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Comment Re:Hemos Says: "So Long, and Thanks For All The Fi (Score 1) 1521

I think it's fair to say that the average uid in the comments on this post will be the lowest in the last few years... possibly the last decade.

Yes, quite likely. It's nice to come back to someplace where we all spent so much time contributing in big and little ways. Many of us are a bit older and rounder than when /. started but the ride has been fun. I still remember grabbing a tshirt from Rob at some Linux conference in the San Jose Convention center. It was in the 1990s I'm sure because I still have Alpha Linux swag as well. Thanks CmdrTaco for the fun times.

I don't really miss the juvenile flames and obligatory nitpicks but I do recall fondly some of the lamer aspects: hot grits, Natalie Portman, MEEPT, first post, endless discussion of whether Jackson would ruin the LOTR movies, "I hate JarJar", whining about poll choices, vi vs emacs, etc. Maybe I'll look to see if there's a BSD fan around here and start a flame war for old time's sake.

Comment Re:Let's play the odds: (Score 2, Insightful) 165

Of course this is the case. This study is as exciting as news that George Michael is gay. There have been plenty of studies to this effect. My company makes tons of money consulting on better storage utilization. [Some Fortune 500 companies I've visited run below 40% utilization.] EMC, IBM, HDS, NetApp and the rest have no real interest in selling you less drives. They all make vague, glossy statements about saving storage money but in reality you need to be wasteful if you want to protect your ass. Think of the things we spend $ on just to get another 9 on the uptime digits: UPS, generators, clustering, DR systems/networks that sit idle, dark fibre between datacenters, RAID 1(+0), RAID 6, tapes, VTLs, Storage Arrays, redundant Fibre Channel SANs, . . .

From a human perspective, fuzzyfungus is right. Over-engineering is less likely to cost your job than failure. Plus, over-engineering is easy to justify.

Some things are just known to cost money if you MUST ensure that business is not subject to fallibility in hw and sw. The fact that there are 50 TBs unused out of your 200 TB of usable storage really might not mean too much. [Some of the numbers quoted could point to the mirrored side of RAID 1 stripes as wasted. It's a cheap gimmick to make the numbers look worse but still true to a certain extent if the performance difference between R5 and R1 is not needed.] Of course, there are usually low hanging fruit that can be attacked to save real money and prevent cascading costs on the other cost centers mentioned above but there will always be waste. It's the cost of five 9's.

The Internet

Submission + - Is Cisco's New Announced Router Really Enough?

_damnit_ writes: With 100mbps home internet service being promised by nearly every consumer provider in the coming years and with Google floating the idea of 1Gbps trials, is Cisco's newly announced product really enough to satisfy the bandwidth needs of the coming internet? With talk of the CRS-3 having a capacity of 322Tbps and 100Gbps fibre trials at AT&T it sounds like it unless the ISPs deliver faster speeds quickly and the "Next Big Thing" comes along to gobble bandwidth. Are there good sites out there which show the current and projected utilization of the backbones? Are we all destined to be sitting on 1Gbps pipes to the home/office with backhauls that can't come close to handling the traffic as we see now with some wireless providers?
Medicine

Submission + - Doctors Skirt FDA To Heal Patients With Stem Cells (singularityhub.com) 1

kkleiner writes: For many years countless individuals in the US have had to watch with envy as dogs and horses with joint and bone injuries have been cured with stem cell procedures that the FDA has refused to approve for humans. Now, in an exciting development Singularity Hub reports that Regenerative Sciences Inc. in Colorado has found a way to skirt the FDA and provide these same stem cell treatments to humans. The results have been stunning, allowing many patients to walk or run who have not been able to do so for years. There’s no surgery needed, just a needle to extract and then re-inject the cells where they are needed. There has always been a lot of hype around stem cells, but this is the real deal. Real humans are getting real treatment that works, and we should all hope that more companies will begin offering this procedure in other states soon.
Science

Submission + - Nokia Targets Mobile Kinetic Energy Charging (eweekeurope.co.uk)

justice4all writes: Nokia has filed a US patent for a phone charger that harvests kinetic energy

The technology has been used in laptops, PDAs and GPS receivers, according to Nokia. Essentially, the mobile devices would be powered, in part, through the movements of their owners.

Handhelds

Submission + - Blackberry mail down again!

_damnit_ writes: RIM has had another "severe event" which has taken down users across North America. The problem apparently started around 3:30PM EST. RIM has not given an expected resolution time.
Portables (Apple)

Submission + - Ticketed for using a hands-free device with my cel (tidbits.com)

scooteristi writes: "Full story at: http://db.tidbits.com/article/9180 ...Officer Wright turned his lights on and signaled me to pull over, which I did. "License and registration." Mindful that I had two officers tailing me, I couldn't think of any traffic laws that I had violated: "Officer, why did you pull me over?" "Under Virginia State Law it is illegal to wear headphones," he replied. "I'm wearing the hands-free device that came with my iPhone," I said, and I showed him my iPhone.... ...Now considering that in jurisdictions like Washington, D.C., and New York, it is mandatory that one use a hands-free device with a cell phone, it struck me as very odd that here I am in Virginia being pulled over for using one. Yet...using a hands-free device in the State of Virginia can be legally problematic."
Space

Photonic Laser Thruster Promises Earth to Mars in a Week 413

serutan writes "Using lasers to drive spaceships has been a subject of interest for many years, but making a photonic engine powerful enough for practical use has been elusive. Dr. Young Bae, a California physicist, has built a demonstration photonic laser thruster that produces enough thrust to micro-maneuver a satellite. This would be useful in high-precision formation flying, such as using a fleet of satellites to form a space telescope with a large virtual aperture. Scaled up, a similar engine could speed a spacecraft to Mars in less than a week."

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