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Comment Horrible article, No Metrics (Score 4, Insightful) 182

There is no mention of speed, performance, file copy replication, the ins and out of each solution, just a list of features they all share and how the author went about determining them at his whim. Without metrics this article is just a sales blurb for links. Other websites do it better: Storagereview for one, Smallnetbuilder is the other.

Another wretched sales brouchure disguised as a review by Infoworld.
Transportation

First Fully Electric Manned Helicopter Flight 86

cylonlover writes "On August 12, electrical/aerospace engineer and helicopter pilot Pascal Chretien took to the sky in the world's first untethered, fully electric manned helicopter flight in a prototype machine that he designed and built almost entirely by himself within a 12-month development period. In his 2-minute, 10-second test flight, Chretien beat aviation giant Sikorsky into the record books — but it was not without significant risk. As the man himself puts it: 'in case of crash I stand good chances to end up in kebab form.'"
Image

Jetman Attempts Intercontinental Flight 140

Last year we ran the story of Yves Rossy and his DIY jetwings. Yves spent $190,000 and countless hours building a set of jet-powered wings which he used to cross the English Channel. Rossy's next goal is to cross the Strait of Gibraltar, from Tangier in Morocco and Tarifa on the southwestern tip of Spain. From the article: "Using a four-cylinder jet pack and carbon fibre wings spanning over 8ft, he will jump out of a plane at 6,500 ft and cruise at 130 mph until he reaches the Spanish coast, when he will parachute to earth." Update 18:57 GMT: mytrip writes: "Yves Rossy took off from Tangiers but five minutes into an expected 15-minute flight he was obliged to ditch into the wind-swept waters."
Data Storage

Submission + - Colossus 3.5-in SSD Combines Quad Controllers (pcper.com)

Vigile writes: The new Colossus SSD comes in capacities starting at 256GB and going all the way up to 1TB in a standard 3.5-in hard drive form factor. This larger size was required because the drive actually integrates not one but FOUR Indilinx SSD controllers and THREE total RAID controllers in a nested RAID-0 array. All of this goodness combines to create an incredibly fast drive that beats most other options in terms of write speeds and is competitive in read tests as well. Using some custom "garbage collection" firmware, the drive works around the fact that TRIM commands aren't supported in RAID configurations to maintain high speeds through the life of the SSD.

Comment Re:Why are sex offenders treated worse than murder (Score 1) 587

This is an easy one:

In a murder someone dies, there is pain and closure. It happens and there is nothing you can do about it, someone is dead.

Sex crimes are where the victim lives to tell the tail. The lingering "pain" and "emotional suffereing' cause this to be a more serious crime to society as both the perpetrator and the victim still live.

Death is a finality. Rape lasts for a lifetime.

Comment Dragon's Lair? Anyone? (Score 1) 56

Anyone else see this as a rehash of good ole Dragon's Lair? I must be "ancient" in terms of computer game knowledge but we had this back in the 80s and the game was savage as hell. All this talk of "Oh no major game overs, players can die and the story goes on" Is hooie. You need lightning reflexes, perfect time, and coordination of a ninja juggling flying Molotov cocktails balancing on a ball being shot at by assassins.

Longer story, more plot, but in essence same gameplay as 30yrs ago.

Comment It Just Works (Score 5, Interesting) 334

<b>TLDR: I hated Vista. Loved XP. Use Linux. Installed 64bit Vista. Vista Crashed and burned. Reinstalled with SP2. It just Works.</b>

I've been a longtime XP user. I use Ubuntu and RHEL at work. I use linux and unix. I hated Vista with a passion, thought it was a PIA and had so much config problems. I then bought a new PC (quad core 6GB ram, blah blah) so I figured I'd put Vista on it. First time worked ok. I updated my bios, it blew away my Raid 1. Got irritated and stopped screwing with it. Then SP2 came along in the last few weeks and I reinstalled my OS and installed SP2 over it.

It just works. Works perfectly. So simple to install Vista and simple to install the SP2. 2 reboots and I had everything working. Fixed the RAID issue, fixed the bluetooth issue, fixed some other quirks that drove me batshiz crazy.

I gotta say that I used to hate vista with the passion of a 1000 firey suns. Now I'm like "Well it's not too bad, what's the problem with it again?"
Businesses

Submission + - Boeing Dismisses Claims of Senior Engineer

Seakip18 writes: An Senior Engineer for Boeing, Vince Weldon, has argued that their new 787 airplane is deadlier than normal, metal framed airplanes. To his credit, he has worked with composites since 1973. Boeing has denied his claims, insisting that their airplane testing has no dangers to merit his claims.
FTA:

...Weldon alleges:
The brittleness of the plastic material from which the 787 fuselage is built would create a more severe impact shock to passengers than an aluminum plane, which absorbs impact in a crash by crumpling. A crash also could shatter the plastic fuselage, creating a hole that would allow smoke and toxic fumes to fill the passenger cabin.
-After such a crash landing, the composite plastic material burning in a jet-fuel fire would create "highly toxic smoke and tiny inhalable carbon slivers" that "would likely seriously incapacitate or kill passengers."
-The recently conducted crashworthiness tests — in which Boeing dropped partial fuselage sections from a height of about 15 feet at a test site in Mesa, Ariz. — are inadequate and do not match the stringency of comparable tests done on a 737 fuselage section in 2000.
-The conductive metal mesh embedded in the 787's fuselage surface to conduct away lightning is too light and vulnerable to hail damage, and is little better than a "Band-Aid."
An OSHA claim by Weldon for illegal firing was also denied. The company stated in the OHSA report that he was fired for threating his supervisor.
Businesses

A Majority of Businesses Will Not Move To Vista 378

oDDmON oUT writes "An article on the Computerworld site quotes polling results from a potentially-divisive PatchLink survey. The poll shows that the majority of enterprise customers feel there are no compelling security enhancements in Windows Vista, that they have no plans to migrate to it in the near term and that many will 'either stick with the Windows they have, or turn to Linux or Mac OS X'. A majority, 87%, said they would stay with their existing version of Windows. This comes on the heels of a dissenting view of Vista's track record in the area of security at the six month mark, which sparked a heated discussion on numerous forums."
The Internet

Submission + - Wikipedia Founder plans community-based search (msn.com)

DTemp writes: "According to Reuters, Jimmy Wales (Wikipedia founder) plans a community-based search engine called Wikia, and is optimistic about its chances of competing with Google and Yahoo. The backbone of the new search initiative is Grub, which apparently he just acquired. The community part, according to the article, seems to be regarding untangling ambiguous search queries. This generally seems a less rewarding task than writing/editing an encyclopedic article for Wikipedia, so we'll see if the community actually materializes."
Sony

Firm Sues Sony Over Cell Processor 330

An anonymous reader writes that earlier this month, Sony received word of a lawsuit from a Newport Beach company called Parallel Processing. They've filed against the electronics giant alleging that the Cell processor, used in the PlayStation 3, infringes on a patent they own. They've made the somewhat outrageous demand that every infringing chip (and console) be 'impounded and destroyed'. From the article at Next Generation: "The patent, 'Synchronized Parallel Processing with Shared Memory' was issued in October 1991. It describes a high-speed computer that breaks down a program 'into smaller concurrent processes running in different parallel processors' and resynchronizes the program for faster processing times ... Parallel Processing said that Sony's alleged actions have caused 'irreparable harm and monetary damage' to the company."
Media

Submission + - Ten things your IT Department Won't tell you

jriding writes: Posted in the Wall Street Journal Monday, July 30, 2007 THE JOURNAL REPORT: TECHNOLOGY Office Technology Ten Things Your IT Department Won't Tell You This is an article that describes the "top ten" lock downs or policies that are put in place to help with regulations (hippa, sox, etc) and how to get around them. In tomorrows news "Wall street journal sued for helping millions of companies become non-compliant. can you say irresponsible journalism? http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB11853954327 2477927.html Here is the list: 1. HOW TO SEND GIANT FILES 2. HOW TO USE SOFTWARE THAT YOUR COMPANY WON'T LET YOU DOWNLOAD 3. HOW TO VISIT THE WEB SITES YOUR COMPANY BLOCKS 4. HOW TO CLEAR YOUR TRACKS ON YOUR WORK LAPTOP 5. HOW TO SEARCH FOR YOUR WORK DOCUMENTS FROM HOME 6. HOW TO STORE WORK FILES ONLINE 7. HOW TO KEEP YOUR PRIVACY WHEN USING WEB EMAIL 8. HOW TO ACCESS YOUR WORK EMAIL REMOTELY WHEN YOUR COMPANY WON'T SPRING FOR A BLACKBERRY 9. HOW TO ACCESS YOUR PERSONAL EMAIL ON YOUR BLACKBERRY 10. HOW TO LOOK LIKE YOU'RE WORKING

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