Comment Re:Guilty of not doing as she was told. (Score 1) 652
Amtrak doesn't go to Hawaii.
Comment Re:Who has a leal use for this. (Score 2) 293
This seems to be a reasonable situation to define limits to what a law abiding person needs for personal use.
Seriously? I hope you are the last one to say it. Reading between the lines of your quote above, it would appear that you think it might be reasonable to outlaw access to this technology, solely because you can't think of a legal use for it.
As others have posted, there are certainly legal usages. I can think of others, but that is besides the point. The whole idea of limiting something because it might be used for illegal purposes is ridiculous.
Regardless of the "legal" ideas proposed, sometimes new technology leads to new ideas, i.e. as storage costs go down and capacities go up, new ways of using storage may evolve. One (possibly half-baked) idea I can think of is crowd sourced, highly redundant, "free" backup storage.
Comment Re:I don't get it. (Score 5, Informative) 293
No, the article is quoting aureal density which is expressed in gigabits or terabits per square inch.
The problem with the article is that it is combining data from various sources and misreading/misinterpreting the data (so what's new, this is Slashdot after all).
First, the summary above says that Seagate will produce a 60 Tb drive by 2016. That is not true. Seagate has said they will produce a drive with "up to" 60 Tb of capacity (30-60 TB) by the end of the decade. This is based on the theoretical limits of HAMR technology, which are projected to be in the 5-10 Tbits/sq. inch. range. Current 4TB drives are made with platters that have a density of around 650 Gbits/sq. in., so the math works (10Tb/.65Tb is approximately 15x).
The other part of the article is talking about what the maximum density is likely to be over the timeframe from now to 2016 using PMR technology and transitioning to something new like HAMR. PMR technology will top out at about 1Tbit/sq. inch, so anything over that will require something new like HAMR. that underlying article quotes 1.8 Tbit/sq. in in 2016, which may not be out of line with 5-10 Tbit/sq. in. by 2020 as a new technology like HAMR comes online.
The two articles that I am basing the above on are:
Seagate/HAMR article
IHS/ISuppli article
Officials Use Google Earth To Find Unlicensed Pools 650
Officials in Riverhead, New York are using Google Earth to root out the owners of unlicensed pools. So far they've found 250 illegal pools and collected $75,000 in fines and fees. Of course not everyone thinks that a city should be spending time looking at aerial pictures of backyards. from the article: "Lillie Coney, associate director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington, DC, said Google Earth was promoted as an aid to curious travelers but has become a tool for cash-hungry local governments. 'The technology is going so far ahead of what people think is possible, and there is too little discussion about community norms,' she said."
Publishing Company Puts Warning Label on Constitution 676
Wilder Publication is under fire for putting warning labels on copies of historical US documents, including the Constitution. The label warns "This book is a product of its time and does not reflect the same values as it would if it were written today." From the article: "The disclaimer goes on to tell parents that they 'might wish to discuss with their children how views on race, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and interpersonal relations have changed since this book was written before allowing them to read this classic work.'"
Comment Re:Sorry, what you're asking for is too easy to ab (Score 1) 197
The digital TV standard allows for providing up to 16 days of guide data. However, the FCC only mandates that a station provide 12 hours of guide data, and many stations only provide the minimum. In many cases the station is just going with the default settings and can be convinced to change them; however, the most guide data I've seen, at least in the Denver area, is 7 days of guide data.
Submission + - Legal summits to tackle Linux (builderau.com.au)
An anonymous reader writes: BuilderAU has the story that the Linux Foundation, custodians of the Linux trademark, have announced that they will host two summits to deal with legal issues surrounding Linux and open-source software. Attendance at the first summit will be restricted to members of the Linux Foundation and their legal counsel. The second summit — an open meeting — will be held in Autumn 2008 where legal experts from any background will be able to attend.
Submission + - Free Hackers Defeat Commercial iPhone Unlocking (gizmodo.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Gizmodo had exclusive live coverage on the first free iPhone Software Unlock. They broke the news of the first free unlock at 7:10PM EST, when the iPhone Dev Team tried it for the first time. This marks the beginning of the end for iPhone Sim Free, the company who used the hackers' tools to develop their own commercial unlock. Their software was in the market for barely 24 hours before the free unlock hit. Absolutely beautiful and bitch-slapping poetic justice. The software and the source code is available directly from the article and other mirrors.
Submission + - EU abandons plans to convert UK to metric
SeeSchloss writes: After years of trying to get Britain to switch to the metric system the EU has finally decided to give up the fight. Conversion was initially a precondition for UK's membership of the European Union, in 1973, and the deadline had been regularly extended since then. Should we add back the UK to the list of the three countries in the world which do not use the metric system (Myanmar, Liberia and the United States)? It looks like the more a country waits before switching to the metric system, the more difficult it is, most countries did it while their litteracy rate was low and avoided most of the problems the UK or the US would be facing now. Do you think it is realistic to expect the UK or the US to switch to the metric system now? Do you think such a conversion is even useful outside of technical fields (I hope we all agree that it is needed in space research, for example)?
