Gah, total format failure. Forgot I was in HTML mode. You get the idea, though.

Minor nit: Mac OS X (until Snow Leopard) had to deal with 4 architectures $ file /usr/lib/libbz2.dylib /usr/lib/libbz2.dylib: Mach-O universal binary with 4 architectures /usr/lib/libbz2.dylib (for architecture ppc7400): Mach-O dynamically linked shared library ppc /usr/lib/libbz2.dylib (for architecture ppc64): Mach-O 64-bit dynamically linked shared library ppc64 /usr/lib/libbz2.dylib (for architecture i386): Mach-O dynamically linked shared library i386 /usr/lib/libbz2.dylib (for architecture x86_64): Mach-O 64-bit dynamically linked shared library x86_64

I don't see this as an either/or proposition. Backing up protects you from data loss, which comes in many forms:

* Sudden hardware or software failure
* Silent hardware/software failure (or user failure) resulting in corruption you only discover later
* Theft/fire/natural disaster

At the same time you want:
* Easy backup procedure (if it is too hard, you won't do it)
* Fast restore procedure

A sensible backup plan needs to address all of these needs. Incremental tape backups with rotation to an offsite vault is one option which covers most of these things, but isn't particularly easy or automated. RAID is very easy and convenient, but only covers a very narrow range of hardware failures. (If you listen closely, you can hear the screams in the distance of a RAID user who just lost data to software-induced filesystem corruption. Hence the mantra "RAID is not backup.")

Network (blah, blah, "cloud," blah) backup services are a great option for cheap offsite backup that is extremely convenient and continuous. But you should supplement it with some kind of local, fast backup as well. That way you can recover quickly from hard drive failure and corrupted filesystems, but still have a Plan B if your house floods. (Or if you local backup turns out not to be broken when you need it!) Moreover, many network backup services will mail a hard drives for a fee if disaster strikes and you need to restore everything.

In my case, I use CrashPlan and Time Machine to do this. CrashPlan backs up changed files every 15 minutes to several offsite locations. I also plug a Time Machine disk into my laptop periodically to make a local snapshot. Restoration is quick in the common case, but I also have coverage for extraordinary events as well as backups when I travel without my external disk.

I think often people confuse "altruism" with "long term self-interest," and that may be the issue Google is considering here. In the short term, you can make it hard for tenants to move out, and maybe gain a little bit of rent that you would not have otherwise gotten. However, people talk and, in the long term, behavior like that can lose you potential customers. You will be forced to drop your rent in order to keep your units full.

(This relates to the best description of "business ethics" I've heard: Ethical business requires that you balance the needs of and try to act in the best interest of your owners, employees and customers. Otherwise, in the long run, you will find yourself without capital, labor, or revenue. Thus, business ethics is about long term self-interest, not some kind of abstract altruism. Sometimes the "long run" takes a really long time, encouraging people to risk unethical behavior, of course.)

Making it easier to leave Google applications helps grow your potential customer base in the future (such as those who are wary of lock in), at the risk of losing current customers who are unhappy with your service. That is a motivation well-rooted in self-interest, as long as you think your product is better than everyone else's.

The GeForce 9 series was a rebrand/die shrink of GeForce 8, but the GTX 200 series has some major improvements under the hood:

* Vastly smarter memory controller including better batching of reads, and the ability to map host memory into the GPU memory space
* Double the number of registers
* Hardware double precision support (not as fast as single, but way faster than emulating it)

These sorts of things probably don't matter to people playing games, but they are huge wins for people doing GPU computing. The GTX 200 series has also seen a minor die shrink during the generation, so I don't know if the next generation will be more of a die shrink or actually include improved performance. (Hopefully the latter to keep up with Larrabee.)

From the page: "Sloppy reduction allowed us to make our code branch-free and thereby very efficient on the PS3's 4-way SIMD Synergistic Processing Units (SPUs)." This sounds promising for CUDA. If this code is really branch-free, it should fly on a GTX 285. NVIDIA's GT200 chips have a lot more raw compute power, but less flexibility, than the Cell processor on the PS3. The usual CUDA performance killer is irregular memory read patterns and highly divergent branching.

This makes sense, of course. If disk rotation speeds stay fixed, and areal densities increase, then the number of bits per second passing under the head has to go up. As long as hard drive manufacturers can keep increasing storage capacity, they will get speed increases at the same time. (If you need to use longer error-correcting codes on the platter to achieve these densities, that can fight against these gains.)

oops. 15 cents/MB

I picked up the Kindle DX on release day (much to my amazement, as I figured the initial stock would go entirely to preorders) and then took it on a 2 week trip. I'm quite pleased with it, although I definitely believe that it will only appeal to a narrow market.

Pros:

• The e-ink display really needs to be seen to understand the benefit. Over time, more and more of my reading material has become electronic, and I had not appreciated how much reading long documents on my backlit laptop LCD was leading to eye-fatigue. The result was that I tended to read on my laptop in short bursts, taking frequent breaks and losing focus. With a passive display like this, I find that I naturally read for longer intervals. Contrast is not as good as paper, but being able to read in direct light really changes your reading behavior.
• The form factor is perfect for full page document reading. A netbook or small laptop, while useful for other things, is a horrible document reader. The clamshell form factor is the wrong orientation for reading pages, and if you try to turn it to read in portrait mode, you have a keyboard sticking out the side for no reason. I tried reading with a sideways 12" laptop on the bus as a graduate student, and it was pretty annoying. Anyone suggesting a real computer as an alternative to the Kindle DX should at least begin with a tablet PC.
• As a reader, the software mostly gets out of your way. The power switch just puts the system to sleep, so you can pick up the DX and be reading where you were last in about 4 seconds. Your last location is remembered in all documents, as you would expect. More sophisticated controls would be nice, but aren't a deal-breaker.
• The built-in cellular data link is not spectacular, but gets the job done. I really enjoy being able to read something, then if I encounter an unfamiliar concept, I can just start typing a phrase and hit "wikipedia". xkcd's comment about the Kindle being our manifestation of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is very true.
• The browser is definitely limited, but very convenient when you are traveling. I don't have a fancy phone, so this is the only device I own which provides nearly universal Internet access. (Yeah, I'm late to the party.) Not having a stupid cell contract to use the web browser is a huge plus.
• Battery life and weight are good. I tend to leave the wireless radio on, but even with that extra drain, I normally have to recharge every few days. At 1 lb., it is the weight of a thin hardback. You won't read it for long periods by holding it out in front of your face (see "gorilla arms"), but it doesn't take much support to a corner or an elbow to comfortably hold it.
• Being able to read the first chapter of books free is kind of neat. I don't usually buy books for the Kindle with the store, because I consider DRM-crippled data to be disposable. It is a great way to find new books to buy in dead-tree format, though.
• PDF rendering works fine. I have encountered one image in one PDF that rendered strange, but otherwise viewing PDFs has met my expectations.

Cons:

• Some people say other readers have a better e-ink display. This is my first e-ink device, so I can't comment on that.
• If you are used to reading on an LCD, it will take you a little bit to adjust. The first thing I noticed when I got the DX is that I have very poor lighting in my apartment for reading. With a backlit display, I never noticed. However, the DX needs external light, just like paper. :)
• This is not a speedy device, nor a speedy internet connection. The browser is very slow, especially on complex websites.
• The economics of the cellular link are worrying. Since it is effectively pre-paid in the cost of the device itself, Amazon does not have a strong financial incentive to improve the built-in browser. More web use means more money they have to pay to Sprint on your behalf. You see the effects of this in other device features as well. Downloading books and magazines from the Kindle store is free, but you cannot download PDFs via the web browser because of the cost to Amazon. To put PDFs on the device, you have to transfer them over USB (as you might expect) or email them to a special address you setup on the Kindle website. However, emailing files to your Kindle costs 0.15 cents per MB because it is using the cellular network. Also note that the cost for email files is computed per file, not per email. If you send four 100 kB PDFs to your Kindle in one email, you are charged 60 cents, not 15 cents. Still, it's cheap enough that I will sometimes email PDFs to myself from work for later reading as long as they are less than 1 MB in size.
• The web browser is a little crashy on complex sites. When you encounter a problem, it will lock for a few seconds, then some kind of watchdog kicks in and the Kindle will reboot automatically. The reboot sequence takes about 30 seconds with a progress bar, and I didn't realize what was going on the first time it happened.
• The target audience for the DX is definitely someone who reads PDFs, where full-page rendering is important. If you like to read books from the Amazon store, the smaller Kindle is probably a better fit. (I've seen a lot of Kindle 2 owners bash the DX for being too big, but that's really the point.) There is less overlap between the target audience for a Kindle 2 and the Kindle DX than you might think. If you have one, you probably don't want the other.
• The keyboard is like typing on Tic-Tacs. However, if you are using the keyboard a lot, you probably want a netbook because you are either taking copious notes, or using the web in a very interactive fashion.
• Although running a Linux distribution (and possibly Java) under the hood, there is no way to load your own programs. Given the cost to Amazon for using the data link, I doubt it will ever open up, which is too bad. The Kindle DX is a decent ARM system-on-a-chip crammed into a light tablet form factor with a cellular radio and an ultra low power usage display on it. I'd bet that 3rd party developers could come up with creative uses for such a device.

In summary, the DX is a very competent PDF viewer with a good display. Amazon got the core features mostly right, and the extra features (like the web browser) are technology demos, showing where things might go in the future. Despite the price, I'm excited by the existence of a full-page reader with some marketing force behind it. Hopefully we will see more devices like this, and dropping prices as the technology is refined. After seeing the datapad props in Star Trek: TNG as a kid, I've been searching for more than a decade for something that would live up to my imagination about how those devices would work. The DX is the first thing I've used that gets the core idea right, and just needs about 300 more years of polish before it ends up on Jean-Luc's coffee table. :)

In fact, Lustre (a distributed filesystem for clusters) will be using the ZVOL layer precisely for this reason in a future release of the OS.

Amen, but to add to this: If you are going to institute some kind of usage billing, it is *absolutely* critical you give people the tools to monitor their usage. At a minimum, there should be a web page that customers can view their current usage (no more than 24 hours old) relative to the quota. For bonus points, give people the ability to get email updates when they pass predefined levels, or if their one-day usage exceeds some value.

If you are putting 130W into the CPU, then I would expect nearly 130W coming out in heat. Otherwise, that means the CPU is storing energy somewhere. Initially, it will store some energy as the chip heats to above room temperature, but then it should rapidly hit a steady state where power in = power out.

Self-selection bias. The people most likely to hit the reply button will be angry, bitter and/or annoyed.

I'm a big Newegg fan, but the hard drive packing comment is definitely true. If I were to mail a hard drive back to Seagate the way Newegg often mails drives to customers (wrapped in 2 layers of bubble wrap, thrown into box of peanuts), Seagate would void my warranty. The weight of the drive has usually popped half of the bubbles by the time I receive the box. Thankfully, none of the drives I've purchased have been DOA, but this shipping practice must increase the infant mortality rate somewhat.

A quick Google puts the number of US cell phone users in 2005 at 208 million. A number of cell providers will give you a "free" phone every two years, and many people take advantage of that. I'd guess the cell phone number is plausible if you assume slightly less than 50% turn over rate per year and include growth in the cell phone market since the 2005 numbers were published.