How is this Insightful? How about -1 Trite. Is it that hard to believe that government can and does provide useful services, especially those that have such a long time horizon and capital investment that the market will not provide them? Is it also that hard to understand that these valuable programs and the people who run them (at a huge discount relative to the private sector) suffer under the vagaries of political brinksmanship?
This is why I have Qik. If you see something, stream it directly from your phone to their servers, and let *them* delete anything they want off your phone. Not to plug, though. If anyone knows of an open source solution, I would love to have one.
and one that I think does not fall to Ebert's "games are goal directed" criticisms:
Jason Rohrer's "Passage"
http://hcsoftware.sourceforge.net/passage/
I highly recommend it!
No doubt, instances of cherry-picked and poorly-worded "gotcha" phrases will be pulled out of context. One example is worth mentioning quickly. Phil Jones in discussing the presentation of temperature reconstructions stated that "I've just completed Mike's Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith's to hide the decline." The paper in question is the Mann, Bradley and Hughes (1998) Nature paper on the original multiproxy temperature reconstruction, and the 'trick' is just to plot the instrumental records along with reconstruction so that the context of the recent warming is clear. Scientists often use the term "trick" to refer to a "a good way to deal with a problem", rather than something that is "secret", and so there is nothing problematic in this at all. As for the 'decline', it is well known that Keith Briffa's maximum latewood tree ring density proxy diverges from the temperature records after 1960 (this is more commonly known as the "divergence problem"-see e.g. the recent discussion in this paper) and has been discussed in the literature since Briffa et al in Nature in 1998 (Nature, 391, 678-682). Those authors have always recommend not using the post 1960 part of their reconstruction, and so while 'hiding' is probably a poor choice of words (since it is 'hidden' in plain sight), not using the data in the plot is completely appropriate, as is further research to understand why this happens.
Reading this headline brought a quick rush of angry memories and a tinge of guilty satisfaction.
Guilty because of course I know not every, or even most employees behave in the manner of the following story. I'm sure many of them are decent, honest people.
In any case I had many terrible experiences at CompUSA, including what I would consider to be the greatest insult I ever received in a retail situation.
In undergrad (around 1999) I went to the Emeryville, CA CompUSA to pick up a flat-screen CRT (remember when those were cool?) that was on sale for a reasonable price. Of course when I got there, there were none within reach, so I had to go ask a salesman to pull one down off the storage shelves above the displays. Now, in order to appreciate what comes next, I should say that I'm a pretty nice little asian guy, bordering on appearing naive. I was all around the store, and finally find the entire sales staff apparently having a little BS-ing time between two isles. The conversation quiets as I approach:
"Hi, I'm looking for this monitor (I point to the ad), but they're up above the display, could someone pull one down for me?"
"Sure, I'd be happy to"... all smiles at me. Then, in full voice, right in front of me, that salesman turns to his buddies and says: "Service plan?" His buddies, wearing the biggest shit-eating grins, look up up and down for a second and respond: "Service plan" says one... "Service plan" says the other...
I was so dumbfounded that all three of them would just stand there and smile and literally call me "sucker" right to my face, I didn't respond.
I was pissed. Seeing red, clenched fists pissed. But I still wanted the monitor, so I figured I would have the last laugh after letting the guy pull the monitor and carry it up to he cashier before telling him politely, "NO".
So he pulls it down, we start walking up the the cashier, and I don't say a word, waiting for him to start giving his pitch. Halfway to the cashier, he mumbles:
"you know, we have this protection plan, it's really great..." I quietly respond: "uh-huh?"
That's it, not another word. We get to the cashier, the salesman puts the monitor on the conveyor, and shouts to the cashier (who's dealing with customers ahead of me): "Protection plan!"
Was that it?!! Were they really going to charge me for a protection plan without actually ASKING ME if I wanted it?
You can imagine what happens after that. The Cashier rings me up, and as the numbers flash by I ask: "What's this $45 ($45!!!) charge?"
"That's the protection plan you wanted"
"Take it off, I don't want it, he never asked me if I wanted it, and I never said I wanted it."
"but he said..."
"I don't care what he said"
"but I can't"
"are you saying you won't sell me this item at the advertised price without a $50 surcharge?" I had never nor since raised my voice at a service person, but I was going up involuntarily, and just enough so that when I turned my head in frustration, I noticed that I had the attention of everyone in line.
At that point the cashier noticed this also, and quickly removed the charge. I had been looking forward to this monitor for a while, so I took it home, but I couldn't shake the anger I felt when I looked at it. By evening, I got so sick of it I brought it back. (I also don't return stuff).
Just remembering the event almost ten years later, my hands are shaking.
No, HDD's are hermetically sealed. They have to be.
Actually, no. Look at any consumer drive and you'll see a hole with a sticker besides it with an arrow that says "do no cover this hole". This is to equalize pressure, otherwise the cover would bulge and warp. (There is a filter under the hole so particulate matter can't get in). Yes, there are some very special disks used in the military and NASA and the like that are hermetically sealed mainly to keep moisture from condensing on the platters, but you don't have one of those drives, trust me.
Spacing between head and platter can be in the microns. Turbulence from the rotation of the disk actually aids in making sure the head does not contact the disk.
Yes, and the turbulence (it's actually the boundary layer) that keeps the head off the disk is air, which gets less dense with increasing altitude, and so it gets thinner, ergo crash. What I meant was that perhaps the designers knew this and included a shut-out circuit that detects low pressure and doesn't allow the drive to spin up.
One might be humidity, another the decreased frictional constant of the air around you, viscosity of the air is what the internal fans rely on to cool the circuitry and heat producing chips, that the air is thinner means decreased cooling capacity.
Actually humidity drops with altitude. I agree that there is much lower cooling capacity at higher altitude, although it has nothing to do with viscosity or a frictional constant. Air is less dense at high altitudes, so the volumetric heat capacity of air is lower at high altitudes, so for a given volume of air that your fan moves, a lower mass of air is blown over the chip at higher altitudes, and there is less cooling. So sure, it could be a heating thing, no doubt. Whether it be for hard drive protection or thermal reasons, the cut-out would probably be tied to a pressure sensor, since at high altitudes, the thing won't even turn on (it doesn't freeze up like an overclocked computer). Many camcorders, digital cameras, etc. won't either. I have a few solid state gizmos that don't like high altitude either. In any case, the SSD can go higher.
...
(and yes, when I said I was a biologist who works in high altitudes I should have said I am a biologist who works on heat balance physiology of high altitude organisms)
I agree with TFA that SSD is most useful if you need the ruggedness and the read speed.
I have a 16GB Samsung 1.8" SSD in my fujitsu P1510D.
It's a marriage made in heaven!
I am a Biologist, and use my P1510 in the field. The SSD gives piece of mind, one less thing to go wrong. In fact, almost right after I swapped in my SSD, I (yes accidentally) dropped my computer about three feet to the floor. After checking to see that screen and case wasn't cracked, I just knew it was fine, and of course it booted right up. I also work in some high altitude locations, and I find the the machine boots at higher altitudes now. (perhaps hard drives cut out at high altitude because there's not enough air to keep the head off the platter?)
Finally, the P1510 uses hard to find and extremely expensive micro-DIMMs, so upgrading the memory is prohibitively expensive. That was my biggest gripe with the little machine, it was slow because I couldn't get the 1GB it really needs. This, coupled with the incredibly slow 1.8" hard drive made it kind of annoying. I still can't do much about upgrading RAM, but the read speed of the SSD allows me to just close applications, and re-open them when I need them (nearly instantaneously), so I never have more than two applications open at a time.
The most telling test I've done is with Allway Sync, which I use to synchronize the files on my little laptop with my desktop. Running "Analyze" (version checking files) on my home folder used to take about about a minute, now with the SSD it's somewhere between 10-15 seconds.
Sure, I wouldn't put it on a MySQL server or the like, but for my laptop, the whole experience is just so much better. I would recommend one to anyone who can use the ruggedness and read speed.
I also favor Ubuntu and Fedora, depending on the circumstances.
The biggest suggestion I can give is to not use dual boot, but to use a "mobile rack". Basically, sue multiple hard drives that are easy to swap mechanically, and so if and when you hose one of your operating systems, you don't have to worry about the others... and you'll still have a workable system for your work... while you wait for a chunk of time to fix the OS on the other drive.
After a while, you'll realize that you're using your windows drive less and less, but you always have it in case something comes up.
My friend's dog managed to get out of her car while she ran into a friends house to drop something off. This might not have been a big deal with some dogs, but her dog is a rescued dog, and was previously abused, so it's a real 'fraidy - dog, scared of everthing and everybody. My friend went back to the area for days (we went along also), but the situation felt hopeless because it was a woodsy area, and we knew we could be standing right next to the dog and never know it. (We eventually found it after 5 days of actively looking).
I looked around for little techie things to help in this situation. Very early, my friend and I dismissed the idea of a cell phone/gps combo as too expensive, and intractible (for us at least), but this definately would have helped.
Eventually we settled on one of those bi-directional keyfinders...I'm not going to put the link because this isn't an ad, but it works great, and all for around $20. She's even trained the dog to come to her when it hears the response tone. And, of course, she no longer loses her keys.
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How is this Insightful? How about -1 Trite. Is it that hard to believe that government can and does provide useful services, especially those that have such a long time horizon and capital investment that the market will not provide them? Is it also that hard to understand that these valuable programs and the people who run them (at a huge discount relative to the private sector) suffer under the vagaries of political brinksmanship?
This is why I have Qik. If you see something, stream it directly from your phone to their servers, and let *them* delete anything they want off your phone. Not to plug, though. If anyone knows of an open source solution, I would love to have one.
and one that I think does not fall to Ebert's "games are goal directed" criticisms: Jason Rohrer's "Passage" http://hcsoftware.sourceforge.net/passage/ I highly recommend it!
This situation seems to be similar to the ongoing debates about the morality of cochlear implants (for the hearing impaired): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cochlear_implant#Controversy
No doubt, instances of cherry-picked and poorly-worded "gotcha" phrases will be pulled out of context. One example is worth mentioning quickly. Phil Jones in discussing the presentation of temperature reconstructions stated that "I've just completed Mike's Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith's to hide the decline." The paper in question is the Mann, Bradley and Hughes (1998) Nature paper on the original multiproxy temperature reconstruction, and the 'trick' is just to plot the instrumental records along with reconstruction so that the context of the recent warming is clear. Scientists often use the term "trick" to refer to a "a good way to deal with a problem", rather than something that is "secret", and so there is nothing problematic in this at all. As for the 'decline', it is well known that Keith Briffa's maximum latewood tree ring density proxy diverges from the temperature records after 1960 (this is more commonly known as the "divergence problem"-see e.g. the recent discussion in this paper) and has been discussed in the literature since Briffa et al in Nature in 1998 (Nature, 391, 678-682). Those authors have always recommend not using the post 1960 part of their reconstruction, and so while 'hiding' is probably a poor choice of words (since it is 'hidden' in plain sight), not using the data in the plot is completely appropriate, as is further research to understand why this happens.
anyone else remember 0.002 dollar = 0.002 cent from two years ago?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2isSJKntbg
Reading this headline brought a quick rush of angry memories and a tinge of guilty satisfaction.
Guilty because of course I know not every, or even most employees behave in the manner of the following story. I'm sure many of them are decent, honest people.
In any case I had many terrible experiences at CompUSA, including what I would consider to be the greatest insult I ever received in a retail situation.
In undergrad (around 1999) I went to the Emeryville, CA CompUSA to pick up a flat-screen CRT (remember when those were cool?) that was on sale for a reasonable price.
Of course when I got there, there were none within reach, so I had to go ask a salesman to pull one down off the storage shelves above the displays. Now, in order to appreciate what comes next, I should say that I'm a pretty nice little asian guy, bordering on appearing naive.
I was all around the store, and finally find the entire sales staff apparently having a little BS-ing time between two isles. The conversation quiets as I approach:
"Hi, I'm looking for this monitor (I point to the ad), but they're up above the display, could someone pull one down for me?"
"Sure, I'd be happy to"... all smiles at me.
Then, in full voice, right in front of me, that salesman turns to his buddies and says:
"Service plan?"
His buddies, wearing the biggest shit-eating grins, look up up and down for a second and respond:
"Service plan" says one...
"Service plan" says the other...
I was so dumbfounded that all three of them would just stand there and smile and literally call me "sucker" right to my face, I didn't respond.
I was pissed. Seeing red, clenched fists pissed. But I still wanted the monitor, so I figured I would have the last laugh after letting the guy pull the monitor and carry it up to he cashier before telling him politely, "NO".
So he pulls it down, we start walking up the the cashier, and I don't say a word, waiting for him to start giving his pitch. Halfway to the cashier, he mumbles:
"you know, we have this protection plan, it's really great..."
I quietly respond: "uh-huh?"
That's it, not another word. We get to the cashier, the salesman puts the monitor on the conveyor, and shouts to the cashier (who's dealing with customers ahead of me):
"Protection plan!"
Was that it?!! Were they really going to charge me for a protection plan without actually ASKING ME if I wanted it?
You can imagine what happens after that. The Cashier rings me up, and as the numbers flash by I ask: "What's this $45 ($45!!!) charge?"
"That's the protection plan you wanted"
"Take it off, I don't want it, he never asked me if I wanted it, and I never said I wanted it."
"but he said..."
"I don't care what he said"
"but I can't"
"are you saying you won't sell me this item at the advertised price without a $50 surcharge?" I had never nor since raised my voice at a service person, but I was going up involuntarily, and just enough so that when I turned my head in frustration, I noticed that I had the attention of everyone in line.
At that point the cashier noticed this also, and quickly removed the charge.
I had been looking forward to this monitor for a while, so I took it home, but I couldn't shake the anger I felt when I looked at it. By evening, I got so sick of it I brought it back. (I also don't return stuff).
Just remembering the event almost ten years later, my hands are shaking.
Bah! I don't feel guilty any more.
Dear CompUSA: Suck failure assholes.
Actually, no. Look at any consumer drive and you'll see a hole with a sticker besides it with an arrow that says "do no cover this hole". This is to equalize pressure, otherwise the cover would bulge and warp. (There is a filter under the hole so particulate matter can't get in). Yes, there are some very special disks used in the military and NASA and the like that are hermetically sealed mainly to keep moisture from condensing on the platters, but you don't have one of those drives, trust me.
Yes, and the turbulence (it's actually the boundary layer) that keeps the head off the disk is air, which gets less dense with increasing altitude, and so it gets thinner, ergo crash. What I meant was that perhaps the designers knew this and included a shut-out circuit that detects low pressure and doesn't allow the drive to spin up.
See: http://www.storagereview.com/guide2000/ref/hdd/op/heads/opHeight.html or Scott Moulton's fantastic drive recovery videos: http://www.myharddrivedied.com/presentations.html for more information
Actually humidity drops with altitude. I agree that there is much lower cooling capacity at higher altitude, although it has nothing to do with viscosity or a frictional constant. Air is less dense at high altitudes, so the volumetric heat capacity of air is lower at high altitudes, so for a given volume of air that your fan moves, a lower mass of air is blown over the chip at higher altitudes, and there is less cooling. So sure, it could be a heating thing, no doubt. Whether it be for hard drive protection or thermal reasons, the cut-out would probably be tied to a pressure sensor, since at high altitudes, the thing won't even turn on (it doesn't freeze up like an overclocked computer). Many camcorders, digital cameras, etc. won't either. I have a few solid state gizmos that don't like high altitude either. In any case, the SSD can go higher.
I agree with TFA that SSD is most useful if you need the ruggedness and the read speed. I have a 16GB Samsung 1.8" SSD in my fujitsu P1510D. It's a marriage made in heaven! I am a Biologist, and use my P1510 in the field. The SSD gives piece of mind, one less thing to go wrong. In fact, almost right after I swapped in my SSD, I (yes accidentally) dropped my computer about three feet to the floor. After checking to see that screen and case wasn't cracked, I just knew it was fine, and of course it booted right up. I also work in some high altitude locations, and I find the the machine boots at higher altitudes now. (perhaps hard drives cut out at high altitude because there's not enough air to keep the head off the platter?) Finally, the P1510 uses hard to find and extremely expensive micro-DIMMs, so upgrading the memory is prohibitively expensive. That was my biggest gripe with the little machine, it was slow because I couldn't get the 1GB it really needs. This, coupled with the incredibly slow 1.8" hard drive made it kind of annoying. I still can't do much about upgrading RAM, but the read speed of the SSD allows me to just close applications, and re-open them when I need them (nearly instantaneously), so I never have more than two applications open at a time. The most telling test I've done is with Allway Sync, which I use to synchronize the files on my little laptop with my desktop. Running "Analyze" (version checking files) on my home folder used to take about about a minute, now with the SSD it's somewhere between 10-15 seconds. Sure, I wouldn't put it on a MySQL server or the like, but for my laptop, the whole experience is just so much better. I would recommend one to anyone who can use the ruggedness and read speed.
I also favor Ubuntu and Fedora, depending on the circumstances. The biggest suggestion I can give is to not use dual boot, but to use a "mobile rack". Basically, sue multiple hard drives that are easy to swap mechanically, and so if and when you hose one of your operating systems, you don't have to worry about the others... and you'll still have a workable system for your work... while you wait for a chunk of time to fix the OS on the other drive. After a while, you'll realize that you're using your windows drive less and less, but you always have it in case something comes up.
My friend's dog managed to get out of her car while she ran into a friends house to drop something off. This might not have been a big deal with some dogs, but her dog is a rescued dog, and was previously abused, so it's a real 'fraidy - dog, scared of everthing and everybody. My friend went back to the area for days (we went along also), but the situation felt hopeless because it was a woodsy area, and we knew we could be standing right next to the dog and never know it. (We eventually found it after 5 days of actively looking).
I looked around for little techie things to help in this situation. Very early, my friend and I dismissed the idea of a cell phone/gps combo as too expensive, and intractible (for us at least), but this definately would have helped. Eventually we settled on one of those bi-directional keyfinders...I'm not going to put the link because this isn't an ad, but it works great, and all for around $20. She's even trained the dog to come to her when it hears the response tone. And, of course, she no longer loses her keys.