Re: First N900 bod to post

Really dreading the day I'll have to replace my N900. I use it primarily for instant messaging and SSH, two things that really benefit from a real keyboard. I wouldn't mind if the available web browser and email client actually worked a bit... but I'll live. New battery made my charging issues much less pressing, and TMobile didn't get bought by ATT, so I still have a network to use it on.

Re: again.. reality imitates girlgenius :)

I have a framed copy of this: http://wondermark.com/634/ on my desk. So excellent.

Re: I dont quite see the progress here

My guess is that since the only mention of RAM is outside of the quote (which says non-volatile memory,) maybe El Reg got it wrong? It certainly does look more like a replacement for NAND (or possibly NOR) Flash rather than DRAM. A 1us p/e cycle would be a hell of an improvement over current NAND.

Also, +/- 7V doesn't seem remotely 'low' compared to any sort of modern volatile or non-volatile solid state memory. Maybe they mean it's low compared to alternatives that are currently in development? Or low compared to their last prototype? It certainly doesn't scream 'efficient operation on battery power,' which is kind of necessary for mobile use. Then again, DC-DC converters aren't all that bad these days.

Subtitle Snark

The Git comment exists because it's true and hilarious.

Supposedly (I heard it from a guy, who read it on the Internet!) Linus never planned for users to interface with Git directly, he wrote it as a back end for other, more friendly version control applications. And it shows.

Not that any version control is perfect, but my experience lines up with at least a few others', which is something along the lines of "Oh god, whyyyyyy!?!"

But if Git is what you know, by all means, use it. There's nothing that'll make you hate version control more than trying to alternate between similar, but ultimately incompatible syntax and operations.

Re: Thank goodness!

"""You won't be laughing when these people are the ones left to save the human race after alien mind-hackers take over the rest of us via the internet and our mobile phones!"""

OK by me - I've got an unlikely quantity of firewalls (displayed in real time and full color on a handy flat screen) and a sweet Nokia smart phone. If movies are anything to go by, I'll run into an action hero and provide questionable technical plot devices while things blow up for no reason. We'll then send the aliens packing, the hero will get the girl, and I'll find a beer. Roll credits.

Kidding about the firewalls, of course, but you'll have to pry my N900 from my cold, dead fingers.

Re: Another good one for troublesome wireless

It's called WDS: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_Distribution_System

Implementations might not be compatible across different WIFI APs, but if you build a network with all the same kit, it'll probably work. Note that I haven't tested this at all, since one high-powered AP can cover my whole house quite nicely.

As for devices, you may not be in the right country, but I rather like the devices offered here: http://www.wlanparts.com/category/wlan.access_points/

As for my network - I've got a policy against using wifi for anything that isn't mobile, so I'm running CAT6A everywhere (slowly.) I'll be ready when 10gbit kit gets semi-affordable. And yes, I need it, because my (rather old) fileserver can manage a sequential read speed over 500MB/s, and I can't stand waiting for transfers that are bottlenecked down to 112MB/s. Also, it's important for me to have the biggest toys.

Re: Buyer Beware

"""Even for my own "light consumer" use, I would be shocked and dismayed if I shelled out a ton of money for an allegedly faster SSD device and only got 75MB/s of sequential writes out of it."""

Well, if you were to buy a drive that came out a few years ago (the C300 quoted in the article,) this is what you should expect. If you were to get the C400, which came out about a year ago (judging by the timestamps on my benchmark logs,) you could easily manage 250+MB sequential write (for the 256GB model - performance varies with size in SSDs) until you run out of available erased blocks.

I've got to say, there are a few kinds of 'enterprise' application out there. For instance, the one that I work with, which is (somewhat) latency sensitive, and writes reasonably large amounts of data, which works just great with (certain) consumer SSDs.

The key is to have a benchmark that models your application, and then see how a given drive performs over a suitably long period of time. Disregard all of the data from early in the test, when the drive looks good, and then assume you'll be operating in the messy zone, where the drive is scrambling to come up with enough blocks to cope with your reads. And then start killing power randomly, and make sure all the data that you think you've written (and sync'd) is still there.

If your application performs alright when the drive is saturated, and your data doesn't disappear, then you're probably better off with a handful of consumer SSDs than a single enterprise drive. An elegant redundancy system (something nicer than boring old RAID, that is) makes drive failure somewhat more tolerable.

Re: Quite innocuous, everyday items can be used.

"""There is NO logic in banning 100ml+ fluid containers if I can book 20 people onto the same flight."""

Ehh, no reason to book anything. All you need is 20 people with passable ID (it's not recorded... so using your real one wouldn't be the end of the world) and a faked boarding pass. Since they let you print your own boarding passes these days... you pretty much need half a brain and a printer to get into the secure area of an airport.

Once there, give all of the 100mL containers to one guy, have the others blend in with people who have just landed, and head out of the airport. Sure they'll be able to trace things on the security cameras after the fact, but your mules probably have a better chance of getting away than if they're on an airplane that you blew up... Or whatever you can /actually/ do with a couple liters of liquid(s).

Honestly, it'd probably be cheaper to smuggle booze in that way than pay airport bar prices...

Yeeeesss

The "Oh Hiiiiii" thing caught on around the office and stuck... Really hits a nerve in the pre-coffee morning times. I had an opportunity to see it live, with Tommy in attendance, but then that life stuff got in the way and I did not get to experience the awesomeness. Too bad, because I'm pretty damned good at extremely-short-range football tossing, especially in formal clothes.

Re: have yet to find a compelling reason to upgrade my 5850

Last video card upgrade for me was because I got a second monitor, and my trusty Nvidia 7800GT didn't have a wide enough video buffer... so I got a 9800GT, which can theoretically display 8096x8096 pixels.

And I can play Quake 3 on native resolution. For all 9 minutes per month that I have free to play games. The rest of the time, it handles Fluxbox + hardware transparency with about a hundred windows spread across a dozen workspaces just fine. Which is all I need: Quake 3 and a hundred windows.

It displeases me that there seem to be no more dual DVI-I cards out there that fit in a single slot, and have no aux power connector... HDMI and Display Port don't work so well with my CRTs...

Re: Yeah, who could possibly tell that a random-appearing string of characters .....?

"""And besides, a random appearing string of characters might be a program in Perl"""

The ultimate form of steno is, of course, hiding your message in a Perl script which prints 100 Bottle of Beer, by all of the same methods that can be made to make that script look like a row of beer bottles.

Then you post the script to a suitable newsgroup, and your secret communications are complete.

Re: Seriously?

""""14in dv4 and 15.6in dv6 feature a screen res of 1366 x 768"

That's where I stopped reading. """

Exactly. I had 1280x768 in 10.6 inches in 2004, and 1366x768 in 8.9 inches in 2008. Where have all the reasonable DPI screens in laptops gone? (Yes, I know the netbook fling is to blame.)

Even desktop LCDs are only just starting to catch up to CRT DPI - I had ~110 DPI in 2001, and the new 27" 2560x1440 screens have just caught up to that (30" LCDs are about 110DPI.) My current monitors will do 120 DPI, which comes out to 2560x1600 in 25", or 2560x1440 in 24.5" - those would be some nice LCDs.

Now don't get me started on chicklet keyboards...

Re: Jeez

I love how they also doubled the page size (again) to get twice the performance. Of course that increases write amplification (and thus reduces wear-life and performance) if you're not writing 16K blocks. Which nobody really does.

Oh well, it does say it's for tablets and smart phones, which nobody apparently expects to remain usable for longer than ~18 months, and flash write speed is waaaay less important than a large capacity number on the spec sheet (to marketing people, and probably most customers.)

Oh well, it's always good to see 'progress.' At least they came up with some new buzzwords to make this chip supposedly not as bad as it could have been.

Re: The reliability of SSD devices still worries me

"""Suffice to say, SSDs haven't proven themselves both over the long term and at high storage densities."""

They might not have done so for you, but I've got hundreds of them that've been running 24/7 in enterprise workloads for the last 3 years... they're fine.

"Moreover, figures for read/rewrite operations are actually published, this was never 'matter of fact' for magnetic HDs; alone, this is of considerable concern (especially when considering long term storage)."

I think maybe you don't understand how SSDs work, and specifically how they're different from spinning magnetic storage devices. Also, manufacturer-published performance data is always worthless, on any product in any field. Test it yourself. Long term storage, which to me means "Write once and read the same data over a long period of time" is a perfect application for an SSD - they're really quite good at maintaining written data, since most of the failure modes occur on write events, not reads. A spinning disk, on the other hand, is more or less guaranteed to fail in 3-5 years of continuous runtime.

And you shouldn't have any data, on any storage device, without backups (and RAID, if space allows.) If you follow those same standard guidelines with SSDs, you still won't have data loss.

Nah...

If this drive was SLC it'd be quite a lot faster. It's probably MLC in the Intel 520 (thus slightly higher performance) and eMLC in the Hitachi, for more endurance.

Also a major consideration in drive lifetime is the quantity of spare NAND available to use as blocks start failing - the 520 comes in 240GB and 480GB advertised capacities, whereas the Hitachi is available in 200GB and 400GB, with probably the same amount of raw flash on board, which would allow them to withstand ~20% more failed blocks before the user noticed anything.

"""so maybe there will be a true successor to the X25-E?"""

There are plenty of those - they're made by companies like STEC, are blisteringly fast, and far, far out of my price range. Just like the original X25-E.

Don't even need them!

"""But, this time, let us pray keep those Telephone Sanitizers though....."""

If you look at it, our society has progressed to the point where we no longer share phone handsets! So we can ship out the Telephone Sanitizers' Union along with the rest.

Great, now I feel like a gin and tonic, and it's not even lunch time yet.

Possibly...

There are (I've heard, haven't tried) decent programs for 3D modeling for things like animation. But when it comes to mechanical design, you want (need, in my opinion) a parametric modeling system, like Solidworks or Inventor. Believe me, I've looked (and re-look every few months,) and nothing free comes anywhere near the capabilities of Solidworks.

For reference, parametric design mostly boils down to relative dimensioning, so you can define the center of a hole some distance from an edge, and if you move that edge the hole follows it. This allows you to make adjustable models, which in turn allows you to iterate your designs quickly (until you hit some limitation, and your hole is now in free space, at which point everything goes to hell and you just have a beer.) Anything with static dimensions ("this hole is at x,y,z - then adjust it manually after you move the edge it's supposed to be aligned with,") or, gods forbid, primitive-based modeling (BRL CAD - "I have a rectangular prism with these corners, I subtract from it a cylinder of this side at these coordinates... now imagine making a laser printer paper tray") is just asking for trouble.

Then again, I'm a mechanical engineer (and I've had models 3D printed!) Maybe people art abilities (not me, in the slightest) would do better with Blender. I've heard it works, but I can't imagine tolerancing moving / meshing / interlocking parts with it.

I also doubt that it has a button that'll tell you the second area moment of inertia of a surface (IE cross-section,) which saves about 2 pages of calculus (assuming an oddly-shaped beam) when you're trying to print beam springs. Couldn't live without that!

I've used them...

I've had a couple cars with touch screen stereos now, and I can say that they're tricky to use while driving. Thankfully, they just played music (SatNav is for people who are lost,) and the important interfaces (power, volume, seek) were on physical knobs, plus replicated on steering wheel buttons. If I was insane enough to try and adjust the fader while moving, though, things would go horribly wrong.

But no, it's not really bright enough to affect my night vision, plus, if it was, I could (while parked...) dim it to the point that it's nearly off.

If I had to use the touch screen to adjust A/C, or switch on a defroster, well, I wouldn't drive that car. That said, I'm a weirdo, as I still insist on cars with the right number of pedals (3, for the tragically uninformed,) and what's more, I have a tendency to pay attention to things going on outside of my vehicle while I'm on the road.

Maybe Overkill

"""I don't drive with the radio on any more"""

On long drives, it's generally recommended to keep the radio on to fight fatigue. Maybe you get more distracted by music than I do, but wind (white) noise tends to tire you (well, most people) rather quickly, so covering it with something intelligible helps a lot.

And driving really isn't so hard that it needs your full attention any where near 80% of the time - I spend far more than 20% of my driving time stopped at lights, and it doesn't require intense concentration to tell when the 8 people in front of me begin to roll forward.

If you've been driving for a while, and you're used to your car, picking a course and steering onto it should require minimal thought and effort, and most of the time conditions really don't require anything more than moderate alertness to notice and respond to unexpected events.

I'd say that occasionally, when there's low visibility, low traction, unpredictable drivers, unfamiliar or complex interchanges, or poor signage, a driver needs to pay attention 100%. If you can't drive safely in easier conditions with a few added distractions, then there's just no way you can reasonably be safe in difficult conditions with no distractions. Plus, maintaining a high alertness level also leads to fatigue.

Fatigue, by the way, is also quite deadly behind the wheel, and it can be sneaky, which is why I concentrate so much on avoiding it.

Around here, almost nobody pays attention - while I wait at those lights I watch other drivers complete their left turns and then almost at the same point on the road most of them look straight down into their laps, where they're trying to hide their devices from the cops.

And I think they should all have their licenses revoked.

I'm OK with a hands free call (no, holding a phone on speaker phone 2" from your face isn't hands free,) but any activity that requires looking away from the road for more than ~2 seconds seems like it should already be illegal under various reckless driving laws.

Oh?

Was thinking Vogon, myself.

Indeed...

I can't stand that almost all LED-lit screens are edge lit. From what I can tell, this is because 'LED' is a price-bump feature, and so is 'thinness,' so they end up combined on the higher end sets. I like the color and energy efficiency of LED backlit screens, but I think that edge lighting generally looks like crap. And I really don't understand the point of a thin monitor - you just look at it from the front anyway.

Oh well, I picked up a lovely full LED backlight Sharp a while ago, I guess I just won't buy any more displays for a while.

Yup...

"""Is Thunderbolt really faster than PCI-e?"""

Technically, I think Thunderbolt runs PCI-e (4x?) over the cable, along with some other things. I imagine latency is higher, but it should be enough to drive the sort of GPU you'd expect in a reasonable laptop (these Ultrabook toys would clearly have a much less capable GPU.)

That said, I wouldn't give up my desktop - I've had laptops, netbooks, PDAs (remember those?), and smart phones, and they all just make different amounts of compromise to give me a computer that I can move around a bit. My desktop, by comparison, doesn't compromise much (only in price, and maybe energy consumption,) and yields a much more enjoyable operating experience.

Of course, I tend to use computers a bit differently than many people ("You can't possibly need that many open tabs / windows / workspaces / monitors / etc!") and since computers are now used for 2 purposes (streaming video and facebook,) most people probably don't need more than a laptop. In fact, many of them probably don't even need all the buttons on the tablet screen keyboard - a simplified version with a handful of buttons for 'phrases' like 'lol' and 'omfg' would satisfy most of their text input requirements. For all the rest they can just click and drag the pretty pictures.

Easier than that

You just need a computer with wifi - then broadcast beacon frames to announce whichever SSID/BSSID combo you'd like. The interesting thing to do would be to scan an area some distance away, and realistically broadcast that set of beacons, to confuse phones in the area. More complicated would be to set up a geographically diverse network, where each node scans it's surrounding networks periodically, and other nodes randomly pick a node to replicate. Extra points for spamming the Google scans.

Sounds disturbingly like work though - I'll let someone else handle the details and implementation bits.

KDE3 was just fine...

KDE3 was a bit ugly, but it worked fine. Then along came KDE4 and they had to 'simplify' and rename all their programs. Amarok 2.x (for KDE4) was a useless iTunes clone last time I bothered to run it, wheras Amarok 1.4 (From KDE3) was almost exactly what I've always wanted in a music program. KPDF got renamed to 'Okular,' KView is now 'GwenView,' and both of them are slower and harder to interact with.

That said, I don't even recognize Gnome 3 any more, and have zero desire to try it out. I've been running Fluxbox on all of my machines (the ones with displays, in any case) since Gentoo and Fedora Core were the cool distros of choice, and there's just no reason to run anything else. Similar to XFCE, the Flux developers don't rush anything, and aren't adding features just for the hell of it. It's light-weight and pixel-thrifty enough to run on my netbook, and works similarly just fine on my more powerful desktops. And I get to customize everything in text files, no messing with wizards or configuration widgets, and when I need to provision a new machine, I just have to copy my prefs directory and all of my keyboard shortcuts and app-specific settings are ready to go.

But XFCE seems neat, if you're into that kind of thing.

Mmmmm Fluxbox...

I'm with you there, except I enable slight transparency on my unfocused windows, where my hardware can handle that sort of thing.

Keyboard shortcuts to do /everything/ - not just run programs, but maximize (horizontal, vertical, full screen,) shade (collapse to title bar like OS9,) half-screen maximize (Like you get in Win 7 by dragging to the edge of the screen,) toggle window dressing (title bar, window border,) and even one to ssh to my web development box and restart httpd.

And the best thing about Fluxbox is that I'll never get into the situation where I get forced to learn a new interface, which doesn't seem fun or productive or anything. Plus there's no temptation to collect a huge mess of icons on my desktop, since Fluxbox doesn't offer them (though you can get some 3rd party software to provide clutter if necessary.)

Apparently you haven't spent much time in San Francisco...

"""Sounds a bit of an overkill knee jerk reaction from the authorities to me."""

Actually sounds like a pretty typical reaction for this region... But it's OK, since the general population is exactly as insane as the politicians.

...

I can only imagine you were thumbs-downed because your idea isn't really useful. First, if you were worried about security, you shouldn't be using an OS that offers a defragable filesystem. And if you were using a decent OS, it would be trivial to store your Firefox temp files wherever you want, through mount points or symlinks.

But mostly, thumb drives are crap. You're usually lucky to get 2MB/s sequential write on most of them, and that will add significant latency to your browsing, even on relatively slow connections. And a thumbdrive is about the last thing you should be using if you're worried about security.

Also, though I can't be bothered to figure out, I would be willing to bet that you /can/ change the profile path in Firefox, with a bit of work, but probably without recompiling.

Not that bad...

I know we pay less for electronics on this side of the Atlantic, but I wouldn't really call E-Readers 'expensive.' I think you can get the cheapest Kindle for under $120, which is about what I spend on gas over 2 weeks' commute - not really out of my price range for a device that I use every day.

I still like books quite a lot, and I still buy first editions from certain authors (Just ordered Stephenson's latest,) nothing is quite like high quality printing on paper.

But I have used my kindle daily for about a year now, and most of your complaints are pretty much off base. Battery life on a Kindle just isn't an issue. I plug mine in maybe once every 3 weeks, when I feel like it's been a while since I charged it. Just a micro-usb cable on my computer at work, which I need for a few other devices anyway.

I've dropped my kindle plenty of times, packed it inconsiderately with hard objects, grabbed it with muddy/oily hands and covered it in finger prints, etc. Aside from a little extra flexability in the case, where I presume I snapped off a plastic clip or two, and a bit of a dent on a corner, it works perfectly. The screen isn't glass, so it hasn't broken, and scratches barely show up at all.

I solve most of the other problems you mention by mostly avoiding paying for the content I read. I'm sure enterprising minds could figure out how that might work.

And I don't "need" 500 books (it would get quite tiring browsing that many,) but it is nice to have quite a varied selection in my jacket pocket. I never know what I'll want to read next, and I tend to finish books frequently, I'm glad that I'm never really short of books.

I will say that the regular kindle is pretty poor for reading scanned PDFs (especially since these tend to be textbooks, with quite a lot of text,) and the idea of e-textbooks in general bothers me, since, when I need textbooks, I generally need no less than 6 of them at a time, with a handful of bookmarks (rulers, string, other books) in each. That sort of use case is quite tricky on one screen, no matter how big it is.

That doesn't work everywhere...

"""If the sun isn't overhead, I should probably be sleeping."""

I would advise you not to travel too close to either of the poles with that theory : -)

Probably not the drives you're looking for

If you only want one or two, and not enough to fill at least a few 1U boxen, then just get yourself whatever Sandforce drive looks best this week. You really won't be able to tell the difference in a workstation, aside from the presence of a giant pile of cash which you didn't spend on bleeding edge enterprise tech.

Won't take a weekend

If you're writing data which the drive cannot magic too much (IE don't write blocks of zeros, or repeating patterns) then, under a random (sequential too, probably, but I've never bothered running quite such a useless test) write test, from a fresh drive, you'll inevitably see a drop in performance once you've written one drive capacity (In your case 60GB.) Since the drive should be quite fast while it's fresh (secure erase to re-freshen) this does not take long at all. And since your drive doesn't have much spare capacity (60GB advertised, 64GiB actual, call that 14%, which is low for a SandForce drive,) it should look quite ugly once you've run it out of already-erased blocks. If you run it for a weekend, I imagine the performance you end up with will make you cry a little bit.

This is why we use TRIM. Without TRIM, you'll fill up all but the 14% spare blocks, even at low write speed. With TRIM, any empty space on your filesystem should be available as erased blocks, though if you're writing full speed, the drive probably won't have time to process the TRIMs.

@Nigel 11

"""So implement that command on SSD firmware (or use it, if it's there). I'd expect that drive-erase on flash memory ought to be an awful lot faster. If I remember right, a flash erase operation is much faster than either read or write."""

As far as I've seen, every SSD from the last few years has this, though I haven't looked at any of the really low end consumer controllers. And it is fast. Some SSDs take /up to/ 2 minutes. Some return in seconds. From what I can tell, the speed depends on the architecture of the drive, whether they can use the bulk NAND erase commands or they have to do it page by page.

Plus, as far as I've heard, NAND cells don't have memory like a magnetic bit (Where you can tell that a 1 used to be a 0 because it's slightly less magnetic than a 1 that was a 1 before) so an erase should ultimately destroy everything, without requiring multiple overwrite passes.

Also, the drives which store data encrypted on the NAND chips (If you securely lock the controller, people could pull the chips off and read directly... so nice controllers store things encrypted) generally toss the old key and generate a new one on secure erase. So even if someone read the data, they'd be hard pressed to decrypt it.

I think that the original complaint about securely deleting info is that if you don't want to wipe the whole drive, just a file or two, you're a bit out of luck, since those over writes will land on entirely different blocks. (Store your sensitive files encrypted, maybe?)

It's just a patent...

"""It's still possible to work on the genes, it's just not possible to insert the gene into a bacterial plasmid and produce shed loads of the protein it codes for."""

My understanding of patents (admittedly I think about them in the scope of mechanisms, not molecules) is that patents only grant you the right to prevent another party from selling the thing you've patented. IE If party A patents a widget, party B can make (and give away, or use them internally) a million of them, and party A can't stop them. This is why, for instance, Microsoft sued TomTom for using patented code within the Linux kernel, instead of suing the kernel devs. Since the kernel devs give the code away for free, patents don't grant MS any ability to sue them.

In any case, that would indicate to me that you could produce all the protein you wanted, as long as you didn't sell it.

The entertaining thing to do here would be to immediately patent all possible uses for the DNA which aren't specified in the original patent, just to irritate the patent holder, and for the chance of screwing them in the future. Yes, you can patent a new use for a previously-patented object/substance/etc.

(IANAL)

Never

"""and when are they going to have AA/AAA sizes to power other consumer kit?"""

Short answer: Never.

Long answer: Cell voltage depends on the chemicals inside the battery. Your standard Alkaline battery runs at 1.5V, and a rechargeable NiCd or NiMH will do 1.2V - close enough. Unfortunately most lithium-ion batteries produce around 4V per cell, and I imagine that lots of consumer electronics which expect 3V would not get along well on 8V. Not for long, in any case.

Exactly

"""Science uses a process called "The Scientific Method" in which theories which match the data become accepted until data arises that disproves them. That has been how science has worked for as long as it has existed."""

Which is my problem with the whole thing - the data, frequently, is massaged into fitting the theory, which is the wrong way round. Another important bit of "The Scientific Method" is peer review (On every step from data collection to conclusions,) which has been a bit unimpressive thus far.

Something that I know for sure is that science isn't done by politicians, governments, or whoever else is writing the checks - there are far too many conflicts of interest in this field for me to take much of anything seriously.

So I guess I'll keep on with my "Anti-science" position until I see some actual "Science" done. Anyone who believes absolutely in either side of this current debacle is clearly a bit short in the "Critical Thinking and Analysis" department.

Not really...

"""Ultra-stiff = brittle."""

If you're thinking in terms of metal, then that's true, to an extent. But it's absolutely wrong when you're talking about composites, which I imagine is what they used for these blades. I imagine that small arms fire would cause some combination of a hole and some delamination, but the nature of the material tends to prevent the propagation of fractures, when designed properly.