Comment English Translation (Score 1) 608
"Please give us more money and aid!"
Comment Re:Do they self destruct like other Greens? (Score 1) 313
And as soon as everyone is omniscient about the undocumented behavior of their devices and the "documented only in source code" behavior of all code of their systems this will be a brilliant solution.
Comment Re:Do they self destruct like other Greens? (Score 1) 313
I will respond to your dickish tone with my own:
Ever here of a log file?
How about if you are monitoring the S.M.A.R.T. data to watch for signs of drive failure? You will destroy the drive instead. (Especially if using Munin, because it doesn't show Load_Cycle_Count by default so you won't see it take off.)
How about when your OS is clever and tries to reduce disk use by only flushing the OS block cache intermittently, and that interval is slightly greater than the park timer? Your machine under continuous use parks and unparks continuously.
So there is this little computer in the drive making park decisions. Shouldn't it notice that the drive is parking too often? WD knows how many parks it built the drive to survive, it knows how frequently it is parking. Cap the park rate! Problem solved.
Comment Re:Do they self destruct like other Greens? (Score 1) 313
So? What is your Load_Cycle_Count? That is what is being discussed here. The drives are rated for 300,000. I have ones near a million that haven't failed yet, but have also failures around 600,000.
Comment Location does work (Score 1) 750
My iPad has correctly found me in all four locations I've tried by triangulating WIFI access points.
Apparently mobile users with GPS have tagged my access points.
Comment So? (Score 4, Interesting) 497
If you really have secure passwords, the random guessers aren't going to get them. Log it and move on.
I get thousands of Chinese hackers attempting to break into the battery monitor in my tool shed, big deal. I don't know why my battery voltage and solar current is so important to them, but they can knock themselves out all day.
If the logs bother you then install fail2ban and configure it to lock people out after a few bad guesses. (Then be ready to unlock yourself from an alternate IP when you inevitably lock yourself out.)
Comment Re:Use the Coax to pull CAT 5e cable (Score 1) 608
Ethernet coax was 50ohm, the stuff in your walls is probably 75ohm. They are not interchangeable.
Might I suggest you join us in the 21st century and just use 802.11n? USB dongles can be had for about the cost of a cat5 patch cable and 802.11n is as fast as 100mbps ethernet.
Plus you gain some nice lightning damage protection by eliminating the second electrical path.
Comment Re:Green ? (Score 1) 356
In general large power plants are more efficient than small point of use engines, this is traded off against transmission losses and can end up either a win or a loss for total input energy.
For cleanliness, power plants run much cleaner than small point of use engines and they don't concentrate the adverse effects in close proximity with people. (You may need to pee, but don't do it in the pool.)
Hearts Actually Can Break 136
DesScorp writes "It seems that there's a grain of truth to one old wives' tale; it turns out that you really can die of a broken heart, especially if you're a post-menopausal woman. The Wall Street Journal reports on a phenomena called 'broken-heart syndrome,' which often occurs after great emotional distress. Quoting: 'In a conventional heart attack, an obstructed artery starves the heart muscle of oxygenated blood, quickly resulting in the death of tissue and potentially permanently compromising heart function. In contrast, the heart muscle in broken-heart-syndrome patients is stunned in the adrenaline surge and appears to go into hibernation. Little tissue is lost.' In the article a doctor notes, 'The cells are alive, but mechanically or electrically disabled.' Documented cases track heart attacks in people with seemingly healthy hearts after the grief of the death of a loved one. Intense feelings can cause the heart actually to change shape. Doctors call this 'tako-tsubo,' after the Japanese phrase for 'octopus trap,' so called because the syndrome was first identified by a Japanese doctor who noticed the strange shape in the left ventricle. Doctors note that while strong emotions like grief are usually associated with the syndrome, stress or a migraine can also trigger such heart attacks."
Comment Reassess your place in the universe, techmage. (Score 3, Insightful) 387
What makes you think the owner's information should be available to you in the IT department?
Police Called Over 11-Year-Old's Science Project 687
garg0yle writes "Police in San Diego were called to investigate an 11-year-old's science project, consisting of 'a motion detector made out of an empty Gatorade bottle and some electronics,' after the vice-principal came to the conclusion that it was a bomb. Charges aren't being laid against the youth, but it's being recommended that he and his family 'get counseling.' Apparently, the student violated school policies — I'm assuming these are policies against having any kind of independent thought?"
Dad Delivers Baby Using Wiki 249
sonamchauhan writes "A Londoner helped his wife deliver their baby by Googling 'how to deliver a baby' on his mobile phone. From the article: 'Today proud Mr Smith said: "The midwife had checked Emma earlier in the day but contractions started up again at about 8pm so we called the midwife to come back. But then everything happened so quickly I realized Emma was going to give birth. I wasn't sure what I was going to do so I just looked up the instructions on the internet using my BlackBerry."'"
The Perfect Way To Slice a Pizza 282
iamapizza writes "New Scientist reports on the quest of two math boffins for the perfect way to slice a pizza. It's an interesting and in-depth article; 'The problem that bothered them was this. Suppose the harried waiter cuts the pizza off-center, but with all the edge-to-edge cuts crossing at a single point, and with the same angle between adjacent cuts. The off-center cuts mean the slices will not all be the same size, so if two people take turns to take neighboring slices, will they get equal shares by the time they have gone right round the pizza — and if not, who will get more?' This is useful, of course, if you're familiar with the concept of 'sharing' a pizza."
Super-Earths Discovered Orbiting Nearby, Sun-Like Star 242
likuidkewl writes "Two super-earths, 5 and 7.5 times the size of our home, were found to be orbiting 61 Virginis a mere 28 light years away. 'These detections indicate that low-mass planets are quite common around nearby stars. The discovery of potentially habitable nearby worlds may be just a few years away,' said Steven Vogt, a professor of astronomy and astrophysics at UCSC. Among hundreds of our nearest stellar neighbors, 61 Vir stands out as being the most nearly similar to the Sun in terms of age, mass, and other essential properties."
Saboteur Launch Plagued By Problems With ATI Cards 230
An anonymous reader writes "So far, there are over 35 pages of people posting about why EA released Pandemic Studios' final game, Saboteur, to first the EU on December 4th and then, after knowing full well it did not work properly, to the Americas on December 8th. They have been promising to work on a patch that is apparently now in the QA stage of testing. It is not a small bug; rather, if you have an ATI video card and either Windows 7 or Windows Vista, the majority (90%) of users have the game crash after the title screen. Since the marketshare for ATI is nearly equal to that of Nvidia, and the ATI logo is adorning the front page of the Saboteur website, it seems like quite a large mistake to release the game in its current state."
