Hope not, by splitting into multiple rar files you can prioritize the order that they download. If you can get the first couple of rar files completely downloaded, you can unrar them or play them in VLC to verify you're downloading what you intended to. If it's just one big file it's much harder to preview and it's easy to waste a pile of bandwidth on garbage.

With more website using encrypted connections by default (https://), this won't work.

This would be fine. So long as there are multiple players in the mobile OS space, everyone benefits. Should any one player, even Android, hold over 90% then innovation will stagnate. It's great that both iOS and Android are doing well. Having Windows 8 enter the market is also great as it gives developers another reason to think about cross platform compatibility when writing their applications. With developers creating inherently cross platform apps, there is always the possibility of new mobile OSes entering the market. This was not possible on the desktop as everyone was tied to Microsoft and Intel. What we are seeing now is a market develop without those ties - and that's great for everyone.

It you are working on source code, chances are it will be cached in memory when you go to compile. The seek times don't have much of an impact assuming your OS does a good job at caching. Now I'm not saying that SSDs aren't great, just that the impact of disk access speed is not as pronounced as you make it sound - at least when compiling the same code multiple times. But when it comes to boot speed, or the time required to compile code that isn't cached, SSDs are amazing.

L/100km might contain the same information, but using distance as the domain is preferred. This is far more useful as people don't drive to burn fuel, they drive to travel. Distance is the important variable so fuel mileage should be with respect to distance. It makes comparing given fuel economy ratings easier as it better correlates with the amount of fuel you will use / cost of driving.

For example, consider the following fuel economy ratings: 4L/100km, 6L/100km, and 8L/100km. For a given distance, it is obvious that the most fuel efficient vehicle will be 1/2 the cost of the least efficient vehicle. The cost of third vehicle being is the average of the two other vehicles - or in the middle.

Now in mpg, those numbers are: 58.8mpg, 39.4mpg, 29.4mpg. Notice the 39.4mpg vehicle will cost the average of the 58.8mpg and 29.4mpg vehicles - but this is not apparent from looking at the numbers. It is because the numbers are represented using the wrong domain. Sure the information is there, it just is not represented in the most useful format.

If I remember correctly, Intel is using their own firmware on the SandForce controller. So an Intel SSD will still be different then those from their competitors.

Most of that pollution would not occur if a synthesized fuel like this one was used. It should burn cleaner as it will have no contaminates. The big offenders creating soot/dust are the big trucks burning diesel and lacking proper catalytic converters. A modern car using this fuel should be fine - much like a car burning propane or natural gas.

You sure? The initial release was on Feburary 13, 2002 - 10 years ago. Windows 95 was release 17 years ago and it could never even run .NET. The first version of Windows that could run .NET was Windows 98 - released 14 years ago. And I doubt that they had .NET ready for that initial version - doubt they even had an internal alpha version.

Surface requires a different API so all those Win32 apps will need far more then a recompile - they need a redesign.

Because it would take longer so the airline would not be able to charge as much for tickets. Also, the crew would have to be paid for more hours for each flight. Maintenance would also cost more per flight as each flight would involve logging more air time. And I would feel bad for the air traffic controllers - their job would get significantly more difficult.

Yes, but you are expecting, and prepared for the turbulence of the truck. Many drivers don't deal well with surprises so a car overtaking them at 120mph, combined with the resulting turbulence, could cause problems. But you also have to remember that this is Texas where lots of people drive 1 tonne trucks. Those trucks have power and, considering how the drivers tend to have more money then brains*, will likely be the vehicles travelling at 120.

* - In my area, the young male drivers working in the oil field tend to have the big trucks which are driven like sports cars. Those who actually require a large truck tend to drive them intelligently.

But despite all of this, according to statistics from the autobahn the number of vehicle collisions is not determined by the speed limit. There are idiots on the road regardless. What does change is the number of fatalities as when the speed limit is increased the crashes are more likely to be fatal.

In Canada, and I would assume most states, you only have to provide your drivers license if the officer has sufficient grounds to request it. For example, a driving infraction. Police are free to request it but you do not have to humour their request. As it turns out, most people just hand over their drivers license.

Had a friend's father that was a defence lawyer in a small town (~5000). The police hated him - he always defended the people they arrested. That and he would never let the police overstep their authority. I recall them asking for a drivers license at a random stop - his response, no. The officer asked again several times implying that there would be trouble if he did not comply. His response, no - and that's how it ended.

I guess I'm saying people should read their local laws to see how they are affected. And remember, police do not have to tell the truth so do not automatically trust them. Police act on their own self interest, just like everyone else. They are not always on your side.

No, TRIM is not defragmenting. TRIM only occurs on SSD and is a result of how FLASH has to be written/erased.

Traditional storage devices have storage elements with only two states - 1 or 0. These elements are then written to and read by the OS. SSDs are different as their storage elements have the same two states - 1 or 0, but also have an "empty" flag. You see, to write to a storage element that is not empty requires a rather lengthy erase procedure to be performed before the write. So to speed things up, SSDs maintain an "empty" status.

But how does an SSD know when a storage element is empty? When a file is deleted all that happens is the FAT table is changed - the actual data does not get deleted. Over time, all available blocks in an SSD get marked as "not-empty" and that lengthy erase procedure is required all the time. This is where TRIM comes in, it allows for the OS to give the SSD hints by telling it certain blocks are in fact empty. The SSD can then pre-erase these blocks to ensure speedy future write operations.

So that is TRIM - defragmenting is something else entirely. Look it up, it's basic stuff. But because SSDs do not offer truly random access, there is an advantage in having the file system defragmented. How much of an advantage is what I would like to know. If I had to guess I would say minimal.

I would guess it is because OS X defragments the drive as it is being written. The overhead is largely not noticed when writing to a traditional hard drive while. Due to SSDs greater speed, it will make it appear that OS X has performance issues. The thing about performing inline defragmentation is it improves speed as the computer ages and as the HD begins to fill. Because all of the benchmarks were performed with fresh systems, the benefits of a defragmented drive would not be noticed.

The question I have is with the low seek times of SSDs, is there still a need to defragment drives? Probably, but to what degree as it surely is not as important as when one is using a traditional hard drive.

Careful what you say. I don't know how it's done down under, but I'll leave you with this tidbit of info: