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Yep. I did mention that newer drives with few samples reporting were not as trustworthy as older drives with a large number of samples reporting. Yep. I disagree. Sometimes it's true, but the problem is that different drives sold by the same retailer can take different paths through the...

Hmm, what does the SR Drive Reliability survey have to say about the Raptors? 27th percentile (n=167). Aha! It told us so :mrgrn: Aw, isn't it fun to give ol' Tannin a poke? Huh? What's that you say old man? Something about a stopped clock being right twice a day? ;)

It doesn't have to be the high-end enterprise server market, does it? I think the Raptor was aimed at the low-end / value market.

Ah, yes, memories of Stats... Indeed, you are correct, but we're often presented with imperfect data collected via flawed sampling in the real world and have to make do with it, drawing tentative conclusions where we can. IMO, it's better than nothing. (blasphemy coming from the mouth of a...

Now why would you say that? Remember, one man's sandpaper is another man's toilet paper :lol: But seriously, I know what you mean. It is not even remotely definitive, especially for newer drives with fewer units reporting (< 3 years and < 30 units), but IMO, it's better than nothing. In fact...

Just noticed that my other drives are also rated very well for reliability: Quantum FB+ LM (98th percentile -- 2nd highest rated drive after the X15) and the Atlas 10k3 (75th percentile). The lone black mark appears to be the Maxtor DM+9 (21st percentile) -- a drive which I bought on sale and...

The funny thing is that I don't bother pampering my drives like many others do. You have people monitoring the temperature of their drives, using drive coolers, people with multiple fans, one or two of which are aimed at the drives in order to minimize case and drive temps. Many people also...

Heh, all WD drives here, and they are all quiet and reliable (well, not as quiet as an FDB Cuda, but no offensive whining noises). Your delivery guys really must hate you :) Granted, my 4 year old WD153BA is rated as one of the most reliable drives ever made, according to the reliability...

Thanks for the clarification...

If you're going to spend a buttload of cash on a transportation device, why not get a timeshare on a private jet instead?

Yes, last-mile bandwidth is often not the bottleneck at all, but rather, shared bandwidth at the CO/head-end, inter-network latencies, server capacity, and packet fragmentation/loss. People with broadband are often disappointed at how slow the net can be during prime-time, especially with DSL...

Is it just me or does the ability to tune HDTV not seem useful anywhere you need a digital box (like in much of Canada), as the local cable companies only allow their digital cable boxes to access their network. You would have to use some stupid IR blaster that works with your TV software to...

Perfect. That was exactly what I was looking for. Thank you. BTW, that was some nice JavaScript kung-fu, Will. I dub thee 'Cookie Monster'. ;) So I guess one cannot simply write to a .txt file without including the path, expiry time, and all associated crap that a cookie entails?

e-mail John Chambers directly. He'd fix it ASAP once you remind him that google and various tech and business media outlets would be interested in how poor their reliability and customer service is as they try to convince everyone that their VoIP solutions will approach the PSTN and...

I'd like to be able to prevent my e-mail address from being added to anyone's address book unless they are licensed. Who knows how many parasites are firing off e-mails with my address in the To/From field(s) drawn from somebody's address book. Eventually, despite how careful i am with my e-mail...

A question for you web developers out there... How might one capture data from a form for logging purposes (e.g., tracking who signed-in to an intranet page by capturing the username from the username field) without the benefit of server-side scripting or SQL (using only client-side JScript)...

I recommend the following post as a great jumping point to a bunch of good threads on RAID 0 and benchmarking. IMO, without understanding the limitations inherent in benchmarking and without understanding the theory behind localization, concurrent accesses, and the impact of stripe sizes and...

I can hear the heckling now: "... why, it's so easy even a monkey could do it!" :lol:

Don't remember the lumens, but I bet it was pretty low. Those high CRI tubes are usually a little dimmer than their 62 CRI bulk commercial cousins. And yes, they were 40 W T-12's, so you could probably ballpark it by using the GE Sunshine tube as a proxy.

Went to HD today and picked up a bunch of PAR20 & 30 halogen floods. I noticed that they also sell Philips Natural Color T-12 48" flourescents that have awesome specs: CCT of 5000 K and a CRI of 92! Even better than the Alto Daylight Deluxe (6500 K, CRI 84), and the GE Sunshine tubes (5000 K...

Separate partitions are not good... they force the heads to seek a possibly large minimum distance from one partition to the other. In comparison, an integrated OS/Apps partition can have the OS and Apps files practically next to each other so as to minimize seek distance of the heads.

Argghh! Instant messaging, the bane of modern society! :) Seriously, I haven't used IM since about 2000, when the novelty wore off ICQ. I found it rather annoying having people harrass you online when you were trying to do work... but then why don't you just put it on invisible mode, you ask...

Yeah, it's disappointing when your fellow techies are idiots sometimes. I've been getting a shitload of virus-laden e-mails lately. Thank god I have admin rights to my PC at work and updated my virus defs first thing when the news first broke. Even with Tivoli desktop mgmt services and daily...

Exxxcellent...

Now if they could only get rid of that diesel clatter... (would the reduction in combustion noise speak to this issue?)

SR has been kinda flaky all night/morning for me...

I have a cousin that was really condescending towards me. One time at dinner, she wanted to make fun of me when she found out I was a big investor at the time (mid-90's at the start of the tech boom). Her: "You invest in stocks?" (chuckle) Me: "Absolutely." Her: "What companies?" Me: (at...

OMG, that is a ridiculous amount of torque! ... and in the rpm range where you need it, too (1500-4000 rpm). Drool...

DB, let me know if I can be of service to you, as I live in Toronto.

sechs, you are forgetting about the fact that sugars and carbs are the most efficient triggers of insulin release in the body. This is not a good thing. Insulin is a powerful anabolic hormone that promotes storage of glycogen and fat. Allow me to recycle the post I wrote on carbs, sugars, and...

tech-savvy pirates? now i've seen everything! :)

Excellent article, Buck. When it's all about economics in a low margin business, you do what you gotta do, I guess, unless you want to go bankrupt...

Personal experience, I see? ;)

ROTFLMAO! I almost was in tears that was so funny... (of course, I empathize with your aggravating experience with the evil tech support drones)

I would have rather upgraded my CPU for the amount of $ you spent, but any modern CPU would need DDR anyways.

I am pleased to report that Knoppix 3.3 is working surprisingly well on the first try on this desktop: Gigabyte 7n400 Pro 2 nForce 2 board, Matrox G450. Even watching TV on the desktop as I type this into Moz 1.5. There are a few glitches/annoyances, to be sure, but the fact that it works is a...

Ah, yes. Forbidden fruit. I know the feeling being surrounded by beautiful young coeds, still radiant and, as jtr said, not yet made bitter by life. Ever find yourself applying the "n/2 + 7 rule" to see if you would still be in the "acceptable dating range"? :) I may have on occasion ;) Hey...

I swore off TIVO/VIVO PC's back in 2001 because of all the problems I had with the ATI AIW and TV Wonder stuff. Now in 2004, I very much want to try again with TIVO/VIVO HTPC's due to my recent purchase of an HDTV, but I fear that the flakiness and tempermentalness is still very much alive and...

Kobe beef, perhaps? I've had a Kobe ribeye a couple times. The outer inch or two wasn't the best because it was a little overcooked, but the inner 4 inches or so was really good. Worth the price (almost double the price of a typical high-end ribeye)? Maybe not, but it's one of life's luxuries...

Just installed Winamp 5.01 to try it out. It's a little unstable, but otherwise, it's not too bad... especially since it supports 2.x and not 3.x plug-ins! HA! I guess they realized nobody used Winamp 3 or developed for it either. Has anybody used the Advanced Visualization Studio (AVS)? And if...

Sorry to trivialize this by delving into demographics, but I can imagine that it would be hard to meet someone when the population of Alaska is something like 75% male and 25% female. Reminds me of grad school.

Can't wait for the next one...

I define "original alternative browser" as Opera. Nutscrape and IE were the dominant browsers at the time. Then along came Opera! As Merc said, NCSA Mosaic was not really an "alternative", as it basically was "it". And Netscape was more or less mainstream as well. If anything, IE 3.02 was an...

P.S. In Toronto, we usually get average daytime temps of -2 C and nighttime temps of -10 C in January. We do get cold spells every now and then, but this year it seems like ever since the 2nd week of January, it has been extremely cold (relative to our usual)... the cold weather is expected to...

It's about 10 deg C too cold for me. Not only is it cold outside when waiting for the streetcar (bus), but even when I'm at home it's cold with hardwood floors and floor-to-ceiling wall-to-wall glass in my living room and bedroom. You can feel the cold straight through both the windows and the...

Ah, yes. Dr. Feelgood.

Man, I've just about had it with this winter. No end to this cold weather in sight: http://www.theweathernetwork.com/weather/cities/can/Pages/CAON0696.htm Jake, save me a spot in the kennel. I'm moving down to Australia for the next month.

An admirable attempt, but rather limited to Linux browsers. IMO the top contenders including the Windows platform includes these 5 browsers: 1. Moz 1.6 2. Firebird 0.8 3. Opera 7.23 4. myIE2 0.9.13 5. Avant Browser 8.02.211 I am fairly certain that no matter which of these five you use, you...

Yeah, I heard about that. Anyone see The Daily Show with John Stewart the other day? He was joking about how cold it was in Canada and said "don't worry guys. We're burning fossil fuels at an amazing rate and we'll take care of that cold weather you guys are having up there in no time!"

The wind was ridiculous today. I was doing some banking today downtown and honestly found it difficult to walk forwards against the wind. I think it was around 50 km/h (30 mph) as measured at the airport, but it may have been more downtown with the "wind tunnel effect" with the wind being...