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Comment: Re:Don't bitch. (Score 1) 353

by Ster (#38330336) Attached to: PC Makers Run Short of Popular Drives

Don't take it out on others just because you're imperfect and ignore all of the S.M.A.R.T. and controller warnings... Some of us tech Gurus do religiously tend to our flock of hard-drives and recognize when they are in spiritual, and physical, need of replacement....

I do hardware diagnostics for an HPC storage system vendor, including drive testing, qualification, and failure analysis. SMART has its uses, but, in my experience, if you've tripped SMART, you're already in serious trouble.

It's not helped by the fact that pieces of SMART which are actually in the ATA standards are basically tripped/not-tripped - none of the attribute structures are in the current specs, let alone which attribute IDs mean what. Heck, even getting the thresholds is no longer in the ATA standard!

Fortunately, *most* vendors implement *most* of the SMART structures the same way, and *most* use the same attribute IDs to mean the same things, and *most* still implement the sub-command for getting the thresholds. But all the really interesting data that could be used for more aggressive failure prediction (i.e. beyond the almost-always too late SMART trip) is vendor specific, and getting that information out of some vendors makes pulling teeth look like taking candy from a baby.

</rant-let>

-Ster

Comment: Re:LLVM? (Score 2) 237

by Ster (#37968218) Attached to: GNOME Shell No Longer Requires GPU Acceleration

... And also, does the above mean that Gnome is no longer using GCC to compile, but switching to the LLVM compiler? ...

LLVM is designed to be modular. It sounds like what they're doing is probably similar to what Apple did a few years back - include LLVM bit-code files for functions that aren't handled natively, then hand those off to libllvm to emit native code when needed.

-Ster

Comment: Re:If your Mac is too old (Score 1) 542

by Ster (#37925280) Attached to: Is the Apple App Store a Casino?

I've read comments in past stories about the iOS developer program from people who own a Mac but still can't develop because the Mac is too old to run recent Xcode. So you end up having to depreciate the Mac and the iPod touch on which to test as annual expenses just like the developer fee.

Apple generally supports the current OS and developer tools on hardware going back three years, for both Macs and iPods/iPhones.

Opera

Superluminal Neutrinos, Take Two 98

Posted by Soulskill
from the now-with-infinitely-more-scrutiny dept.
Coisiche writes "To address the many responses to their original findings, the OPERA team who reported the detection of faster-than-light neutrinos is starting a new and improved version of their experiment. 'The neutrinos that emerge at Gran Sasso start off as a beam of proton particles at CERN. Through a series of complex interactions, neutrino particles are generated from this beam and stream through the Earth's crust to Italy. Originally, CERN fired the protons in a long pulse lasting 10 microseconds (10 millionths of a second). ... [In the new experiment], protons are sent in a series of short bursts — lasting just one or two nanoseconds, thousands of times shorter — with a large gap (roughly 500 nanoseconds) in between each burst. This system, says Dr Bertolucci, is more efficient: "For every neutrino event at Gran Sasso, you can connect it unambiguously with the batch of protons at CERN," he explained.'"

Comment: Not (primarily) about round-rects (Score 5, Interesting) 313

by Ster (#37746866) Attached to: Samsung Vs. Apple Tit-For-Tat Down Under

... (unlike the patent-a-rectangle nature of the opposition) ...

As previously stated, it's not a patent on round-rects:

I came across this yesterday and found it interesting (comparisons of what Samsung's tablets looked like before and after the iPad came out):

It seems like it's not quite as silly as it's usually been presented. (Don't get me wrong, I do think it's silly.)

-Ster

One good reason why computers can do more work than people is that they never have to stop and answer the phone.

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