KI0PX - Slashdot User

How Does Flash Media Fail? 357

Posted by kdawson on Friday April 10, 2009 @09:07AM from the in-the-pan dept.

bhodge writes "Aside from the obvious 'it stops working' answer, how does flash media — such as USB, SD, and CF — fail? Unlike with traditional hard drive, where anyone who's worked with computers for a while knows what a drive failure looks like, I don't know anyone who has experienced such a failure with flash. I've haven't been able to find more than scant evidence of what such failures look like at the OS level. The one account I have found detailed using a small USB drive for /var/log storage; it failed very quickly, and then utterly (0 byte unformatted device), after five years of service in the role. This runs contrary to other anecdotal claims that you should still be able to read the media after you can no longer write to it. So my question is: what have you seen of the nature of flash media failure, if anything?"

Comment Faux Panopticon, or guilt trip? (Score 1) 399

by KI0PX on Wednesday June 28, 2006 @09:52AM (#15621080) Attached to: 'Big Brother' Eyes Make Us Act More Honestly

Jeremy Bentham, a British utilitarian philosopher (and godfather to John Stuart Mill, of "On Liberty" fame) used sort of the same idea in a prison design he called the Panopticon.

The Panopticon is designed such that all of the cells can be watched by a single observer (thus cutting down on the number of guards required), but from the cell you can't tell whether you are being observed or not. A prisoner who can't tell if he is being observed will act nicer than a prisoner who knows he is not being observed.

However, I'm not convinced that it is the same effect. If I weren't paying for my coffee, and then a sign was posted with just a pair of eyes, I'd get the message that they knew somebody was gypping the pot. Perhaps a sign saying "Pay up, cheapskate" would have the same effect.

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