Slashback: Courseware, Warranties, Subscraption 316
But will they distribute diploma blanks as PDF files? perlmunger writes "Linux Journal highlighted this in the 'up front' section of the June 2001 issue (I knew I keep these old issues around for a reason). Apparently, MIT will (finally) be opening their Open Course Ware initiative on September 30th to the public. Looks like a great start from many departments."
Answer: it's a strong possibility. skinfitz writes "Following on from Google returning to China, New Scientist is reporting in this article that Chinese surfers searching Google are finding their Internet connection dropped for five minutes if they enter "politically sensitive" keywords, such as the Chinese president's name! Will this new technology find uses elsewhere? Is this the future of the web?"
My human transporter is still a station wagon. An anonymous reader writes with the text which by now many people have seen regarding the status of the world's most famous unavailable scooter; apparently it's not necessarily as far from available as an automated message from Amazon implied.
"Greetings from Amazon.com.You recently received an e-mail from us regarding the Segway Human Transporter (also known as "Ginger" or "IT"). This e-mail was sent accidentally by an automated system and the information in it is incorrect.
In fact, there is no new information on Segway's availability. Consumer versions of Segway Human Transporters are currently being piloted in various communities throughout the U.S. The Segway HT is expected to be released to the general consumer market in 2003.
We apologize for the confusion. We will keep your e-mail address on our list of customers who wish to be notified about this item.
Sincerely,
Amazon.com Customer Service
Strong Opinions softsign writes "Apparently, Tim O'Reilly's recent article addressing the topic of Switchers was so popular and generated so much response that he felt compelled to respond to reader comments in his MacDevCenter column this week. It reads almost like the Apple Switch website, but there are some really insightful emails peppered with Tim's comments. Worth a read."
The moon's been asking for this for years. cscx writes "The mysterious space junk, or apparent "other moon" reported a few weeks ago, now is more likely to be an old Saturn V (from the Apollo program) rocket booster. Bad thing is, there is a 20% chance it could strike the moon sometime next year. More details at MSNBC."
We'll let you you borrow it for a while, sign here. An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft has scrapped plans for subscription-based licensing of consumer products following the end of a 12-month trial in several countries including New Zealand. The Story says people were getting confused as to why they had to pay after the 12 months had gone by."
I find your lack of confidence disturbing. Longinus writes "Ars Technica is reporting that Western Digital is going to follow Maxtor's recent decision to cut their warranty of future drives from three years to one, with an extended warranty being offered at an additional price. The article goes on to mention that Seagate is rumored to also be considering such a cut, but nothing official has been confirmed. One can only wonder if this increase in price is to due to corporate cost saving measures or the fact that hard drives are becoming less stable magnetically as they increase in storage space."
Hard drive warranties (Score:3)
Losing data. (Score:4, Interesting)
Backups are a necessity, not an option.
In the most primitive case, you just mirror to one or more remote sets of drives. Cost is not that monumental.
If you can afford to staff a company, you can also afford a tape drive, if you want a better long-term solution.
You _will_ have drive failure or some other data-destroying event happen once every few years. A wise business must plan accordingly (or plan to recover from having all of their data eaten).
Re:Hard drive warranties (Score:2, Insightful)
Why they should/should not be responsible. (Score:3, Insightful)
Let's compare this to cars. But first, I need to clarify your question.
Do you mean that if you buy it and it just breaks, are they responisble for the data? I hope you don't mean that. If a company buys a delivery truck and it just breaks down, the seller doesn't owe what the company is losing while it's getting repaired. The warranty(if within the period) will cover the cost of the labor and/or parts, but it will certainly not cover loss of time.
If you mean that if the HD company produces a bad product, are they liable for it? Let's compare to vehicles again. In the auto business, they're called lemons(among other things). Without getting into the specifics of recalls, etc., the broken vehicle would get repaired like it was under warranty(probably still is), but you still wouldn't expect to receive any compensation for loss of time. The only way to get a possible compensation would be to take legal action, hopefully with other people in the same position.
So basically, sure if they produce a shoddy product, you can surely take legal action to get compensation for the loss of data. To get anything in return, though, you'd better have other people on your side.
Oh yea, you might also want to provide a good reason why it's more cost effective to persue legal action rather than to back up properly in the first place.
Re:Why they should/should not be responsible. (Score:2, Interesting)
Actually, under certain circumstances, it does. It isn't uncommon for dealers (at least in rural areas) to give someone a "loaner" car while their vehicle was being repaired if the repair was expected to take more than a day.
Now, part of that is a belief that people are more likely to buy things in the future from a dealer that treats their customers with respect. But not all states allow for limitation of liability in the case of loss of business due to defects in manufacture, particularly if lemon laws come into play. And, of course, you won't know if the car is a lemon until it has been repaired several times, at which point the dealer can't go back in time and give them a loaner for the previous repairs....
California, for example, explicitly allows for recovery of consequential damages in the case of a lemon. Which might work for a delivery truck, particularly if the dealer doesn't provide a loaner.
For a hard drive, though, it would be extremely difficult to prove that you couldn't reasonably protect yourself from such a loss, which as best I can tell, is one of the requirements. In short, with a hard drive, you might be able to get consequential damages for the loss of productivity while the drive is being repaired, but it seems unlikely that you'd be able to get money for the loss of data unless you could prove that the company shipped defective drives with malice of forethought, and maybe not even then.
Caveat Emptor, IANAL.
Re:Hard drive warranties (Score:2)
Yes, in an ideal world the motherfucking hard drive manufactureres would make drives worth more than the boxes they come in. Until then, I'll keep all of my drives mirrored....
Western Digital? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Western Digital? (Score:2)
Re:Western Digital? (Score:3, Informative)
Western Digital is the only company I've never seen a failed drive from. The next best is Seagate, where the only failure I saw there was about 7 years ago with a 170Meg and a 500Meg. Now granted, I've seen failed Seagate drives in the servers but out of the many hundreds there, the failure ratio has still been reasonable.
Maxtor I've had numerous failures from, 340Meg, 3Gig, 13Gig and so forth. I tend to avoid their product any more because the failures weren't a while ago, they just keep happening...
IBM I only had one failed 2 gig drive, years ago. I have a couple 20 and 30 gig from them now, but I otherwise haven't seen too much of their product.
Quantum was probably the worst, but that's because we had about 500 desktops with 2.5Gig bigfoot drives in them and I must have replaced half of them. Otherwise I had good luck with their older 500Meg and 1Gig Fireball drives.
Anyway, not quite sure why people bash on WD drives. Maybe you've just seen a higher volume of their drives than other brands. It would be like working in a Honda dealership and saying Honda's suck because they're always coming back in for repairs.
Re:Western Digital? (Score:2)
At the last company I worked for we lost a huge number of western digital drives. I'd guess 30ish in one year. For a company with only 100-150 computers, that's an appalling failure rate. Now most of the computers they failed in were purchased at the same time from the same vendor so I suppose it's possible that they were just a bad batch or something but still, that's just insane.
In one server, we lost 4/4 western digital drives over the course of 3 months. At first we were suspicious that perhaps there was another hardware problem causing the failures but we replaced them with Seagates and when I left 3 years later, none of the Seagates had failed.
Also, coincidentally, the only drive I've ever had fail on me at home was a Quantum Bigfoot 2 gig drive.
thats no moon (Score:2, Funny)
"there is a 20% chance it could strike the moon sometime next year. "
oh no, what could happen if it strikes the moon!
it might be knocked out of orbit. I'm pretty sure the moon has never been struck before...
ahhh.
heh
Re:thats no moon (Score:3, Funny)
They'll make a 'special edition' DVD of Waterworld where they'll digitally paint in the new crater on the moon to fix the inconsistency it'd cause.
Re:thats no moon (Score:2)
Hard drives going the way of the floppies? (Score:4, Insightful)
Makes me wonder if the manufacturers are comprimising quality for both the extra space, and the speed at which they're getting churned out. I noticed the same thing with 3.5" floppy drives in their later years, prices went right down, as did the quality. In the end they were treated almost as a "disposable" part. Are hard drives going this way?
Re:Hard drives going the way of the floppies? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Hard drives going the way of the floppies? (Score:2)
Re:Hard drives going the way of the floppies? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Hard drives going the way of the floppies? (Score:2)
Re:Hard drives going the way of the floppies? (Score:2, Funny)
That's what she said.
Re:Hard drives going the way of the floppies? (Score:2)
Also, fuck speed. Never buy 7200 RPM drives - get 5400 RPM drives instead. They last longer. If you're worried about the speed, get more memory (for disk caching). My time is far more precious than a 0.1% performance increase on some random server (and the time it takes to restore a backup for some random server at 04:00 Saturday night/Sunday morning is very precious time).
Re:Hard drives going the way of the floppies? (Score:3, Insightful)
Subscraption? (Score:3, Insightful)
As the old saying goes (Score:5, Funny)
Information wants to be tied up and spanked.
Re:As the old saying goes (Score:2)
Hard drives are comodities (Score:5, Insightful)
Honestly, when I can buy a 40G Seagate for $64, so what if it only has a one year warranty. You made backups, right? Toss it and get a new one.
Re:Hard drives are comodities (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't care if everyone considers at $100 piece of hardware "throw away". I still have my USR Courier 28.8 (56k) from when it first came out. I still have 3Com Ethernet cards from way back (ISA), and I still have a TON of other random hardware (including other HDs).
This stuff is always able to be reused (especially for other poor college students that have shit that breaks and need it replaced quickly and for free).
I am sick and tired of recent hardware breaking and the fucking manus not taking responsibility.
Make some decent hardware and put a 1 yr on it. Fine. Otherwise make shit hardware and put a long one on it.
My rant is over.
Re:Hard drives are comodities (Score:5, Interesting)
One thing you have to consider is that your Ethernet cards have no moving parts. Your soundcards have no moving parts. Your video card has no moving parts. Your RAM has no moving parts. Your hard disks, however, move quite a lot. True it seems older hard drives seem to live longer, but you also have to take other factors into consideration such as capacity, speed, and overall quality.
Although I know very little about hard drives, it seems logical to assume that there is a direct correlation between storage capacity and drive capacity. For more space, you've got to have more platters and a higher storage density. This means you have more mechanics to deal with these finer details, which is just another place for something to go wrong.
It is rather easy to see why faster drive speeds would decrease the MTBF (Mean Time Between Failure) of a hard drive. The mechanics are moving faster, and more work has to be done to keep then spinning properly. On top of this, you get the extra friction, wear, and tear that increased speeds cause. You may be able to walk at 1 mile an hour for a few hours, but you can't run at 25mph for nearly as long.
And finally, you have drive quality. It is my opinion that as time has passed, hard drive demand has increased as well. In fact, I"m sure somebody could prove this given the proper numbers, graphs, calculators, and secretary. I would imagine that drive manufacturers, in order to meet increased demands, have substituted quality for price. And thus, drives have become much cheaper at the expensve of high MTBF.
So what is my point in this comment? I'm merely pointing out that there are many factors that need to be taken into consideration before saying, "Hey! My other hardware lives much longer than these new crappy hard drives!" I'm sure if you were in the place of the manufacturers, you'd shorten the warranty if you could get away with it. I don't necessary enjoy having shorter warranties, but I see why it is necessary. After having three IBM hard drives die on me within a yaer, it became crystal clear to me that drive manufacturers were losinga pretty penny on RMAs.
Re:Hard drives are comodities (Score:3, Interesting)
Think about it this way. The outer track on a 3.5" platter running at 7200RPM is going at over 60MPH. The read head is precise enough to find a single sector in a track 1/40,000th of an inch wide while it's whizzing by that fast. A car moving at 60MPH would be lucky to hit a dime and has hardly a prayer of lasting 57 years (500,000 hours), let alone running that long.
I hate car analogies, and I think a 1-year warranty sucks but even so, do we really need to be bitching about hard drives? The price per megabyte has dropped by a factor of 1000 in under 10 years; reliability (based on MTBF ratings) and speed have increased by a factor of 5-10 in the same time frame. Name me one other computer component that can boast the same.
Re:Hard drives are comodities (Score:2, Troll)
Tell that to the people in China who are drowning under our computer garbage [time.com].
Sadly, North American culture (and I can say this because I am from that continent) is beyond exceedingly wasteful (not just in relation to computers) in ways that most people don't even notice. It's hard to see the real picture when you're a part of it. I am guilty of it too, but I'm a little more sensitive to it than most folks because my parents are immigrants who grew up in a very different culture where you didn't throw out the mango peels because you can boil them to make a tasty drink.
HDD's using current technology that are $64 are simply not a sustainable way of operating in general and it is worth it now to pay more for better hard drives that will last a long time. Fortunately, there will always be a high-reliability segment of the market for servers. I have never thrown out a HDD. I even had a clock that was formerly a 40 MB drive on my shelf. I sell the ancient 100 MB scsi drives from 10+ years which all still work to collectors. Too bad most current drives will crap out by then.
What about "Fit for Purpose" (Score:4, Interesting)
Will be interesting to see how it pans out.
1 year electronics warranties (Score:3, Interesting)
Given this one-year manufacturer's warranty, I am actually surprised that some hard drive manufacturers were still offering longer warranties. I am surprised they didn't convert warranties to one-year ones a long time ago, or simply have one-year ones from the start.
Loomis
Re:1 year electronics warranties (Score:2, Funny)
Wrong, and no.
They can disclaim most things, but merchantability for a certain purpose is one thing they usually cannot disclaim, no matter if they put it in capital legalese or not.
As always IRECTAL, uh I mean IANAL.
If I ever.. (Score:3, Insightful)
I haveta admit, though, it does make pre-built systems a little more enticing. You can get 4-year warranties on the entire machine, not just the hard-drive. I suppose that's a plus, particularly if you need to have your computer up all the time.
Re:If I ever.. (Score:2)
Re:If I ever.. (Score:2)
Re:If I ever.. (Score:2)
What's with the WD FUD? (Score:3, Interesting)
Now take IBM. Please. My new mac's (1st Quicksilver) HD crapped out after 2 Months!!!
I'll stick with WD, thanks.
It's not FUD, it's Fact. (Score:2)
I worked for a good-sized computer repair center back in 1998, during which time I saw an amazing number of defects in Western Digital drives--specifically, their WDC33200 and WDC36400 models. The two-platter drives were reliable enough, but the three-platter drives were lucky to last a year before they started either subtly glitching or dying altogether.
I think sometimes it's just luck of the draw. I've owned a Quantum Bigfoot 2.4GB hard drive since 1997, and it still works like a champ five years later. Same with the IBM 12GB drive I run now, though it's not quite as old yet.
Re:It's not FUD, it's Fact. (Score:2)
On the other hand, I have Maxtor and WD drives giving me trouble after only 2 years..
They don't build them like they used to, that's my conclusion.
Tim self-servingly ignores criticism (Score:2, Insightful)
Tim manages at the same time to only reproduce emails that do not go for the jugular against his Apple eulogy, and to ignore the strikingly good contestation [freshmeat.net] published at freshmeat.
It is like his other blunders, creating proprietary documentation for free software and starting the whole open source useful innocents propaganda that confused so much the free software message: he puts his foot in his mouth, and then ignores criticism, or put only rehashing of old arguments as a counterpoint, perhaps hoping critics will go away...
It is all right for the likes of you and me to ignore some criticism, but for him, a publisher to do that so openly and so often, and having the advantage of being, well, a publisher... he should know, and behave, better.
Re:Tim self-servingly ignores criticism (Score:3, Interesting)
Besides, if you'd read the piece, you'd see that it contains criticism of Apple as well as praise.
Segway isn't "IT" for commuters (Score:5, Interesting)
These are cool toys, but the 40-60 pound weight means that they're not something you want to carry around.
However, as a longtime cyclist commuter, the 10-15 mile range is easily done on a bicycle. Better for you and the environment than a scooter. Yes, hills suck, but not as much as fighting with cars in traffic.
There are some collapsable bicycles, but I've never found these to be worthy of riding more than 1-2 miles at a stretch.
If your local transit company is forward thinking and has bike racks on the bus, then you're set. (Santa Barbara, I recall, had one bus per hour that dragged a trailer meant for bicycles, and I'd usually see it with 10 bikes on board.)
Buy yourself something theft-proof, like a Schwinn, which is still great quality. My Schwinn mountain bike is my city commuter, outfitted with street slicks, fenders, a rack, and hasn't been touched or mauled once in 12 years. I've ridden it through snow, rain, below-zero weather, and it saved me a bundle and kept my weight down.
Everyone comments that riding a bike in cold weather is cold, but it isn't as cold as you think I frequently had to ride slowly so as to not break a sweat. Your legs are very big muscles, and they generate a lot of heat once you get going. I'd be cold at the start of my 3 mile commute, then I'd be warm after 4 blocks, and perspiring for the last mile.
Snow was no problem with street slicks, but ice is. Fresh, untracked snow is easy to ride in, but once the cars start packing it, your tire wants to follow the random crossing tire tracks, and it gets squirrely.
If you're going to commute, get a good, reflective vest, a strong headlight, two tail lights (and clip a third one on you), and get another headlight for your helmet. Shining that head-mounted light into left-turning drivers, who are looking for a break in traffic and not anything else, are stopped cold by a bright light hitting them in the face.
Finally, always carry a cell phone. It depends upon the area, but some areas have motorists that enjoy scaring cyclists. I've had cars cross four lanes of traffic, coming toward me, just to try to scare me. Or they'll speed up past me, dynamite the brakes, and cut me off in a right-hand turn. Ride defensively, live to be old.
Above all, skip recumbant bicycles. Neato, but when you're sitting down that low, you can't see as well, and that little orange flag on a stick isn't going to protect you from motorists. Quite frankly, it is better to be thrown over the hood of the car that cuts you off, than to be whacked in the chest by the grill because you were riding a recumbant.
Re:Segway isn't "IT" for commuters (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm all for riding bicycles, but fear keeps me from doing it. On a bicycle you don't fight with traffic, traffic simply wins. Do you know how much damage I will do on my bike to an SUV driven by someone who is talking on their cell phone and not paying attention to the road? Not a whole lot. Sure they'll have to pay me money out the ass, but I'd be far too dead to enjoy any of it.
Not that I'd ride a scooter either.
SW
Re:Segway isn't "IT" for commuters (Score:2, Informative)
(Of course, the head attached to the helmet took some damage, too.)
Re:Segway isn't "IT" for commuters (Score:2)
So I'm in the market for a new bike. Preferrably a durable streetwise ten-speed. I nosed around a local bike shop while getting a wheel checked out last week. Some of those bikes were $1500-$2500! They don't burn any fossil fuels!
Seriously, I understand now that cheap bikes are cheap, but I can't justify buying a bike for more than $500. I want to 10-15 miles each night after I get home from work, and I don't want to repair flat tires or gear systems every night to do it. Any tips on buying bikes?
Re:Segway isn't "IT" for commuters (Score:3, Informative)
Try your local police department. My agency sells off our bikes at auction every time someone gets a wild hair up his ass to get new ones.
Also, the same auctions often include recovered lost/stolen bikes where an owner couldn't be contacted or located, or wasn't interested in claiming it. We do one every year. My current bike, a Trek 930, came from an auction like that in pretty good shape, $75 plus new tires and tubes. It retailed once upon a time at $400 or so, and didn't look too used.
Suggestion: if it's a former patrol bike, and it was made by Smith and Wesson, don't touch it. They make good handcuffs and I like the IdentaKit, but the rest of their product line is (MHO) Slick and Worthless. A few of their branded bikes are actually repainted Giant Iguanas, but most suck.
The Dao of the bicycle commute (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm going to roll a reply to a previous comment about someone being afraid to ride. What anyone who commutes by bicycle has to do is simply understand natural law...not the crap that "the man" has beat us over the head with, or the things we've learned from Warner Bros. cartoons. Natural law implies that when a 1/4 hp., sub 300lb. vehicle is occupying the desired space of a semi-hairless primate(bored, anxious, distracted) behind the wheel of a 2+ton moving block of metal and plastic that the union of these two systems will result in some really nifty physics...often to the physical detriment of the previous occupant, and the slightly higher premiums of the second. Simply put, always consider yourself invisble to the vehicles unless you make eye-contact and recieve non-verbal acknowledgement from the motorist. Having done that, the cyclist has only to understand natural law and human stupidity to enjoy their commute.
And with that out of the way, onto the good stuff.
I have been commuting by bicycle since 1988, and I only have a car because my kids are still too young and stupid and my wife has a bad knee, otherwise the whole whining lot of them would be on bikes (everyone in the family has a bike).
Bravo to you sir for giving your previous nag a new home. My recommendation is a multi-vectored approach to getting a good bicycle. You have to consider the bike shops in your area, and look for a franchise, like Cycle Spectrum (but not necessarily them, because other bike-shop franchises exist, I just don't remember them now). There's a good chance that both regular shops and esp. franchises have what they consider a less stylish, less trendy bikes taking up space they would rather fill with faux shocks and bad alloys and other candy to attract the unwary. These bikes are usually going for about $300, which in sales terms is an impulse purchase for someone who wants something useful.If you can find a simple hybrid--a style that no longer sells like hotcakes--make sure it's nothing hard to maintain like shocks. Look for grip-shift,with quick-release hubs front and rear, and get yourself a blackburn mtn rack. Most of the time a shop-keeper will feel your love for the bike and in a synergistic desire to sweeten the deal will almost impulsively add it as a perk. That rack will hold two good u-locks (that's one of the best kept secrets in the business--enjoy), which are invaluable if you have to tether the beastie outside the workplace. However, if you really love your horse, you'll whine-bitch-plead and maybe even argue intelligently to bring it into the building with you. If you love it, bring it inside.
If your commute takes you through suburban areas filled with bored kids or goatheads, you need to invest in a bit of SLIME. It's green, it costs a bit, but unlike the wannabe competitors products(cough-mucous-cough), slime will not let you down unless the laws of physics require it to. You also need high thread-count nylon tires. Slicks or invert treads have less rubber and are reinforced with a lot of nylon threads. When shopping for tires, take one down and open it up and see how dense the threads are. You should also invest in 4.5mil thick thorn-proof tubes. Schwinn, and Bontrager and some other companies import and repackage/resell these. Combined with the slime and good tires there's a chance you will only have to walk a little before reinflating the tire. I've often pulled some really evil stuff (nails, glass, industrial staples, plant thorns) out, spun the wheel for a minute and still had enough pressure to make it home.
Another point to consider when buying a good bike is not so much the up-front cost of the bike (top-ramen is your friend), but the kind of service and warranty a shop will provide you. For a franchise, sometimes this is free tune-ups and labor for the life of the beastie. Granted, the shop you bought the bike from will change hands like a 30yr mortgage, you'll still have your bike taken care of. Usually what happens with the cheap kit is that within a week after you've purchased it, everyting flexes and stretches a bit...it's supposed to. However, Walmart, or whatever-mart isn't responsible for those changes. A bike shop is.
Another thing to consider is the way you approach the gearing. The more you move through your gears, the faster you wear your drive train. There's a simple way to look at wear-and-tear here: If you like to pedal like mad (and think you're a porsche) and go through your gears, making more than three or four gear changes until you're cruising, then don't expect to stay in tune. You're much better off being in the biggest chainring (front gear) during the warm months, and at least starting off in the middle chainring when it's colder, and then figuring out the best place to start with the cog. YMMV depending on the commute. I have my bike tuned only once every few years...I've had it five years and I put over 4500+ miles are year on it just commuting year round. I start out in 17th gear and go up to 19th, only to the highest gears two gears when I'm spinning fast to get in to work because I'm late (or because I'm chasing a pack of spandex goddesses for a quick double-wammy: endorphins and a pheromone fix-heheheh)
I wish you happy hunting--don't buy at the first shop you go into! (been there, done that)p
Re:Segway isn't "IT" for commuters (Score:3, Interesting)
I have one of the best price/quality best buy Mountain bikes out there. I looked on the web for three days. Checked out all the forums. Then I walked into two bike shops and asked two of their mechanics what they ride and what they would suggest for someone looking for a good ride at a good price. Does anyone else do this?
Hands down the winner for manufacturers was Giant. They make good bikes for many budgets. The model I have, the Iguana (which I am not sure is still available) cost around $500 bucks. It has some nice included parts and features, but you can upgrade most of them to higher quality components if you want something nicer. The advice I was given was to ride the standard parts into the ground and then upgrade as stuff gets worn out. The only "non-optional" upgrade, according to everyone, was the seat. I was told to replace it with a nice large gel model.
I ride this 10-15 miles every day. I take it to a shop every 3 months for a $20 tune up and have them check for wear on the parts that looks serious. Haven't replaced a standard part, other than the seat, yet! I LOVE this bike. Adding "bull's horn" handle bar extensions (what do you call those things anyway?) helps relieve the wrist strain of a mountain bike handlebar for long rides (the rotate the wrists into a more relaxed positions).
The only problem with a bike on the campus where I work is damage when left outside. College students can be destructive vicious fucks (no offense if you are a non-destructive non-vicious college student) and tend to do heavy damage to bikes in bike racks. My office doesn't offer a lot of space either. That's why I am looking into human powered kick, aka push, scooters.
By all accounts these are perfect for the 1-3 mile commute (I like 1.5 from my office). The ten minute mile walk drops by about a third. I ordered an "adult" scooter just the other day from Xootr [xootr.com]. These are considered to be the Rolls Roice of scooters. An electric model is also available. The only problem is that they are somewhat expensive and don't work well in wet conditions. Go Ped [go-ped.com] make a human-powered model called the Know Ped which has wider wheels and works well in harsher conditions. They also have gas powered versions.
Hey (Score:2)
Hunter says Microsoft doesn't have records of all those who took part, and they should call 0800 676 334.
Sure I don't actually live in New Zealand but I'm sure they won't know the difference will they
The Moon Is A Convenient Wastebasket (Score:4, Insightful)
Why is this a bad thing? It's not like there's any lunar ecology to disturb, or lunar inhabitants to threaten. And if it hits Luna, that's one less piece of dangerous unguided space debris for future space travellers to keep track of.
Re:The Moon Is A Convenient Wastebasket (Score:2)
What if it lands on my property [moonlandregistry.com]? Who can I sue?
Re:The Moon Is A Convenient Wastebasket (Score:2)
It's actually a good thing. (Score:4, Informative)
Why? so they can use the seismec event of the impact to chart the interior of the moon. During the Apollo missions, NASA left three or so sensor suites on the moon- AES I think they were called- to monitor "moonquakes" and other things of scientific interest. They were turned off in the late 70's, but there's some hope that they can be reactivated for this event.
If they are unable to reactivate the AES's, they can still do some measurements from here.
Sorry, I'd offer a link if I could, but I stumbled across the article somewhere on the internet.
Re:It's actually a good thing. (Score:2)
Reactivated how? They gonna send up someone (or a robot) to toggle the on-off switch? The receivers are turned off, too.
It's Only 54 feet Long (Score:2)
Umm, "passive seismometer"? (Score:3, Funny)
Passive as opposed to what? An active seismometer with giant hammers: "Wakey wakey Moon! Hello, this is your alarm-call!"
Re:Umm, "passive seismometer"? (Score:3, Interesting)
Yeah, that's pretty much it - one of the ones used on Apollo missions was called a Thumper. Then there were the mortars which lobbed explosive charges, after the astronauts had taken off. See this [nasa.gov] or this [bbc.co.uk].
They used active seismometers to do things like measure the depth of the regolith, i.e. the layer of mostly loose rock fragments and sand/dust that make up the outer mantle of the moon (and the Earth for that matter). The moon's regolith was found to be about 35 feet deep in the places they measured, compared to 300 feet in some parts of the Earth.
Subscraption? (Score:3, Funny)
O'Reilly: Meaningless, and just as well (Score:2)
And just as well. If Apple is primarily drawing new users from the under 1% desktop market share of Linux, they're doing something very seriously wrong.
Problem with HD's (Score:4, Insightful)
1. As the fly height gets lower (generally a requisite of higher data density), the chances of a head crash increase (or if there is any dust or other particulate matter, the chances of the head turning into a record needle).
2. Higher data density = less area consumed for a bit = easier for data to be lost.
3. Higher track density = more probability that the head can go off track and write too close to (or over) adjacent tracks (yes, this can happen, and I guarantee it does on at least a yearly basis to someone you know).
Combine this with thin margins (and corresponding decreases in funding to QA and good suppliers/mfg), and you have a recipe for disaster.
For the last time: Back up your friggin' data.
These WHAT!?! (Score:2)
These nuclear-powered [Apollo Lunar Surface Experiment Packages] included a passive seismometer.
Which caused me to do a bit of a double take, but no, they didn't launch entire nuke plants into space.
Quoth this other article: [nasa.gov]
A 70-watt power module converted heat from a radioisotope fuel capsule into electricity by means of thermocouples.
That is..... so cool! I WANT ONE!
Re:These WHAT!?! (Score:5, Insightful)
Generally, you are exposed to far more radiation from "natural" sources than you will ever receive from "man-made" sources. For example, if you were to sit on the fence of Three Mile Island from the minute of its accident for a period of one year you would have gotten less than a typical chest x-ray worth of radiation. However, if you live in a region where natural radon gas seeps into your house then you can get the same dose in a matter of a few weeks. Cinder blocks which make up your house are slightly radioactive, and coal-fired power plants produce many times the radiation per watt as that of a typical nuclear power plant. (Coal typically has a lot of radioactive elements bound up in it, which are released when it burns.)
In short, don't worry so much about radiation. It's a natural part of life, just use sunblock, seal your basement, and get the power companies to replace coal power plants with nuclear ones. The last item will also have the benefit of saving a ton in power costs.
Re:These WHAT!?! (Score:2)
Warranties (Score:3, Insightful)
I was always amazed that the HD companies did 3 and 5 year warranties on consumer drives. Overpriced SCSI drives are one thing, but these consumer drives are getting so CHEAP these days that it isn't cost effective to offer these warranties.
Re:Warranties (Score:2)
How many people are going to actually take a drive in on warranty after four years? Virtually none. If they honour it, then after a three week wait you get back a brand spanking new (actually refurbished) 2GB drive. WOO!
The company wins for having a comprehensive warranty, but the nature of computing means that they almost never have to honour it.
Re:Warranties (Score:4, Insightful)
Many rebate programs are predicated on the knowledge that 90% of all customers will never send in their rebate coupons.
Ti PowerBook (Score:2)
Re:Ti PowerBook (Score:2)
However, I was lucky enough to be able to borrow a Ti Powerbook from work for the past few weeks and I absolutely love the machine! The screen is large and beautiful, the machine is fast and responsive, the form factor is slim and easy to carry around. Everything is very well integrated, from the built-in Airport, to the slot-lading DVD player, to the plethora of ports in the back. It even plays 3D games decently, although I know there are plenty of desktop systems that can display 3D stuff better.
So now I'm looking at my desktop PowerMac G4 and I'm wishing that the machine was obsolete so that I could justify ditching it and getting a TiBook for myself. I definitely would recommend that people get the Ti PowerBook instead of a desktop machine if you don't need the expansion slots of a desktop box.
TiBook is great , but look to the iBook (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Ti PowerBook (Score:2)
You can argue the merits of one versus the other 'til the cows come home, but when people care about how fashionable their computer makes them look, they choose macs. It gives them an automatic in with the trendy designers and artists that they so badly want to emulate, and it makes them feel different and special for rebelling against Microsoft, without needing any of the geek skills to run linux.
Chinese could dominate google (Score:2)
As I understand it, one of the ways to get a higher rating with Google is to have lots of links to your site. If the Chinese population get busy producing their own websites, the amount of cross-linkage they could do would ensure their entries coming at the top of every search. Eventually, the Chinese government wouldn't have to worry about their people finding western sites, because they'll be so far down the list that the users will get bored of going through them.
Re:Chinese could dominate google (Score:2)
the only use for maxtors (Score:2, Interesting)
Density is king. (Score:2)
Never mind that modern hard disks are unreliable pieces of crap, or that IBM moved to a glass substrate that they never got to work quite right, so they sold off their entire hard disk division to Hitachi to scrape the mess off their shoe...
You can store more on them! Yea! Whoopie!
And then you can't back them up. But don't worry, you can back them up by buying another hard drive, which you can't bck up!
And figure out some way to store it off site, the way you used to store tapes off site. Except you pretty much have to buy some seriously expensive glue hardware, because IDE cables can't be more than a foot or so long before they start trashing your data, even without the help of a substandard hard drive.
In related news, I hear that for what it costs for a house on 1/8th of an acre in the rich part of towm, you can buy 100,000 acres of land bordering Love Canal or Three Mile Island. Yeah, the land is crap, but look how much you get!
-- Terry
Wow, did you see the pic of Gates? (Score:2)
Subscription Licensing (Score:2, Insightful)
"People think of software as a CD in their computer which they can use forever and a day. They're not used to having to reactivate the product after 12 months."
"I think we've learned that the market isn't ready for this type of service. There's value in it but we need to do some thinking around how we market and position it."
Translation:
We tried and failed. Once we manipulate people into believing information can be rented, we'll try again.
Slashdotters, this is not a victory.
Re:Subscription Licensing (Score:3, Insightful)
The Humanity (Score:3, Funny)
Why would that be a big deal again?
WD special edition drives maintain 3 year warranty (Score:2, Informative)
Re:WD special edition drives maintain 3 year warra (Score:2, Interesting)
That 20 gig drive I mentioned above is actually my 2nd replacement drive. My original 20 gig drive broke after about a year or so, but not through any kind of defect - it was physically damaged when I shipped my computer cross-country. I called up Maxtor without really expecting anything to come of the call, but the CSR practically begged me to give him the serial number so that he could check if it was eligible to be returned. Sure enough, he said I could return it, gave me an RMA number, and sent me a new drive. When I got the new drive, I was fiddling around, trying to see if there was some way I could salvage the data off the old drive before I sent it back (the damage to it was only in the power connector, so I thought I might be able to get it working if I kinda wedged the power connector in there). Somehow I managed to boot off the drive with the wedged-in power connector, but then something happened and both drives wound up dead. Maxtor took the 2nd drive back too.
There's more, but I don't want to get myself in trouble...Let's just say everything worked out OK for me in the end. Actually, come to think of it, maybe I'm the reason for Maxtor's decision to limit their warranties. >;-> [devilish grin]
OpenVaporWare? (Score:4, Insightful)
And assuming it does happen, what's the big deal? It's a system under which MIT profs can voluntarily put their course materials online. Gazillions of schools have servers and let their profs put their course materials online voluntarily. And the word "open" would seem to imply information that's free as in speech, but what they're doing is only free as in beer. There's nothing wrong with making information free as in beer, but there's nothing special about it either --- the whole World-Wide Web is free as in beer.
It's not the magnetic stability... (Score:3, Insightful)
It's the old adage:
"good, fast, cheap - pick any two."
Any engineer will tell you that he can give you any tolerances you want, it's a matter of how much you want to spend. In this case, the issues are:
1. Bearings. You're going to spin that platter at 15,000 RPM 24 hrs. per day for years on end? At nearly 10 BILLION rotations per year, if you want reliability, those bearings had better be preeeeety good. And that means - more money.
2. Platter surface. Same as above. You want to spin that thing around thirty or fourty billion times with the heads nothing more than maybe a thousandth of an inch away? Better be awfully tough stuff, and it better be permanently bonded to the platter. Oh, wait - you're going to bump and kick your computer while it's on, aren't you? How good for the platter surface (or the heads) will those collisions be? Better coating, better heads: More money.
3. Electronics. Drives get HOT. You want your electronics to last a long time? They better be made for high-temp operation. That means.... yep, more money.
In the end, each company has had to ask itself this:
"Will we spend more money on quality drives, and hope that customer recognition pays off, or will we skimp a little here and there, and sell them by the boat-load?"
You can guess which one they've chosen. Why did they choose it? You guessed it... more money.
Re:Good old slashdot. (Score:5, Insightful)
The day they go quiet is when you should start to worry.
Re:Good old slashdot. (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Good old slashdot. (Score:3, Funny)
Fuck you, I wont do what you tell me!
Re:Good old slashdot. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Good old slashdot. (Score:3, Informative)
- The Sedition Act [yale.edu] of 1798
- The Espionage Act [uiuc.edu] of 1917
- Executive Order 9066 [ucla.edu]
Trampling on the 1st Ammendment in times of war is long-honored American tradition. Of course, just because censoring the internet is no worse than things done in the past by the U.S. government, that does not mean that the U.S. government will do it. It may be paranoid to think that the U.S. government will do it, but it would be delusional to think that the U.S. government is above doing such things.Re:Good old slashdot. (Score:2, Insightful)
And now that Bush has chosen a war that can neither be won nor lost, the US is closer than ever to the concept of "constant warfare" as practiced by Ingsoc's Oceania.
Paranoid vs Delusional (Score:4, Insightful)
"Our country would never do this" is an example of being delusional.
Just for clarity's sake.
Re:Good old slashdot. (Score:2)
Re:Who needs a warrenty? (Score:2)
Re:Who needs a warrenty? (Score:4, Insightful)
And this is the exact reason manufacturers are going with shorter warrantees on their low end drives. If you buy one of the low-end Maxtor 20GB drives in a year or so, in three more years, they won't have those in stock, and will be forced to send you a 100GB drive if you RMA it.
Maxtor has already said their high capactiy and high end drives will have a full three year warranty, and the same MTTF rating as SCSI drives. I think you will see price cuts, and intense price competition on the low end, you may not associate it with the shorter warantee, but they will come. Imagine buying a new, in production, not EOLed hard disk for $30... I think that's coming soon.
I think I am safe in saying that never before in history has there been such a gap between low and high end of in-production hard disks. In the next year, Maxtor will have drives from 20GB to 320GB. When 320 megabyte disks came into production, 20 meg drives were distant history, the smallest in production was something like 100 megs.
The nature of the hardware market is changing, I'd say that this is driving these warantee decisions, not some vague threat of magnetic flux unreliability.
Re:Who needs a warrenty? (Score:2)
Tim
Re:Honestly (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Honestly (Score:2)
Whenever the US government needs to distract its sheep...er..people, they have a Bad Guy they can point to and say "Ohhh! Evil! Bad! Ooohhh! Grrr! Nasty!" so people stay content and consent to whatever it was that the government wanted to sneak by them.
China, on the other hand, is a real threat. The day china decides to go at war, the world will shake. So it wouldn't be wise to piss 'em off too much.
Governments lie, politicians lie, and they do it all the time. If you want to understand their motivations, ask yourself where the profit goes.
Re:Honestly (Score:4, Insightful)
Doesn't the Chinese government retain power with popular soverignty? If so, why do they need to censor things
While it's true that governments ultimately derive their just power from the consent of the governed, it can take a bloody long time for the governed to give consent, or for the government to derive just power.
The same thing could be said of America, which had a really tough time with the Brittish prior to 1776, and well past 1812. Many lived their entire lives within the period of conflict between government and governed, with no real justice. Even longer if you were Black or NA Indian.
If we're so damn worried about the Iraqi regime, why aren't we equally worried about China's current regime
We are. It's just that Nixon decided to play China against the Soviet Union. Later, the policy became one of "constructive engagement". The argument goes that by trading and relating with the Chinese, we are more likely to influence their culture and ultimately liberate their people--hence the complaints about American hegemony from some Chinese. For such a large country, there may be no other practical solution. What do you want? A potentially nuclear conflict with China?
Remember Tiannamen? (Score:3, Informative)
Governments seldom engage in rash acts to improve the lot of people in other countries. They commonly act in what they believe is in the interests of their country and themselves. That is what governments do; it is naive to imagine otherwise. The oppression of human rights in China is wrong, but that fact does not pose an immediate threat to the U.S. In any case, what would be gained for the U.S. to threaten military action against China?
The Bush administration believes Iraq does pose a threat to the U.S., citing Saddam Hussein's behavior pattern with considerable justification. This includes invading Kuwait, gassing his own countrymen, launching a war on Iran that cost more than one million lives, creating and using a vicious internal secret police, etc. In particular, there's little convincing evidence that Saddam would not use nuclear weapons if he had them. China has had nuclear weapons for decades and has acted responsibly vis-a-vis those weapons. You will find very few people -- inside and outside the U.S. Government -- who believe Saddam would behave equally responsibly.
Re:Honestly (Score:2, Insightful)
Simply put, the US has every legal right to go back in and remove Saddam. He's masterminded (failed) plot to assasinate George Bush Sr. The fact that he's an idealogue maniac, willing to test gas agents on his own people, use them as human shields, fund terrorists, hand a briefcase of anthrax to al queda, or any other nightmare scenarios gives the US a moral right to do so.
In fact, I see it as an ethical obligation to do so. What do you think Saddam would do if he was diagnosed with a terminal illness tomorrow, and had nothing to lose? Would he think about his citizens (the ones he gassed and used as human shields) when he hands over his arsenal to muslim extremists to get revenge on the big evil US?
And, the US is equally concerned with Chinas regime, though the only course we have with them at the moment is diplomacy and economic pressure.
And it has had an effect. China has come along way since Tianemen Square. Westerners now regularly visit the country, Hong Kong has a budding capitalist economy, pressures from western groups are changing the way the peasants view their own freedoms, or lack thereof.
China will change eventually the same way the Soviet Union did. Their system doesn't work. We don't need to strongarm them, it'll happen naturally. Just not overnight. Leave it to the Chinese, and offer whatever assistance they ask for.
Re:Apollo? (Score:2)
Re:HD Warrenty (Score:2)
I guess it shouldn't be that big a shock... As we get closer and closer to physical limits, I can see it becoming harder and harder to guarantee that a unit will stay within specs.
It would make sense that somebody is going to hit the wall first -- most likely those thau put less work into quality control,