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Comment: Application: RAM-backed flash drives (Score 1) 241

by davidwr (#43769747) Attached to: Charge Your Cellphone In 20 Seconds (Eventually)

Ordinary RAM is superior to flash memory in most applications.

Imagine a solid-state storage device that was essentially a flash device with a largish (GBs) capacitor-backed-up non-write-through RAM cache, with the cache only "writing through" when certain conditions existed, such as power loss.

You would only need a few seconds of juice on the capacitor and a smart onboard SSD controller to effectively make "wearout due to writes" a non-issue for most SSD applications.

Bonus points - I/O will almost always be at the faster RAM speed not the speed of the persistent storage chips (subject to limits imposed by the SATA or other communications interface, of course).

Heck, for "cheap" bulk storage skip the solid-state non-volatile stuff and just have a capacitor+ large RAM cache on a traditional spinning piece of metal. Hey, which is cheaper, a 4GB-RAM backed 750GB solid-state device or a 4GB-RAM-backed 750GB 2.5" drive?

Comment: Re:Same company is going after Canadians (Score 1) 224

by davidwr (#43733029) Attached to: Federal Judge Dismisses Movie Piracy Complaint

if a person removes all evidence of downloaded movies from their computer and denies downloading anything or ever possessing any "pirated" material can they still be found guilty?

First off, this is a civil case, so "guilty" isn't the right word.

But, generally, yes, if you are found to have destroyed evidence that you knew or that a reasonable person would have or should have known would be needed in a future court case, the court can sanction you. The typical sanction is to instruct the jury to assume the destroyed material would have been the worst possible thing for you in this case.

If you destroyed it before being sued or it was destroyed as part of an automated system before you reasonably could protect it, you will likely fare much better.

The evidence against you in a piracy case is not just the existence of the downloaded file, but the traffic coming into your network and the evidence that all other plausible explanations have been dealt with.

Comment: Alford Plea done right (Score 1) 224

by davidwr (#43732979) Attached to: Federal Judge Dismisses Movie Piracy Complaint

Done right, an "Alford Plea" and "no contest" please would amount to "I'll do the crime, but I won't carry any public record, and the charges will be completely dismissed the day my prison/parole/probation is ended and all fines are paid."

Now, I would go along with a recommendation that for any crime with a legal record that won't go away after a year or two (i.e. anything worse than a traffic ticket, jaywalking, stealing a piece of candy, etc.), an Alfred Plea or a straight-up guilty plea be accepted only after the prosecution has proven their case to a judge by preponderance of the evidence, and that all such pleas include automatic leave to re-open the case if new evidence appears AND a judge rules that the new evidence, plus the old evidence, would result in a rejection of the guilty plea because the total evidence no longer tilts towards guilt.

For traffic tickets, I have no problem with people just pleading no contest and paying the fine. In jurisdictions where the police get ticket-happy the media usually does their job and shines a light on the problem, eventually.

Comment: Re:Cool web site (Score 1) 224

by davidwr (#43732787) Attached to: Federal Judge Dismisses Movie Piracy Complaint

There's zero content worth seeing [bold text added] hidden away behind some poorly-managed website's ad-wall that isn't available somewhere else on the internet in a readily accessible format. Just Google the headline or synopsis.

There, fixed that for you.

--

There is a lot of content hidden away behind a poorly-managed website's ad-wall that's so crappy it's not worth anyone's time to copy elsewhere.

Comment: What if they did it "the slow way"? (Score 1) 224

by davidwr (#43732695) Attached to: Federal Judge Dismisses Movie Piracy Complaint

What if they did it "the slow way" and spent the extra $6K or so per defendant in filing fees and sent non-extortion-type letters simply saying "you are being sued for copyright infringement. Please appear at this court on this date or, if you wish to negotiate a settlement, contact us at our business office by __DEADLINE__."

Then "offer" a settlement in the tens of thousands of dollars range ($7.5K as "target profit," plus sunk costs + their pro-rated estimated costs for cases they think they might lose + their pro-rated estimated costs for cases where they think they might "win" but will recover less than $7.5K plus costs).

How would a judge handle that strategy? Would a single judge even notice?

Comment: How useful is this? (Score 0) 246

by davidwr (#43731929) Attached to: Major Advance Towards a Proof of the Twin Prime Conjecture

Although 70 million seems like a very large number, the existence of any finite bound, no matter how large, means that that the gaps between consecutive numbers don't keep growing forever.

I did not read the paper, but the statement above doesn't mean that gaps between consecutive groupings of prime numbers won't keep growing forever.

It's basically like saying there are an infinite number of "star pairs" in the universe that are less than 70m light-years from each other. That doesn't mean that the spacings between these star-groups (let's call them "galaxies") isn't getting larger over some way of measuring (let's call that way "age of the universe").

Perhaps the paper does make some guarantees in this area that aren't made in the simplified /. summary.

Comment: Internal procedure change forces external change (Score 1) 183

by davidwr (#43719627) Attached to: To Avoid Confusion: Oracle's Confusing New Java Numbering Scheme

Why is this change necessary now?

Some of the goals of this numbering scheme are:

        Allow us to assign a fix/enhancement to a specific release in our bug systems. To accomplish this all planned releases must have predictable numbers.

Oh, so the numbering change is for your benefit, not mine.

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