I just returned an OCZ Agility 3 due to it dying after 2 weeks of light use as my Linux root partition running XFS. Since their office was local I drove it there to save shipping charges and had to laugh in their lobby since they're touting reliability. Sadly Sandforce has gained a reputation for not being the most reliable controller out there. I have never had a hard drive fail except after years of use until this one died. Fortunately it's being replaced under warranty.

Also, unlike other drives I've had fail, this one died suddenly and completely. Suddenly Linux couldn't access the root filesystem and after rebooting the drive could not be found by the SATA controller. Fortunately I had my old Western Digital Velociraptor drive I had replaced so I swapped that back in.

I have another Sandforce SSD that would often not show up when my computer woke up from standby until after a firmware update. Intel might be better, having written their own firmware, but at this point I think SSDs have a way to go in terms of reliability. There's no excuse for the issues that have been reported with the various Sandforce drives. The problem is either insufficient Q/A testing of the firmware or management pushing out the firmware before it's ready. It's also possible that there might be some hardware glitch causing these drives to fail.

-Aaron

It was never a problem for me since the GPS in my phone caches data along the route. You might as well say that your phone GPS is useless because there are areas you don't get any signal. It's not as if the GPS dies when you get a phone call... in my case it happily kept right on going.

Long before the IPhone my old Verizon BREW phone had an app store where I could purchase an app and it would be automatically downloaded and installed.

Actually the losses in the inverter are fairly low. I read some papers describing the efficiency of the inverter design being over 90% efficient. One interesting paper I found can be found at http://www.midmichigansae.org/documents/DrGoverPresentationSAEApril20.pdf

The problem arises when a kid has to do 100 math problems and can easily do it in his head. It's time to move on to more advanced topics rather than waste time on useless busywork. I agree that there are times where showing your work is important, but there is also a time where it's pointless and time to move on. I was the kid who would finish a test in a fraction the time it took most of the rest of the class to finish, bored out of my mind at the pointless busywork and repetition while some of the other kids struggled. I rarely did math homework at home. Usually I'd finish it in class while the teacher was trying to explain it to the other kids. If a kid fully understands what he's doing and can take shortcuts to solve the problem correctly, all the better. Have the kid describe his shortcuts, not show the expected 'work', and only describe it for a few problems and do the rest as needed, otherwise the only thing being taught to the kid is frustration, especially if the teacher knows that the kid knows the material.

As a programmer I am careful to document my code so that others can jump in and work on it because it's required. The amount of documentation reflects the complexity of what is being done and the target audience. This is especially important since I work on bootloader code for some very complex chips which is sent to customers to modify. The amount of documentation also reflects if that part of the code is expected to be used or modified by a customer or if it's used internally. Internal code can expect a much more experienced programmer than code customers are expected to use and modify. It all depends on the target audience. If my target audience is for someone who's more knowledgeable and experienced then the amount of documentation can be less.

I always hated the "show your work" because I could usually do it in my head a lot faster so I never bothered. I always got poor grades on the homework because of this but was always the top in my class when it came to the tests. It drove the teachers crazy, especially since I could often skip a few steps doing it in my head, often faster than the teacher. While in high school I had a fancy graphing calculator though it was rarely allowed for tests.

I think that there are times when calculators should not be allowed and other times when they should be. In 3rd grade we had to memorize multiplication tables which has been useful ever since then. Kids who never learned this are severely disadvantaged later IMO. On the other hand, I was bored out of my mind in later grades doing nothing but addition/subtraction/multiplication/division over and over, especially addition and subtraction. I'd love to see more focus on creative problem solving than repetition in later grades.

If you rely on a computer for everything you're severely handicapped over those who are not.

I can see some use for computers in the classroom but I think it's limited as well. They're a useful tool, but shouldn't be depended upon as a crutch.

-Aaron

Interesting... I bought a cheap $8.53 USB audio adapter from Amazon and it works great in Linux...

http://www.amazon.com/Syba-SD-CM-UAUD-Adapter-C-Media-Chipset/dp/B001MSS6CS/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1325624971&sr=8-1

The C-Media chipset works well.

I got hit with this bug in Linux. There was a bug up through the 2.4.20 kernel where the timer tick would wrap around every 497 days. I had a server where the uptime wrapped around twice due to this bug (but it kept on running). The server is *still* running, years later.

My Windows 7 Home Theater PC goes from Windows logo to login prompt in 5 seconds and is useable within another 5-10 seconds. I spend a lot more time waiting for the BIOS than I do for the OS. Of course that's also with a fast SSD. Before upgrading the hard drive it took several minutes to be useable.

They work much better. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_pipe

-Aaron