Comment Re:Who trusts Sony? (Score 2, Informative) 202
That describes all floppy disks.
Comment Re:This is why... (Score 1) 175
But, if they can better pinpoint your location to a few meters, they can start trying to send you spam in the mail, or, maybe even sell your information to those people search sites.
More metrics always helps. It can even work to become a stronger confirmation of your location, if your IP and geotags all match.
Comment Re:Some quick math says... (Score 1) 359
This thing is putting nearly a quarter megawatt (240kw) drain on the power grid during use.
The quick charging station probably has some sort of means to store charge (e.g. large capacitors [boron/carbon nanotube supercapacitors?]), which can be charged over a great amount of time, and then quickly dissipated in to the automobile.
Comment Bad Summary (Score -1) 205
The thing about TRIM is that its to help the wear-leveling on the drive, not the data throughput performance (TRIM does nothing to guarantee consecutive blocks, etc....It actually would likely cause more fragmentation, because what the system sees as consecutive logical blocks could be reallocated several times on different portions of the disk, creating an extra layer of fragmentation that the OS isn't even aware of).
Even without TRIM you should expect similar performance characteristics until the cells in a specific region of the drive start to fail, because the drive doesn't know when its safe to reclaim blocks for the wear-leveling-- To have any wear leveling at all without TRIM the drive must actually set aside blocks, making it so that the user doesn't see all of the available space on the drive (when a block is rewritten, the drive can allocate a block elsewhere from the pool of free physical blocks, and then assign the old block to the pool of free blocks).
Even without TRIM you should expect similar performance characteristics until the cells in a specific region of the drive start to fail, because the drive doesn't know when its safe to reclaim blocks for the wear-leveling-- To have any wear leveling at all without TRIM the drive must actually set aside blocks, making it so that the user doesn't see all of the available space on the drive (when a block is rewritten, the drive can allocate a block elsewhere from the pool of free physical blocks, and then assign the old block to the pool of free blocks).
The Curious Case of SSD Performance In OS X 205
mr_sifter writes "As we've seen from previous coverage, TRIM support is vital to help SSDs maintain performance over extended periods of time — while Microsoft and the SSD manufacturers have publicized its inclusion in Windows 7, Apple has been silent on whether OS X will support it. bit-tech decided to see how SSD performance in OS X is affected by extended use — and the results, at least with the Macbook Air, are startling. The drive doesn't seem to suffer very much at all, even after huge amounts of data have been written to it."
Comment Re:Leave Canada Alone (Score 3, Informative) 187
This still violates the DNS specification, and there is no way to effectively turn it off. Why is this a problem? Please see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNS_hijacking#Use_by_ISPs .
For this reason I use Internet2, Level 3's (4.2.2.2 - 4.2.2.4), and now google's dns servers.
For this reason I use Internet2, Level 3's (4.2.2.2 - 4.2.2.4), and now google's dns servers.
Comment Re:Less useful (Score 1) 150
Ok, how many people do you know that have Android phones?
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/android-market-share-passes-iphones-npd-data-2010-05-10
Comment Re:checks and balances, sue and cash in (Score 1) 1590
And if you are a us citizen what do they do? Do they ask you to prove it? Do they demand to see ID for no crime?
If ET Calls, Who Speaks For Humanity? 371
EagleHasLanded writes "Who speaks for humankind if ET calls on us? Paul Davies, chairman of the SETI Post-Detection Taskgroup, is a likely ambassador. But Allen Tough founded the Invitation to ETI Web site, which encourages ET to make contact via email (and also strongly discourages humans from impersonating ET). But an individual in the UK got over some of the hurdles designed to weed out hoaxers, before finally throwing in the towel."
BlackBerry Bold Tops Radiation Ranking 189
geek4 writes with this excerpt from eWeek Europe: "Data from the Environmental Working Group places the BlackBerry Bold 9700 as the mobile device with the highest legal levels of cell phone radiation among popular smartphones. Research In Motion's BlackBerry Bold 9700 scores the highest among popular smartphones for exposing users to the highest legal levels of cell phone radiation, according to the latest 2010 Environmental Working Group ranking. Following the Bold 9700 are the Motorola Droid, the LG Chocolate and Google's HTC Nexus One. The rankings still put the phones well within federal guidelines and rules."
Which Linux For Non-Techie Windows Users? 766
obarthelemy writes "Having at last gotten Linux to run satisfactorily on my own PCs, I'd now like to start transitioning friends and family from XP to Linux instead of Windows 7. The catch is that these guys don't understand or care much about computers, so the transition has to be as seamless and painless as possible. Actually, they won't care for new things; even the upcoming upgrade to Windows 7 would be a pain and a bother, which is a great opportunity for Linux. I'm not too concerned about software (most of them only need browser, IM, VLC, mail and a Powerpoint viewer for all those fascinating attachments). What I'm concerned about is OS look-and-feel and interface — system bar on the bottom with clock, trash, info on the right, menu on the left, menu items similar to those of Windows. Is it better to shoot for a very targeted distro? Which would you recommend? Are there themes/skins for mainstream distributions instead? I've been looking around the web, and it's hard to gauge which distros are well-done and reasonably active."
Comment Re:This isn't news... (Score 2, Informative) 172
I've been using it for at least a year, probably edging toward a year and a half...
Now I'll be waiting for someone to realize that the beta java plugin *just* became available....
Now I'll be waiting for someone to realize that the beta java plugin *just* became available....
Comment Re:Define "consumable" (Score 1) 240
Yeah, they're re-usable. But if it's stuck in a filing cabinet then you can't re-use it now can you.
And, even in a good office, I'd be amazed if even half of them got recycled into the system, and not lost/thrown away.
Confidential documents?
* Recovery of the last print might be possible?
* It's a pain to erase the pages (refeeding into an appliance)
Verizon Blocking 4chan 677
An anonymous reader writes "According to 4chan's owner and administrator 'moot,' Verizon has explicitly blocked all traffic on their network from boards.4chan.org, where all of 4chan's boards are located. Moot explains that only traffic to and from port 80 is being dropped and they were able to confirm that it was intentional. 4chan's downtime for Verizon users has been in effect for at least 72 hours since Saturday, February 7."
Physicists Discover How To Teleport Energy 365
MikeChino writes "A physicist at Tohoku University in Japan has figured out how to teleport energy from one point in the universe to another. The technique is based upon prior research that shows it's possible to teleport information from one location to another, and involves making a measurement on each [of] an entangled pair of particles. The measurement on the first particle injects quantum energy into the system, and then by carefully choosing the measurement to do so on the second particle, it is possible to extract the original energy. Heady stuff, but essentially it means that you can inject energy at one point in the universe and extract it from somewhere else without changing the energy of the system as a whole."
