Search results

  1. J

    Something Random

    I nearly passed out from the heat just bringing in the garbage pails. Walking around looking for a doctor is a non-starter. Can't leave my mom alone for that long anyway. I'll just have to deal with it as best I can. The swelling gets somewhat better if I don't eat.
  2. J

    Something Random

    I have terrible swelling on the left side of my face since dinner last night and a fever. I noticed a few mosquito bites the day before. I hope it's not Zika.
  3. J

    10TB helium drive

    http://disq.us/p/18bpeih http://www.zdnet.com/article/how-higher-rpm-hard-drives-rip-you-off/ http://www.waterworld.com/articles/print/volume-24/issue-4/departments/pump-tips-techniques/operating-pumps-at-slower-speeds-increases-reliability.html...
  4. J

    10TB helium drive

    I don't think hard drives were particularly reliable 30 years ago. They were a relatively new product. It took a while to get it right. I want to say hard drive reliability probably peaked before hard drives became commodity items, say in the late 1990s. However, reliability didn't degrade...
  5. J

    Something Random

    Congratulations Howell and Bozo! Not sure I'd make it with someone for 4 days, let alone 4 years or 45 years.
  6. J

    10TB helium drive

    But if they standardize on 7200RPM those won't be available, correct? As it is the pickings for 5400 RPM are pretty slim if you stick to decent brand HDDs like HGST, Toshiba, or Samsung. Seagate and WD are crap as far as I'm concerned and Backblaze's tests seem to bear this out. I'll just wait...
  7. J

    10TB helium drive

    The only reason to buy HDD over SSD nowadays is lower cost per TB. Much of that advantage disappears when you look at enterprise drives. And then if use RAID1 the price advantage gets cut in half. Using Coug's quote for the 10TB drive and buying a pair to use in RAID1 gives you $1320US for 10TB...
  8. J

    10TB helium drive

    The main problem with high speeds is less reliability. Nothing I read would inspire much confidence in me to trust 10TB of data to 5 or 6 disks spinning at 120 times per second. It seems like drives are failing much more often than they used to because the HDD manufacturers are pushing the...
  9. J

    Tesla doomed

    You could say the same thing about why car makers haven't made electric cars. Big, established companies often have an inertia to doing things differently. The car companies also have considerable investments in tooling for ICE vehicles, plus they get kickbacks from oil companies. Given both...
  10. J

    10TB helium drive

    I agree with standardizing on one RPM to avoid having multiple product lines, but from where I stand we should be going to 5400 RPM or less, maybe even 3600 RPM, for power, noise, and reliability reasons. Large HDDs these days solely function as bulk storage where access times really don't...
  11. J

    Tesla doomed

    Electric buses and trucks are potentially way more important than electric cars if we want to reduce the noise and pollution problems in large cities. And any autonomy which reduces the number of vehicles needed and/or parking is another bonus. We made a horrible mistake in the last 60 years...
  12. J

    Something Random

    Ouch! I didn't realize you had been married for that long. For what it's worth, my parents spent nearly 45 years in a bad marriage, basically the best years of their lives. My mom endured it for her children. We would have been in poverty otherwise. She went out on disability in her early 40s...
  13. J

    Tesla doomed

    I could see what you described working fairly well during off-peak hours. However, in NYC at least, most buses on fixed routes are standing room only for much of the day, so probably not much efficiency to be gained by going to smaller vehicles for most of the day (i.e. 7AM through about 7 or 8...
  14. J

    Something Random

    I think this was the first time he mentioned it. I don't recall reading anything about him not being married until yesterday. I'm always sorry to see a potential union between two people not work out. On the bright side, at least no children are involved. Children always complicate a split. I...
  15. J

    Tesla doomed

    The suburbs in general receive a massive amount of direct and indirect subsidies for roads over and above whatever portion of taxes their residents pay which goes for urban transportation. Also, in the context of bus service, the largest cost by far is labor, not the cost of the buses. An...
  16. J

    Tesla doomed

    That's universally true in large cities. I typically even beat out buses on my bike late nights when there's little traffic. The bus needs to stop for passengers and red lights. I don't. Even if I only average 15 mph I'll often handily beat buses late nights. During the day it's no contest...
  17. J

    Tesla doomed

    In the suburbs probably true. In large, dense cities we'll still use conventional buses on fixed routes simply because the street space doesn't exist to replace one bus with 50 or 75 autonomous vehicles going to different destinations. I've heard the idea of autonomous vehicles making mass...
  18. J

    Tesla doomed

    NYC has already been using hybrid buses for at least the last 5 years. Electric buses are probably the next step once the charging infrastructure is in place. Buses often sit for 10 or 20 minutes at the end terminal. That might give enough time to replenish the charge lost in between terminals...
  19. J

    Something Random

    There is some value in cooking/cleaning. There may or may not be value in bringing over other girls, depending upon whether or not they're hooked up, addicts themselves, or attractive/unattractive. I hate to say this but I'm not so sure about that. Right now with my mother going through the...
  20. J

    Something Random

    The real problem here is if anything happens to her you may well end up with a child you don't want and are ill-equipped to take care of. Does she have family members who will take the child if anything happens to her? I understand why you want to help her. Indeed, if not for my parents letting...
  21. J

    Politics

    That makes two of us. Should make for interesting reading.
  22. J

    Politics

    I tend to think Putin would rather have Hillary as President. Trump with his America first rhetoric strikes me as someone who would have his finger on the nuclear button from day one.
  23. J

    SSDs - State of the Product?

    I think we're still on a major learning curve. The raw materials for any kind of semiconductor are ridiculously inexpensive. The real cost is in the process. I have to think as we get better at it, yields will go up and the cost will come way down. The yields for 3D NAND are probably a closely...
  24. J

    SSDs - State of the Product?

    I've heard there's no fundamental physical limit on vertical stacking. There might ultimately be a process limit. In any case, the next few years in storage should be interesting. Obviously cheap, bulk storage will be the last thing to go. HDDs will probably hit some fundamental limit on future...
  25. J

    SSDs - State of the Product?

    If I did that means we have four years to go. It's a pretty fair bet HDDs will mostly be dead in personal computing market by then. How many spindles can that 2TB SSD replace? In many enterprise applications using HDDs they actually use more drives even if capacity isn't needed to spread the...
  26. J

    SSDs - State of the Product?

    This sums things up pretty well: http://www.enterprisestorageforum.com/storage-hardware/ssd-vs.-hdd-performance-and-reliability-1.html The article is two years old however. SSD prices have dropped since then relative to HDD prices, so so of their conclusions may have changed slightly. I think...
  27. J

    Windows 10

    Free disk space is the problem. My boot drive with 7 is a 256GB SSD. I only have about 25 GB right now, and chances are good I'll use 5 to 10 GB in the next few weeks with some work I need to do. I suppose I could get a 512GB SSD, clone my Windows 7 install on it, then install 10 over 7 on the...
  28. J

    Windows 10

    I just checked the minimum requirements. I don't meet them, so the decision is made for me regardless.
  29. J

    Windows 10

    What's the verdict? Install Windows 10 or not before the deadline? I'm leaning towards not because I only have one system new enough to do stuff I need to do on a regular basis. I can't afford to brick it or not have applications I'm using not no longer work. That especially includes my...
  30. J

    Best movie you've seen

    The storm itself was another inconsistency. The atmospheric density at the Martian surface is equivalent to Earth's atmospheric density at 100,000 feet. Winds strong enough to tip over a MAV just don't exist on Mars. In fact, the strongest winds top out at about 60 mph. Given the low air density...
  31. J

    I want to buy a new car

    The only way this concept seems feasible is to have the solar panels either next to the road or above it. Places like NYC can't even maintain asphalt roads to better than third world standards. A road with solar panels would last until ConEd needed to open up the street for some utility repair...
  32. J

    Cycling

    He most likely would have felt a pop if that happened. It happened to me once. I nearly fell on a slippery road, put my leg out to stop the fall, but the leg went too far due to putting it in a pothole I didn't notice. I took six months before the leg felt normal again. :( In retrospect I...
  33. J

    Cycling

    I've had the same thing happen to me from time to time. Usually in my case the cramp will go from tolerable to excruciating when I'll accelerate after needing to slow or stop at an intersection. Sometimes it gets so bad I can't go on, although this rarely happens. Usually I'll just need to...
  34. J

    I want to buy a new car

    Really, there is no viable substitute for gas in aviation on the horizon, other than nuclear power which wouldn't fly (no pun intended) for a whole host of obvious reasons. I seriously hope reduced demand for gas due to widespread adoption of EVs results in perpetually low oil prices. We use...
  35. J

    I want to buy a new car

    Gas is only cheap in the very near term. It's already started ticking up and it's almost a given we'll eventually have carbon taxes which make it even higher. I don't understand why people in this country fail to grasp the concept of historical trends. We react to short-term blips as if they're...
  36. J

    Do you maintain personal secure storage?

    That's playing with fire. Sure, I back up on USB drives too, but I also have copies of my data on two SSDs and one HDD. I should probably also put non-changing stuff on DVD-RWs or DVD-Rs. Nobody should trust their data solely to a thumb drive. I've heard of those things just failing without warning.
  37. J

    I want to buy a new car

    I'm quite sure all the major automakers would do exactly the same things I mentioned if they really wanted to mainstream EVs. They have plenty of people way smarter than either of us. For whatever reason they don't. The businessperson in me might say it's because they invested a lot in tooling...
  38. J

    Something Random

    This one sounds like the best of the bunch, although I haven't bought one yet. It supercedes this one, which is no longer made.
  39. J

    Something Random

    It's a telemarketing scam for sure. Telemarketers posing as the IRS saying you owe money is an ongoing scam. Best bet is to not answer calls from numbers you're not familiar with and/or block them. In fact, get a call blocker. You can safely block certain entire area codes right off, like 100...
  40. J

    I want to buy a new car

    And you'll provide the financing I assume? Tesla is already pretty much doing the same things I would do but they're only one company without the ability at present to produce the same number of vehicles as major auto manufacturers. China will probably be the first to mass market EVs. They have...
  41. J

    Do you maintain personal secure storage?

    The thing is the average person isn't going to use or need enterprise-level drives for backup. They'll probably buy the cheapest external HDD they can find, and then handle it roughly. If it's not their sole means of backing up then that's not an issue but sadly for many people it is. SSDs are...
  42. J

    I want to buy a new car

    First, kudos on getting something which is at least partially EV, although I think Chevy could have done way better than a 40 mile electric only range, and even though I still think the concept of having a gas generator is a unnecessary kludge used to basically compensate for some horrible...
  43. J

    Do you maintain personal secure storage?

    Just my opinion but I've long felt that using only HDDs are a really bad way to store anything you care about, particularly if they're external HDDs which are handled constantly. One slip and the drive could be toast. My own preference is to use solid state (SSD or USB flash drives) and perhaps...
  44. J

    I want to buy a new car

    Repair are a big factor here also. I've read from many sources even with a higher initial purchase price the TCO of EVs is less than ICE cars. With economies of scale from mass production there won't even be a higher initial purchase price for EVs. People won't buy an EV before they need a new...
  45. J

    I want to buy a new car

    I'm talking about the baseline power supply which is mostly nuclear, coal, CNG, and hydroelectric. None of those can easily be throttled down at night, particularly nuclear, so the excess power is there for the taking. Right now we often just burn it up in resistor grids if there are no takers...
  46. J

    I want to buy a new car

    Let's be realistic here. Batteries have their limitations but the oil companies spread a lot of FUD out of self-interest. Apparently you bought into it. Something like 95% of car trips are under 40 miles. Almost all are under 200 miles. Obviously a person who drives 500 miles a day can't use an...
  47. J

    I want to buy a new car

    Amen to that a thousand times over. IMO the only reason for hybrids to exist might be to get a general public resistant to change used to the idea of an electric propulsion system without being dependent upon a battery. And the need for doing this really only exists because of all the FUD spread...
  48. J

    Do you maintain personal secure storage?

    Anything I care about I keep in multiple places on whatever storage media is in common use at the time. Right now I have redundant copies of my important stuff on several USB flash drives, two SSDs, and a 2 TB HDD. If holographic memory cubes became common, I would put a copy of all my data on...
  49. J

    SSDs - State of the Product?

    The charge loss rate is less at colder temperatures. While I don't have any numbers, putting the SSD in a freezer would probably increase the storage time substantially. Also, as Coug said, some large fraction of the people here probably don't need to be concerned about what will happen in 40...
  50. J

    SSDs - State of the Product?

    We still use tape? I thought tape was obsolete over a decade ago. I used to use one of these for back up but it became obsolete as soon as CD-RWs became common. Now USB drives have long made CD-based backup obsolete. The open question however is how long will HDDs remain cheaper per GB by a...
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