Visual Studio 2010 will make parallel and multithreaded programming easier to accomplish. Essentially, instead of just
for(x=0;x1000;x++) dosomething(); you'll have
parallel_for(x=0;x1000;x++) dosomething(); and 2-1000 threads will kick off at once. I'm sure there can be thread pooling, locking, etc., but if the code is segmented well enough then parallel programming for 32 cores is probably not that traumatic for 90% of the world's code needs. Get into some high performance stuff or time-critical code, and you're probably already past the point where VS2010's new parallel code library is interesting.
"The tin-foil hatters will think that M$ is doing this on purpose so people will feel compelled to upgrade more frequently, but I don't really give them that much conniving intelligence."
Oh, it gets better... check this out.
MSDN Magazine, October 2008, page 150, "End Bracket"
Josh Phillips, a Program Manager on the MS Parallel Computing Platform Team, actually is advocating wasting CPU cycles. As in, if you have multiple sources of data, go ahead and fetch two or three and just use the first one that comes back. Pre-apply filters to images even if they're not requested, etc.
That's great and all, but that kind of predictive computing has to be done cautiously, with a fully loaded system in mind. I can say my app is the only one on the box (i.e. SQL Server, MSMQ, etc) and just expect all four cores to be mine. But when my app is working alongside 150 other little modules and apps, we still only have four cores serving everyone. That's probably why Vista runs so rough on my single core Athlon XP 2800 but is beautiful on a low-end dual core system. The OS has built-in expectations for multiple cores dedicated to its own tasks.
I wish apps would consider their environment like we do traffic while driving -- if we see a 50 car pileup in front of us, do we just plow through them? No, that's called demolition derby. While fun, not very efficient. Newer apps should consider their work in context, and have some way to tell the OS that if the Disk Read Time % for spindle 0 is at 3600%, something might want to scale back its workload. As it is, most apps consider their I/O of equal, "Normal" priority.
And XP/Vista will present a login screen within 30 seconds because of performance promises (from marketing, probably)... but the OS knows in advance (prefetch logs) it has to read 10GB of files to finish the boot cycle. Anything after that login screen should have a priority flag set to "below normal" because if it isn't important enough to delay the login screen, it can afford to wait an extra two minutes. There is a "delayed startup" mode, but I can't see enough improvement... the stupid thing just waits until I'm halfway through downloading my email to grab its "equal share".
I applaud your response, CFD. It's the responsibility of the data center management to ensure redundancy in the event of fire, flood, earthquake, tornado or curious squirrel. In this case, there was an explosion and fire. I've seen fire up close when we invited the local volunteer fire department to use an old house as training. Once they set the fire, the entire thing was engulfed in 26 seconds. They intended to enter and practice saving occupants but it was 60 year old, dry wood and just went poof, so they just waited a minute and turned the hoses on. It smoldered for about 24 hours and was a pile of ash.
In this datacenter, there are all kinds of things that could smolder and cause secondary fires if the generators were turned on and something unknown happened (i.e. short from inside?). Plus, don't firefighters need to check for hot spots? Isn't that easier if power's off? Don't get me started on structural stability, either... 3 of 4 walls collapsed. That has to count as added risk.
So yes, if ThePlanet was willing to take the risk that their building was destroyed by earthquake, they can accept 24 hours downtime at the insistence of the fire chief. Redundant data centers for critical operations; acceptable tactical losses for whatever doesn't have redundancy. Murphy's law happens, and nothing is truly redundant. If their 9,000 customers expected full redundancy, those customers will need to re-evaluate what exact kind of redundancy they're getting. Not everyone needs multi-datacenter stability which is horrifically expensive. After reading this story, I'll be getting a second server for my 19 domains, on a different provider in a different city. Just in case.
I'm not familiar with all the FTC laws and regulations, but do they make it so that Google can't ever change their privacy policy? Because I had a credit card do that, and it took me a while to notice the actual change in the 10 page privacy policy which was sent in its entirety, in which they could now share all my information (income, credit history in its entirety, purchase habits) with anyone they chose. All I need to opt out is repay the balance in full and close the account. Simple.
So if HIPAA doesn't apply, what law exists to stop Google from slipping in a policy change where now 50 million health records are shared with "select partners" including Amazon.com who will gladly spam you with the books you're most likely to want?
With HIPAA, there are laws, penalties and jailtime. If someone slips up inside the walls of Google and 'oopses' out a thousand records, does anyone get in legal trouble? And with HIPAA, the rules don't change on 30 days notice. This is why I and a billion others will be skeptical of any large database containing our own health information.
I'm not trying to argue with you personally, but if you know more about FTC or the other billion pages of privacy laws, maybe there really is something that applies and we're not seeing it.
I worked for 6 years at one of the largest medical clearinghouses in the country. They're technically not a clearinghouse, as I understand the term, but they would hold a critical role that shouldn't be ignored or used to circumvent HIPAA.
If Google stores personal health information (PHI) it should be protected with the same security and privacy arrangements as are required in a clearinghouse. Why? Because, it could contain information on a governor, a celebrity, or their janitors. Information that would be very tempting to unscrupulous parties. Britney's in the hospital again? Let's see if we can dig up why. Oh, no, just her housekeeper's information is here... let's extort some information.
With HIPAA, all access to my records is by law traced. If Google is able to store my records and release them without that tracing, then I, as an educated consumer, will not use their service. 50 million other people will, without knowing the risks. I know how easy it is to sneak a peek behind the scenes or say, "hey, check this out" when you're not being watched... when HIPAA threatens you with jail time, it's a whole new ballgame.
If Google wants to store PHI, I believe they should follow HIPAA, SOX or whatever rule set is appropriate. If there's a loophole in HIPAA that allows a third party to accept 50 million volunteered health records, HIPAA should be updated asap.
I agree, $3500 is insane for MSDN (I cap its value at $2,000), and I think the Premium Uber MSDN with Team System costs like $11,000. And the Express editions of Studio just don't cut it for a lot of people; no source control or unit testing, etc. Still, there's a middle ground:
Microsoft Certified Partners are entitled to a certain number of MSDN subscriptions and/or Visual Studio copies, depending on their partner level. Even as just a Registered Partner (anyone can get this simply by signing up for free), there's something called an Action Pack, I think, that includes enough licenses to get a small business running - server OS, SQL Server, etc. The Action Pack costs either $200 or $400, and I'm too lazy to verify that but here's the link if you're still interested:
Getting Certified Partner status isn't a big hurdle; get some customer references and prove certain technologies are within your scope and you're well on your way.
Thank you. I'd mod you up, but I just replied to someone else.
A hummer isn't so tall that a 2-3 second lead means you can't see a yellow light. Even following a big rig should be done at enough distance so you can see the cars in front of it, and if not, at least see the light after he passes it, with enough time to stop on your own. If a Peterbilt runs a red, someone in the intersection will wait just until his tail feathers are out of the way before gunning it to clear out of the path of the next Peterbilt coming the other direction. And if someone's drafting that first truck... guess who's invisible?
Heck, I still think "yellow" is mainly so people who've been waiting can finally make their left turns.... That's how I learned it in California, 1992. You get in the intersection, wheels pointed straight, not turned, just in case you're rear-ended. Oncoming traffic (Car A) has to be past your front bumper before you start your turn (I got docked 12% on my exam for this one), and you must allow a certain space (about 5 seconds of lead time before impact) before the next oncoming car (Car B). If the light turns yellow, oncoming traffic (Car B) is obliged to stop because Yellow Means Stop If At All Possible - moderate to heavy braking included. Yellow is to clear the intersection of anyone already in it. That three second lead between Car B and Car C is so that Car C can stop when Car B brakes hard or hits something. That same three second lead has saved me a hundred times.
Today I drove with a coworker who obviously believes the polar opposite of me -- he was doing 50-70 on streets and highway, approx 2 feet from the car in front of him, playing with his GPS, and weaving around lunchtime traffic. I swear Jesus was his copilot, because if even one of those cars had even tapped their brakes for anything unexpected, we'd have spun and taken out three other cars. I'll be driving myself to lunch from now on.
Interestingly enough, Visual Studio 2005 and 2008 under Vista can't access a project stored in a local IIS website unless running as admin. You're explicitly prompted to run the entire session under Administrator account. The alternative is to change your project storage to disk instead of IIS -- maybe not a bad idea, but contradicting their new HTTP based projects of 2002/2003 (as Web services were promoted then too, now web services are actively discouraged for security and scalability reasons. Lessons learned, I guess.)
Clicking "Run as administrator" is easier and just reinforces the "click through all these dialogs" mentality. I think MS went too far in some of the dialogs; their new push to give detailed explanations is counterproductive, as I don't want to read an essay at that particular time.
Still, I agree -- running as admin is dangerous; Linux and Unix had a great approach from their beginnings. Windows needs to catch up to that, and it'll involve a massive effort on the part of the users and developers. Having Ubuntu Linux prompt similar to UAC helps reinforce the principle of running with lowered privileges, and shows that Windows isn't any more evil now that it has UAC, it's just that things were so non-secure before that it's hard as hell to conform to the new guidelines.
Eight 3.16 GHz cores (2 x Quad Penryn Xeons).
24 GB RAM.
Quadro FX4600.
Two 10K RPM Raptors in RAID-0. And it STILL took 30 minutes to install? Crikey! My poor Athlon 2800 with 1.5GB would take a week. I'll disable auto updates until I'm brave. When they released the pre-SP1 stuff, I booted my machine at 6pm. Went to watch TV, and at 7pm found it rebooting to finish installing the thing. It didn't ask, it just went ahead and downloaded, installed and rebooted. How proactive of it.
One day soon I'll get a multicore 64 bit machine with 8GB+ RAM. Vista on Athlon... I really underestimated the sluggish factor.
I can see the last few minutes of the movie now: Bruce Willis rides the missile rodeo-style, trademark scream and all. On the ground, Chuck Norris will be waiting to roundhouse kick the satellite just in case the Bruceissle misses.
That's the trouble with air purifiers -- so many designs, so little fact and little to no regulation. I have used a few ozone generators, most of which gave me a headache. Then I took a chance and invested in a Biozone sized for the space I use it in -- with ventilation. It uses UV-C and a small amount of ozone. If air circulates, no headache, and no germs -- I've been sick only twice in 5 years and both times came after I was on a plane full of sneezing rednecks for 6 hours. Before the Biozone I was sick every 4-8 weeks. Anecdotal evidence, but I'm 100% convinced.
As long as the device doesn't produce too much ozone (if you can smell it, it's too strong) and there's enough air circulation, it's probably safe. Ozone splits into O2 after a while (an hour, I think). Crank it up to 11 and snort the ozone directly and you'll kill more than the germs.
When your friend cranked his up far enough that you could smell it, he damaged your lungs temporarily and his reputation as well as air purification in general. I would love for the technology to get national attention and real public education; there's benefit if it's used right, like in hospitals.
I did some work recently for a new product, and I was told that the users at the pilot client actually requested the Microsoft Agent. I begged the project manager not to use Clippy. I think we compromised on the wizard, although he made a good case for the puppy.
How about if a perfectly capable teenager has a serious health problem and has to track 31 pills per day on a schedule that's measured in 10-30 minute increments because of interactions? My brother had that situation a few years ago. He had one of those monthly notebook-sized things just to separate them out in sequence. Something like this would have made his daily regimen more portable.
Sure, a hammer is a great tool when a hammer is needed. Likewise, the sun alone wakes a lot of people up every morning. Others choose to use an alarm clock. I see a market for the smart pill box.
OCZ and Corsair make some high performance USB drives. Corsair's red Voyager GT (Not the standard blue one) gets over 20MB/sec write. Of course, "reasonably priced" may be a stretch... they're about double the price of much slower drives.
Per Corsair "Ram Guy" forums:
"The average read and write for a
4 G GT FV 25.5mbs Wite and 34 Mbs Read
Non GT 4G FV is 2.2mbs Write and 19.2mbs Read."
In 1998 I worked for a real estate company that kept its entire rent database on an IBM DisplayWriter 8" floppy disk, no backups. Strangely enough, it lasted longer than the 30MB hard disk in the CEO's secretary's PC. Boss man said to spend $1,000 to recover the address list on the drive. They salvaged everything, including the 25KB of value on a 30MB drive. Finally backed up to... wait for it... a single 3.5" floppy. $84 million in revenue and you couldn't convince them to spend a dime in the right places.
When the CEO drove to work in his new $300k Ferrari, I decided my value was understated and moved. They sold the company 3 years later.
Humorously enough, my experience with hard drives has been similar. With few exceptions, a couple of bad blocks showing up is usually a precursor to the drive going completely dead within a matter of days. YMMV.
I believe IDE drives made since the early/mid 90s have auto-remapping where a bad sector is moved silently except to the SMART diagnostics -- no bad sectors show up at the OS. When SMART reports you have a pending failure due to bad sectors, it's because most of the spares have been taken up or the remapping failed on the first try. By the time an IDE drive shows a bad sector, it's practically toast.
Funny thing about towns of 300-400 people is that they're likely 30+ miles from each other, with 2,000 more people out of radio range, spread out on thousands upon thousands of acres of farmland, pasture or just tree farms. My in-laws live 20 miles from town, 5 miles from a paved road. Something like 20 families in a one-mile radius, and only one to my knowledge has upgraded past dial-up, to satellite. Half would use the net if the cost were $20-30/mo and reliable, but the phone lines can barely hold a 9600bps link.
If you can get wireless internet (>500kbps down/30kbps up) to Smithdale, MS, I know you'll have a loyal following.
Modded funny, yet hinting at tragedy. Hopefully despite the "not kidding" your intent was only to be funny, but just in case...
Man, if you seriously regret the impact now, you need a new perspective. Maybe you don't know what it's like to have that 1 year old, even with all the fear, confusion and regret, and later lose everything but the regret. Hold on to what you have. Appreciate all of it, and look at the diaper changes and feeding frenzies as entertainment. If you look at the world from his perspective (a new life form learning the most basic things through stimulus and response), babies are rather fascinating. And you have the unique opportunity to guide him and try to shape his behavior. Kind of like programming a robot, but with nature as a powerful framework.
If you ever find yourself doubting your kid's value and positive impact, talk to people -- lots of people, or trained experts if you can't trust family. It's amazing what a new perspective can do for a father.
Don't ever tell your kid that you'd never have had him if you knew what you were in for. If you do, your kid will never be the same.
Slashdot Mirror
Corollary to B:
Visual Studio 2010 will make parallel and multithreaded programming easier to accomplish. Essentially, instead of just
for(x=0;x1000;x++) dosomething();
you'll have
parallel_for(x=0;x1000;x++) dosomething();
and 2-1000 threads will kick off at once. I'm sure there can be thread pooling, locking, etc., but if the code is segmented well enough then parallel programming for 32 cores is probably not that traumatic for 90% of the world's code needs. Get into some high performance stuff or time-critical code, and you're probably already past the point where VS2010's new parallel code library is interesting.
"The tin-foil hatters will think that M$ is doing this on purpose so people will feel compelled to upgrade more frequently, but I don't really give them that much conniving intelligence."
Oh, it gets better... check this out.
MSDN Magazine, October 2008, page 150, "End Bracket"
Josh Phillips, a Program Manager on the MS Parallel Computing Platform Team, actually is advocating wasting CPU cycles. As in, if you have multiple sources of data, go ahead and fetch two or three and just use the first one that comes back. Pre-apply filters to images even if they're not requested, etc.
That's great and all, but that kind of predictive computing has to be done cautiously, with a fully loaded system in mind. I can say my app is the only one on the box (i.e. SQL Server, MSMQ, etc) and just expect all four cores to be mine. But when my app is working alongside 150 other little modules and apps, we still only have four cores serving everyone. That's probably why Vista runs so rough on my single core Athlon XP 2800 but is beautiful on a low-end dual core system. The OS has built-in expectations for multiple cores dedicated to its own tasks.
I wish apps would consider their environment like we do traffic while driving -- if we see a 50 car pileup in front of us, do we just plow through them? No, that's called demolition derby. While fun, not very efficient. Newer apps should consider their work in context, and have some way to tell the OS that if the Disk Read Time % for spindle 0 is at 3600%, something might want to scale back its workload. As it is, most apps consider their I/O of equal, "Normal" priority.
And XP/Vista will present a login screen within 30 seconds because of performance promises (from marketing, probably)... but the OS knows in advance (prefetch logs) it has to read 10GB of files to finish the boot cycle. Anything after that login screen should have a priority flag set to "below normal" because if it isn't important enough to delay the login screen, it can afford to wait an extra two minutes. There is a "delayed startup" mode, but I can't see enough improvement ... the stupid thing just waits until I'm halfway through downloading my email to grab its "equal share".
Nah, Chuck Norris will just slingshot the supplies to the right spot.
I applaud your response, CFD. It's the responsibility of the data center management to ensure redundancy in the event of fire, flood, earthquake, tornado or curious squirrel. In this case, there was an explosion and fire. I've seen fire up close when we invited the local volunteer fire department to use an old house as training. Once they set the fire, the entire thing was engulfed in 26 seconds. They intended to enter and practice saving occupants but it was 60 year old, dry wood and just went poof, so they just waited a minute and turned the hoses on. It smoldered for about 24 hours and was a pile of ash.
In this datacenter, there are all kinds of things that could smolder and cause secondary fires if the generators were turned on and something unknown happened (i.e. short from inside?). Plus, don't firefighters need to check for hot spots? Isn't that easier if power's off? Don't get me started on structural stability, either... 3 of 4 walls collapsed. That has to count as added risk.
So yes, if ThePlanet was willing to take the risk that their building was destroyed by earthquake, they can accept 24 hours downtime at the insistence of the fire chief. Redundant data centers for critical operations; acceptable tactical losses for whatever doesn't have redundancy. Murphy's law happens, and nothing is truly redundant. If their 9,000 customers expected full redundancy, those customers will need to re-evaluate what exact kind of redundancy they're getting. Not everyone needs multi-datacenter stability which is horrifically expensive. After reading this story, I'll be getting a second server for my 19 domains, on a different provider in a different city. Just in case.
I'm not familiar with all the FTC laws and regulations, but do they make it so that Google can't ever change their privacy policy? Because I had a credit card do that, and it took me a while to notice the actual change in the 10 page privacy policy which was sent in its entirety, in which they could now share all my information (income, credit history in its entirety, purchase habits) with anyone they chose. All I need to opt out is repay the balance in full and close the account. Simple.
So if HIPAA doesn't apply, what law exists to stop Google from slipping in a policy change where now 50 million health records are shared with "select partners" including Amazon.com who will gladly spam you with the books you're most likely to want?
With HIPAA, there are laws, penalties and jailtime. If someone slips up inside the walls of Google and 'oopses' out a thousand records, does anyone get in legal trouble? And with HIPAA, the rules don't change on 30 days notice. This is why I and a billion others will be skeptical of any large database containing our own health information.
I'm not trying to argue with you personally, but if you know more about FTC or the other billion pages of privacy laws, maybe there really is something that applies and we're not seeing it.
I worked for 6 years at one of the largest medical clearinghouses in the country. They're technically not a clearinghouse, as I understand the term, but they would hold a critical role that shouldn't be ignored or used to circumvent HIPAA.
If Google stores personal health information (PHI) it should be protected with the same security and privacy arrangements as are required in a clearinghouse. Why? Because, it could contain information on a governor, a celebrity, or their janitors. Information that would be very tempting to unscrupulous parties. Britney's in the hospital again? Let's see if we can dig up why. Oh, no, just her housekeeper's information is here... let's extort some information.
With HIPAA, all access to my records is by law traced. If Google is able to store my records and release them without that tracing, then I, as an educated consumer, will not use their service. 50 million other people will, without knowing the risks. I know how easy it is to sneak a peek behind the scenes or say, "hey, check this out" when you're not being watched... when HIPAA threatens you with jail time, it's a whole new ballgame.
If Google wants to store PHI, I believe they should follow HIPAA, SOX or whatever rule set is appropriate. If there's a loophole in HIPAA that allows a third party to accept 50 million volunteered health records, HIPAA should be updated asap.
I agree, $3500 is insane for MSDN (I cap its value at $2,000), and I think the Premium Uber MSDN with Team System costs like $11,000. And the Express editions of Studio just don't cut it for a lot of people; no source control or unit testing, etc. Still, there's a middle ground:
Microsoft Certified Partners are entitled to a certain number of MSDN subscriptions and/or Visual Studio copies, depending on their partner level. Even as just a Registered Partner (anyone can get this simply by signing up for free), there's something called an Action Pack, I think, that includes enough licenses to get a small business running - server OS, SQL Server, etc. The Action Pack costs either $200 or $400, and I'm too lazy to verify that but here's the link if you're still interested:
http://partner.microsoft.com/
Getting Certified Partner status isn't a big hurdle; get some customer references and prove certain technologies are within your scope and you're well on your way.
Don't forget the best challenge of the 70s and 80s... TILT!
Bump the machine to move the ball just right, but not enough to trigger TILT.
To a 10 year old, that's an invitation to cause havoc.
Thank you. I'd mod you up, but I just replied to someone else.
A hummer isn't so tall that a 2-3 second lead means you can't see a yellow light. Even following a big rig should be done at enough distance so you can see the cars in front of it, and if not, at least see the light after he passes it, with enough time to stop on your own. If a Peterbilt runs a red, someone in the intersection will wait just until his tail feathers are out of the way before gunning it to clear out of the path of the next Peterbilt coming the other direction. And if someone's drafting that first truck... guess who's invisible?
Today I drove with a coworker who obviously believes the polar opposite of me -- he was doing 50-70 on streets and highway, approx 2 feet from the car in front of him, playing with his GPS, and weaving around lunchtime traffic. I swear Jesus was his copilot, because if even one of those cars had even tapped their brakes for anything unexpected, we'd have spun and taken out three other cars. I'll be driving myself to lunch from now on.
Interestingly enough, Visual Studio 2005 and 2008 under Vista can't access a project stored in a local IIS website unless running as admin. You're explicitly prompted to run the entire session under Administrator account. The alternative is to change your project storage to disk instead of IIS -- maybe not a bad idea, but contradicting their new HTTP based projects of 2002/2003 (as Web services were promoted then too, now web services are actively discouraged for security and scalability reasons. Lessons learned, I guess.)
Clicking "Run as administrator" is easier and just reinforces the "click through all these dialogs" mentality. I think MS went too far in some of the dialogs; their new push to give detailed explanations is counterproductive, as I don't want to read an essay at that particular time.
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa964620(VS.80).aspx
Still, I agree -- running as admin is dangerous; Linux and Unix had a great approach from their beginnings. Windows needs to catch up to that, and it'll involve a massive effort on the part of the users and developers. Having Ubuntu Linux prompt similar to UAC helps reinforce the principle of running with lowered privileges, and shows that Windows isn't any more evil now that it has UAC, it's just that things were so non-secure before that it's hard as hell to conform to the new guidelines.
Tuberculosis?
24 GB RAM.
Quadro FX4600.
Two 10K RPM Raptors in RAID-0. And it STILL took 30 minutes to install? Crikey! My poor Athlon 2800 with 1.5GB would take a week. I'll disable auto updates until I'm brave. When they released the pre-SP1 stuff, I booted my machine at 6pm. Went to watch TV, and at 7pm found it rebooting to finish installing the thing. It didn't ask, it just went ahead and downloaded, installed and rebooted. How proactive of it.
One day soon I'll get a multicore 64 bit machine with 8GB+ RAM. Vista on Athlon... I really underestimated the sluggish factor.
Even better -- the sound of a mosquito. Or angry hornets. Whatever the player hates/fears more.
I see a market 10 years from now for tech to disrupt these.
I can see the last few minutes of the movie now: Bruce Willis rides the missile rodeo-style, trademark scream and all. On the ground, Chuck Norris will be waiting to roundhouse kick the satellite just in case the Bruceissle misses.
That's the trouble with air purifiers -- so many designs, so little fact and little to no regulation. I have used a few ozone generators, most of which gave me a headache. Then I took a chance and invested in a Biozone sized for the space I use it in -- with ventilation. It uses UV-C and a small amount of ozone. If air circulates, no headache, and no germs -- I've been sick only twice in 5 years and both times came after I was on a plane full of sneezing rednecks for 6 hours. Before the Biozone I was sick every 4-8 weeks. Anecdotal evidence, but I'm 100% convinced.
As long as the device doesn't produce too much ozone (if you can smell it, it's too strong) and there's enough air circulation, it's probably safe. Ozone splits into O2 after a while (an hour, I think). Crank it up to 11 and snort the ozone directly and you'll kill more than the germs.
When your friend cranked his up far enough that you could smell it, he damaged your lungs temporarily and his reputation as well as air purification in general. I would love for the technology to get national attention and real public education; there's benefit if it's used right, like in hospitals.
I, for one, welcome our new stoked Ozarkian overlords.
I got to use one too! w00t!
I did some work recently for a new product, and I was told that the users at the pilot client actually requested the Microsoft Agent. I begged the project manager not to use Clippy. I think we compromised on the wizard, although he made a good case for the puppy.
How about if a perfectly capable teenager has a serious health problem and has to track 31 pills per day on a schedule that's measured in 10-30 minute increments because of interactions? My brother had that situation a few years ago. He had one of those monthly notebook-sized things just to separate them out in sequence. Something like this would have made his daily regimen more portable.
Sure, a hammer is a great tool when a hammer is needed. Likewise, the sun alone wakes a lot of people up every morning. Others choose to use an alarm clock. I see a market for the smart pill box.
OCZ and Corsair make some high performance USB drives. Corsair's red Voyager GT (Not the standard blue one) gets over 20MB/sec write. Of course, "reasonably priced" may be a stretch... they're about double the price of much slower drives.
Per Corsair "Ram Guy" forums:
"The average read and write for a
4 G GT FV 25.5mbs Wite and 34 Mbs Read
Non GT 4G FV is 2.2mbs Write and 19.2mbs Read."
(Reference: http://www.asktheramguy.com/v3/showthread.php?t=65150&highlight=voyager+speed)
Corsair appears to be holding to that, offering replacements for a few that report 22MB/sec reads.
Product links:
Corsair Voyager GT 8GB:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820233054
OCZ Rally 2 Dual channel advertises 8MB/sec+ writes:
http://www.ocztechnology.com/products/flash_drives/ocz_rally2_usb_2_0_dual_channel_flash_memory_drive
In 1998 I worked for a real estate company that kept its entire rent database on an IBM DisplayWriter 8" floppy disk, no backups. Strangely enough, it lasted longer than the 30MB hard disk in the CEO's secretary's PC. Boss man said to spend $1,000 to recover the address list on the drive. They salvaged everything, including the 25KB of value on a 30MB drive. Finally backed up to... wait for it... a single 3.5" floppy. $84 million in revenue and you couldn't convince them to spend a dime in the right places.
When the CEO drove to work in his new $300k Ferrari, I decided my value was understated and moved. They sold the company 3 years later.
I believe IDE drives made since the early/mid 90s have auto-remapping where a bad sector is moved silently except to the SMART diagnostics -- no bad sectors show up at the OS. When SMART reports you have a pending failure due to bad sectors, it's because most of the spares have been taken up or the remapping failed on the first try. By the time an IDE drive shows a bad sector, it's practically toast.
Am I wrong about this?
Funny thing about towns of 300-400 people is that they're likely 30+ miles from each other, with 2,000 more people out of radio range, spread out on thousands upon thousands of acres of farmland, pasture or just tree farms. My in-laws live 20 miles from town, 5 miles from a paved road. Something like 20 families in a one-mile radius, and only one to my knowledge has upgraded past dial-up, to satellite. Half would use the net if the cost were $20-30/mo and reliable, but the phone lines can barely hold a 9600bps link.
If you can get wireless internet (>500kbps down/30kbps up) to Smithdale, MS, I know you'll have a loyal following.
Maybe he was referring to MTV's new series, America's Next Top Banshee.
Modded funny, yet hinting at tragedy. Hopefully despite the "not kidding" your intent was only to be funny, but just in case...
Man, if you seriously regret the impact now, you need a new perspective. Maybe you don't know what it's like to have that 1 year old, even with all the fear, confusion and regret, and later lose everything but the regret. Hold on to what you have. Appreciate all of it, and look at the diaper changes and feeding frenzies as entertainment. If you look at the world from his perspective (a new life form learning the most basic things through stimulus and response), babies are rather fascinating. And you have the unique opportunity to guide him and try to shape his behavior. Kind of like programming a robot, but with nature as a powerful framework.
If you ever find yourself doubting your kid's value and positive impact, talk to people -- lots of people, or trained experts if you can't trust family. It's amazing what a new perspective can do for a father.
Don't ever tell your kid that you'd never have had him if you knew what you were in for. If you do, your kid will never be the same.