence of evidence. Belief in the face of concrete contrary evidence seems more like stubbornness and unreasoning prejudice.
I would appreciate it if you would share your definition of faith and belief. Googling for the definitions didn't yield a lot of results that weren't too consistent or helpful.
I agree that saying science is the new religion isn't quite correct. However I still stand by the idea. Moving along, Science as you said is an activity. It is performed by imperfect human beings in our imperfect manner. Yet it allows others to duplicate work and verify findings and generally work together to figure out this world around us. Science kicks ass. I love it.
However there is no doubt that many of the things that "science" tells us today are wrong. This is the way it has always been. New theories and models come around and displace the old. We add it to the general body of knowledge and the human race keeps on chugging. It is a beautiful thing.
I am very suspicious of anyone who says "trust me, I have the answer." The more answers they claim to have, the more skeptical I am. What I see in the creationism vs. evolution vs. ID vs "Big Bird gave birth to the world" debate is a bunch of people on each side chanting that there side is the one true way. I just don't buy it.
None of us knows how we got here, and furthermore it just doesn't fucking matter anyway. My two cents.
Great point, and that certainly is an issue. My thought exercise was a best case scenario in that regard. Usually Flash filesystems involve some sort of translation layer that runs in between a regular disk filesystem, like FAT, and the flash layer. One key reason for this is that sectors go bad on flash and may be bad even when they are brand new. These sectors have to be worked around and that is what the translation layer does. One would hope that writes to the same sector are combined by that translation layer also, but I don't know enough to say either way.
I agree. To generalize a bit and throw in some random thoughts, the word dogma comes to mind when I read many posts about science on Slashdot. Here is a definition of dogma from Wikipedia:
"Dogma is belief or doctrine held by a religion or any kind of organization to be authoritative and not to be disputed or doubted."
In my estimation that definition describes a lot of Slashdotters' beliefs in science and scientists. Similar to what the author of the summary wrote. People are looking for ammunition to fit preconceived ideas, instead of just opening their mind and searching for the truth. To me that is what science is about or should be anyway, a search for the truth without prejudice.
I'm a bit off topic here and rambling, I guess seeing people try to bend and form scientific research to prove their own belief systems has been disturbing me lately. It seems that science is the new religion for many. This new religion's adherents are just as intolerant of other's viewpoints as good old fashioned religions have been.
The lowest rating I've ever heard for flash memory is 10,000 writes. If you swap out every byte of the flash two times a day, you will hit 10,000 writes in 13 years. Many flash chips are rated at 100,000 writes. Note that the write rating isn't for the whole device, but for a sector of the flash. Wear leveling will help smaller transfers to be distributed over different sectors. Writing the whole flash negates the wear levelling though. I am not an expert, but I have trashed a few flash chips before:)
If we were to write a program to stress test a nano, I would bet that the number of writes it took before trashing would be well over 10,000.
Slashdot Mirror
In the case that a "normal" filesystem is used, such as FAT, it isn't written out to the chips. NAND flash has special requirements about how it is written that prevent a normal FS from being used on it. There is a software layer between the filesystem the operating system sees and the flash chips. The operating system does not directly write to the flash chips unless it is using a flash filesystem. FAT32, ext2, and other non-embedded filesystems are not written directly to the flash.
T echnology/TrueFFS_Technology.htm
Here is a company that sells flash chips that can be used with normal filesystems:
http://www.m-systems.com/site/en-US/Technologies/
On that diagram the DiskOnChip is the physical device. You can see that there is quite a bit going on between what the operating system "sees" and what actually gets written to the chips.
Flash drives do not write FAT32 out to the flash.
"Until recently, the common approach to using Flash memory technology in embedded devices has been to use a pseudo-filesystem on the flash chips to emulate a standard block device and provide wear levelling, and to use a normal file system on top of that emulated block device."
Taken from http://linux-mtd.infradead.org/~dwmw2/jffs2.pdf.
Next up was a device that measured my perscription. I had to stare at
a little picture while it zoomed in and out of focus. Apparently this
determines my exact perscription, none of that "Is this better, or that"
lens swapping. I wonder why eye doctors don't use this all the time.
The doctor used one of these devices on me for my current lenses. The best glasses I've ever had. Evidently a machine can pick out my prescription better than me and a doctor playing the lens swap game.
Using models to make policy based on field-gathered data is substantially more "scientific" than using wishful thinking based on economic self-interest.
More scientific doesn't mean the results are fact. Scientists are not inherently less biased human beings because they work in the field. I am not particularly studied in climate change and all that, but I have googled around a bit and investigated some climate research. From what I have seen the computer models are just not that good.
One article from some scientific journal went like this: 10 or so computer climate models were all wildy inaccurate in their predictions (replaying past data and checking the results). In the end they averaged all the models together, and that produced the best result! What?! That is not exactly confidence inspiring.
The fascinating story of the world's first microprocessor.
Let me preface this by saying I love my Tivo.
Not everything under the sun should be patentable. All they did was take existing technology and put it to use in a very obvious way. If any Tivo engineers or programmers are reading this, don't get me wrong, you did a marvelous job. The product is amazing, I love it.
I think I missed your point. If your point is that Tivo probably doesn't have anything truly new under the sun, then I would agree completely. It doesn't seem to me like it should be patentable, for whatever that is worth.
1.) The breakthrough is that a Tivo (and other DVRs) can record and play at the same time. The same program or a different program. That is the key difference between a VCR and a DVR.
2.) The rest of it is just a very well designed interface on top, that pretty much exposes everything that it should be able do as a consequence of 1.
For myself, it wasn't until I used it first hand that I understood everything that is encompassed in 2. Here are a few main points:
Note: I have DirecTV, so I have two tuners in my Tivo.
I can:
Pause live TV. The Tivo will keep recording "live TV." When I press play, it will continue playing where I was, all the while recording the incoming video stream on that channel. If I paused it for ten minutes, then I can fast forward through a couple commercial breaks. I can watch another show during a commercial break (on the other tuner), I don't have to worry about missing any program.
I never use the mute button on the TV. Why mute it, when I can just pause it? I can answer the phone, go outside and get some sunshine, whatever. All I have to do is click on the record button and it is taken care of.
All of this gets better if you are watching a recorded program. Then you are completely in control. A Tivo completely decouples the recording and viewing so that you can watch what you want, when you want. All you have to do is set it up to record the shows you want. On the whole I would say I watch less TV, but I enjoy what I watch much more.
Take a look at this
1997 - Intel develops an asynchronous, Pentium-compatible test chip that runs three times as fast, on the half the power, as it synchronous equivalent. The device never makes it out of the lab."
So why didn't Intel's chip make it out of the lab? "It didn't provide enough of an improvement to justify a shift to a radical technology," Tristram says. "An asynchronous chip in the lab might be years ahead of any synchronous design, but the design, testing and manufacturing systems that support conventional microprocessor production still have about a 20-year head start."
I won't get into arguing against your points, because frankly, I think you make some good ones.
Please remember that God and religion are two different concepts. Just because some religious people claim to know about God, does not mean that they do.
I have been learning to use prayer primarily as a means of seeking guidance in my life as well as seeking happiness and peace. Amazingly, it works.
It's not the job of the collective to ensure that everyone makes the "right" choice. We could spend the time, money and effort to repeat this study 1000 times, and still someone will refuse medical treatment.
There is nothing wrong with this. It is perfectly acceptable for people to refuse medical treatment. It may not be what you fulwould choose, but thank God you can make your choice and they can make theirs.
Ownership of knowledge and ownership of a car are not similar concepts.
Why is everyone so hung up on: "Why aren't these machines inpenetrable to all sorts of physical attacks?"
Who cares how physically secure the machines are or aren't? Even if the machines were tamper proof (which they should be), who cares? The real problem here is that we have a closed vote counting and verification process. That is unacceptable.
Elections and the vote counting process should be completely and utterly transparent. I trust no machine to count votes. If we use any kind of machine, it should be verified by random human recounts.
This is not the kind of problem for a clever or slick solution. The only sane solution, IMHO, is to apply the KISS principle. Keep it Simple Stupid.
I have an iAudio M3l. Before I bought it a bit of googling revealed users reports that battery life was about 50% shorter using Ogg Vorbis vs. mp3 files. I have been too lazy to actually measure this as the battery life of the M3l is pretty good (around 20-30 hours playing a mix of ogg and mp3).
I would think that the devices themselves would also have to be controlled for. Different processors, amounts of ram, algorithms and all that good stuff. There are a lot of variables to take into account before generalizations can be made.
I'm not in the business of characterizing how businesses feel. That said, it is very obvious to see why corporations might love regulations.
Many (Most? 99.99%?) of regulations make it harder to enter a market. Have you ever given any thought to starting a business? Think about it for a second now, if you haven't. In many many markets the first thing to think about is obtaining the appropriate license from the appropriate governmental agency. Depending on the license there will be some cash up front, plus different various hoops to jump through. I overheard someone at the DMV talking about selling a liquor license (to sell). He was asking $35,000 (US).
You may be tempted to tell me how great or necessary these regulations are for the consumer, but that is a different debate for another day. The fact is that regulations make it harder for new competitors (they have to spend time and money) to enter a market. Thus the corporations already in that market probably like those regulations quite well.
My concern is that the US public will be even more hesitant to question a war that doesn't have US lives at stake.
We already are hesitant. Our government is very opaque. They point the finger at a bad guy, and then we go and attack. The partisans attack each other and the rest of us scratch our heads wondering what the hell is going on.
If there are no US lives at stake, I am afraid that we will be even less critical and less involved.
Thank you very much for the sources. I just looked over all 3 of them a bit. Very interesting. I don't have the energy or time to dig into those now, but I always appreciate a good nudge in the direction towards knowledge. They will be filed for future reference. Thanks.
It sounds like AMD and Intel are both choosing the designs that work. How can anyone blame them for that? Can you follow up with more evidence on your "carbon copy" claim? If AMD's designs are so uninspired, then why is AMD giving Intel so much trouble right now? This in spite of Intel's advantage in manufacturing technology and might.
I don't believe for a second that Intel's marketing department designed the p4. But I'm also not so naive as to think that Intel's marketing department didn't try to take advantage of high clock speeds in their advertising. They made their bed, now they get to lie in it.
AMD has delivered better speed performance at better power consumption than Intel. Kudos to Intel for trying a new design, too bad for them they stuck with it for so long. That is life in the big city. The company that delivers *results* gets rewarded. AMD has done just that.
Thanks for the response. I agree with what you are saying. I think this snippet from your post is the heart of the matter:
"The scientists, in this case, have every right to scream 'trust me I have the answer' - ok, I'll amend that, they should be screaming 'don't trust us, but we have very good answers you can check out yourself'. Point is, sometimes one side is simply right."
I could be wrong about this, but I don't think that the true scientists are screaming any thing. Science is science. People's beliefs are people's beliefs. When I hear someone who claims to be a scientist arguing that we should all think like him or accept his beliefs, that scientist sounds a lot more like a political or religious leader to me.
As far as my beliefs, I do believe in God, and I also believe that evolution is a fact of life. I have no problem reconciling the two. What I hear in some evolutionist's arguing sounds like they think that evolution disproves God, and that is just silly. Evolution is not anti-God just because it pisses of some stubborn folks who insist on taking every word in the Bible literally.
Thanks for the response. My own internal definition for faith is more along the lines of belief in the absence of evidence. Belief in the face of concrete contrary evidence seems more like stubbornness and unreasoning prejudice.
I would appreciate it if you would share your definition of faith and belief. Googling for the definitions didn't yield a lot of results that weren't too consistent or helpful.
I agree that saying science is the new religion isn't quite correct. However I still stand by the idea. Moving along, Science as you said is an activity. It is performed by imperfect human beings in our imperfect manner. Yet it allows others to duplicate work and verify findings and generally work together to figure out this world around us. Science kicks ass. I love it.
However there is no doubt that many of the things that "science" tells us today are wrong. This is the way it has always been. New theories and models come around and displace the old. We add it to the general body of knowledge and the human race keeps on chugging. It is a beautiful thing.
I am very suspicious of anyone who says "trust me, I have the answer." The more answers they claim to have, the more skeptical I am. What I see in the creationism vs. evolution vs. ID vs "Big Bird gave birth to the world" debate is a bunch of people on each side chanting that there side is the one true way. I just don't buy it.
None of us knows how we got here, and furthermore it just doesn't fucking matter anyway. My two cents.
Great point, and that certainly is an issue. My thought exercise was a best case scenario in that regard. Usually Flash filesystems involve some sort of translation layer that runs in between a regular disk filesystem, like FAT, and the flash layer. One key reason for this is that sectors go bad on flash and may be bad even when they are brand new. These sectors have to be worked around and that is what the translation layer does. One would hope that writes to the same sector are combined by that translation layer also, but I don't know enough to say either way.
I agree. To generalize a bit and throw in some random thoughts, the word dogma comes to mind when I read many posts about science on Slashdot. Here is a definition of dogma from Wikipedia:
"Dogma is belief or doctrine held by a religion or any kind of organization to be authoritative and not to be disputed or doubted."
In my estimation that definition describes a lot of Slashdotters' beliefs in science and scientists. Similar to what the author of the summary wrote. People are looking for ammunition to fit preconceived ideas, instead of just opening their mind and searching for the truth. To me that is what science is about or should be anyway, a search for the truth without prejudice.
I'm a bit off topic here and rambling, I guess seeing people try to bend and form scientific research to prove their own belief systems has been disturbing me lately. It seems that science is the new religion for many. This new religion's adherents are just as intolerant of other's viewpoints as good old fashioned religions have been.
The lowest rating I've ever heard for flash memory is 10,000 writes. If you swap out every byte of the flash two times a day, you will hit 10,000 writes in 13 years. Many flash chips are rated at 100,000 writes. Note that the write rating isn't for the whole device, but for a sector of the flash. Wear leveling will help smaller transfers to be distributed over different sectors. Writing the whole flash negates the wear levelling though. I am not an expert, but I have trashed a few flash chips before :)
If we were to write a program to stress test a nano, I would bet that the number of writes it took before trashing would be well over 10,000.