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Submission + - i-Race: A race with yourself! (iitb.ac.in)

Submitted by sameerds
sameerds writes: i-Race is IIT's (Indian Institute of Technology) iconic running race that is conducted thrice a year, and is held simultaneously in cities across the globe. It is a unique race where runners compete with themselves, and against others across the world. The uniqueness of the event is that the participants are compared against their own limitations, and the ones who come closest to their capabilities are ranked higher. Using a mathematical model, the race computers adjust for changes in one's racing ability due to age, gender, race distance, height and weight. Thus, runners' performances are compared against their calculated limits, and the winners are chosen from across the globe based on their coming closest to their ideal best.

Comment Re:Are you catholic? (Score 1) 902

by sameerds (#26995337) Attached to: Designer Babies

Until birth, it's either a part of the mother's anatomy to do what she feels like (if it's implanted in the womb already) or just a thing in a glass if it's not.

Err no. The unborn baby is not part of the mother's anatomy. It's a separate living organism hiding itself from the mother's immune system. Practically a parasite.

Comment Re:OpenXML Plug-In Exists for Novell's OO.o (Score 2, Informative) 503

by sameerds (#26542273) Attached to: Can a Small Business Migrate Smoothly To OpenOffice.org v3?

Correction. Go-OO is not just some improved version, it is the the official version that you get in a number of distributions these days. Check their downloads page ... Debian, Ubuntu and Gentoo carry it as the official "openoffice" package in their own repositories. And as far as I can make out, that is the case with openSUSE too.
Data Storage

Submission + - an archival system for a home user

Submitted by sameerds
sameerds writes: What is the best way to archive data in a home setup? The kind of data I am looking at is photographs, music and old documents mainly.
  • Size: One property of this kind of data is that newer files are likely to be larger than older files. Just because they can be, usually. For example, I am sure to save photographs with the largest possible resolution, which will increase every time I upgrade my camera.
  • Frequency: I am likely to access music more often than photos, which in turn will be accessed more often than old documents. But I would like easy access to photos when I do want to access them, especially for non-techies; say, as convenient as pulling out an old family album.
  • Reliability: The old documents are the ones that require maximum reliability, followed by photographs. Music is less critical since I can acquire new copies in the worst case. Of course there are exceptions to that too, in case of vintage items.


I suppose the answer might be a combination of different media, for different kinds of files.
  • Archival quality optical media — how long do they last? Will there be drives to read them 10-20 years from now? Could be too slow for data that is accessed frequently.
  • Hard discs — one would imagine an array with enough redundancy and some preventive maintenance through timely replacement of hard disks. The capacity will keep growing as older discs are replaced with newer ones. But the power cost is pretty high for data that you don't access often. How does a hard disc compare with an optical disc, both kept away with very little use?
  • Flash RAM — How long does that last? How reliable is it?

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