Re: Fail and fail hard
> If you are relying on HDD soft failure modes preserve your precious snowflake pictures it is you who has hard failed. Redundancy.
...which is much more feasible if you are not paying 4x the price you really need to.
2525 publicly visible posts • joined 26 Jan 2009
> it became apparent that unless you have a burning desire to record and keep for posterior every single episode of East Enders
Even a machine that's used for light gaming and the occasional bit of web surfing is still going to need a significant amount of drive space. Significant meaning an amount that is EXPENSIVE if you are only considering SSDs. It really doesn't take much in terms of personal media files or just GAMES to fill up a smaller drive.
Going strictly SSD only makes sense if you're made of money or the device is only intended to be a terminal connecting to some other machine with a decent amount of storage.
It's funny you should mention that because enterprise storage vendors have had "tiered storage" for many years now. This is not a new problem. These dynamics exist even within the same disk technology (namely magnetic HDD). There's pretty much always been a cost versus speed tradeoff.
Just add various "grades" of SSD into the mix using the tech that's already there.
...again: not news.
This is old news. I was working with SSD storage back in 2001. The same issues and limitations existed then as they do now. People and companies are not made of money. Some big talking amateurs like to talk about how money doesn't matter but it does. It's a inescapable part of engineering.
Any solution you pose for any problem needs to be worth the cost.
That doesn't change just because it's 2014 and some blogger can get his hands on SSD tech now.
My kid is also not bothered by the whole idea of using a phone as a remote. This is good because he lost one of the Roku remotes. It's a bit more awkward than a real remote but still usable.
It's interesting that someone dismisses this idea in principle because it's basically the big thing with Apple's streamer.
> It sounds like, at the moment, you are better off getting an old Nintendo Wii off eBay.
Nope. I had the in-laws setup with a Wii. The moment they saw my Roku the were like "why didn't you ever tell me about this. Buy me one of these."
"Hacking a Wii" isn't even an option there.
The Wii is a different tool for a different job.
Exactly. With a "smart" TV you are effectively forced to pay for crap you don't want or need. The built in media features are pants. The thing is likely spying on you too. It's far better to not waste the resources (carbon footprint and whatnot) and just let people buy the STB of their choice.
When I bought my "smart" TV, the price premium was the same as one of my HTPCs.
That TV certainly didn't deliver a comparable level of extra utility.
I'm fine with that as long as the cops are disarmed too.
They are also civilians with insufficient training or discipline to be trusted with "military weapons" if the average citizen isn't. If anything, the cops need to be de-militarized first.
> At some point, I bought two Macs. I could barely stand the usability of their desktop compared to my traditional Linux environments
Same here. I used Macs as Linux based HTPCs back when that made more sense. Tech moved along quickly and those Minis quickly became obsolete. After that, I had some Macs to play with so I could properly put MacOS through it's paces.
Suddenly I wasn't interested in recommending Macs to rubes anymore. I was far less impressed with MacOS and Apple software than I thought I would be.
Although, being stuck using Apple hardware is the single biggest disadvantage of using MacOS. Apple does it's best to ignore sound engineering decisions to favor unmaintainable novelty form factors.
This blast from the past 80s style soldered on RAM is just more of Apple's usual nonsense.
> They don't market it as a server now but why would that need upgradable RAM,
Even my last Atari didn't have it's RAM soldered onto the main board.
A machine doesn't need to be a server. Maintainability and repairability is useful for ANY kind of machine. This is especially true given the fact that OS upgrades tend to demand more out of existing hardware. Plus tech tends to get cheaper over time making various kinds of upgrades more feasible.
> Just because all these people have a different opinion doesn't mean we have to sit back and let them spew all this bullsh*t all over the internet...
Yes. Actually it does. Otherwise it's not free speech.
It's not free speech if it's only the things you personally approve of.
This stupid sh*t is why we had to flee to another continent.
> Last time I tried Linux and attempted to install Firefox I first had to find an installer for the distribution I was using.
It sounds like you were going out of your way to make things harder than necessary.
Although Linux download file types are really no worse than comparable WinDOS equivalents. Something like Firefox works the same way. If you are whining about Linux being hard then you're whining about WinDOS being hard.
> And yet you're preaching a UNIX-like separation of OS and GUI? It hasn't worked to push Linux into the mainstream, why would it work here?
The total LACK of a GUI never stopped WinDOS from being ripped out of the mainstream.
Linux not being in the mainstream has nothing to do with it's particular characteristics. MS-DOS had the market completely tied up before a single line of Linux was ever written. Actually it was the dominance and crapulence of MS-DOS that inspired Linux to begin with.
No. People have always been too fixated on running things like Lotus-123. They tolerated MS-DOS in order to do it even when better and cheaper options were legion.
The Windows 8 debacle even demonstrates how this is the case. The majority tolerate Windows for it's ecosystem despite the fact that the OS itself is a festering pile.
Microsoft BARELY has to acknowledge the needs or desires of it's customers.
> However ... “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses” as Henry Ford said.
Except this isn't some primitive physical item that is still inferior to what it's trying to replace.
This is software. It doesn't wear out and it's easy to change. Enabling your "Model-T" doesn't require shooting everybody's horse.
...pretty much.
The Netflix versions of these are great until you realize that they are low quality or they have been "widescreened". Then you want to go and use your own copy.
TV in general has this problem. It seems to apply equally to broadcast TV, cable TV, and streaming services.
...and to that point specifically Jobs and Woz were no Henry Ford.
Apple kit has always been overpriced since day one. If anything, Apple is more like the pre-Ford luxury automakers like Mercedes. That's certainly the comparison modern fanboys want to make now.
The Ford of computing is more along the likes of Commodore or Sinclair.
If it were only up to Apple computing would have gone nowhere. The masses would never be able to afford it.
Yes. This is something that the "progress for the sake of progress" crowd just doesn't seem to get. In the domains where Unix has it's most powerful stronghold, the one overriding consideration is reliability. It doesn't have to be fast It doesn't have to be fancy. It doesn't have to be usable by a trained monkey. It needs to be reliable.
It's simply insane that it's a server vendor that's pushing this crap.
> "Why do I get the feeling that a lot of the people that want to keep sysvinit have never tried to read a service script, let alone write one."
Not only have I read and written service scripts but I have done so quite successfully. They're just standard shell scripts.
On the other hand, my first attempt to alter Upstart scripts resulted in an unbootable system.
Individual init scripts can be as simple or as complex as you want them to be. Init itself is very simple and difficult to sabotage without a lot of highly focused effort.
It sounds like someone has an axe to grind. I looks like some fanboy wants to distract from the fact that the PC part of Apple's business is now only 15% while mobile devices in general account for more than 2 thirds of Apple revenue based on the fanboy's own numbers.
Apple is an ARM shop pushing consumer electronics. It ceased to be a PC company a long time ago.
> I can't imagine HBO going to market for less than netflix,
HBO already has a price structure with cable that places them at a higher price point than Netflix. I can't see them lowering that significantly. I am not sure they need to. They are already the classic ala carte premium cable option and always have been.
Once you hit 30, you have an increasingly greater risk of conceiving a genetically defective child. In some professions, you're barely going to be established by that age. In the US, you will likely be bogged down by student loans until that age (if not later).
Preserving the fresh eggs rather than trying to make do with the spoiled ones makes a lot of sense medically.
I don't stream anything from my mobile device over an actual mobile network. The restrictions are just too draconian. If my phone could pick up something like conventional radio, that would not be such a bad thing. People like to call it a dinosaur but it (broadcast) is still a much better solution to the problem. Individual streams just don't scale.
The idea of minaturization in general was pretty common in the 50s. Pretty much anyone that read sci-fi in the 60s, 70s, or 80s could see stuff like the iDevices coming and probably imagined a number of their own that looked like "shameless Apple copies".
I thought up some "shameless Apple copies" of my own in the 80s. (Inspired by Asimov)
It doesn't matter if they "stole" it or "bought" it. The result is the same. They cribbed it from someone else. They did not invent it. They merely took someone else's stuff and reused it.
Apple like Microsoft are both great at watching the innovators flounder. Then they swoop down like vultures when everyone else has done the hard work trying to push the technology forward. They steal or buy stuff and then run the real risk takers out of business.
> "Now I know many techies don't have much in the way of creative capacity."
I would rather that form followed function and that "design" was kept out of it. I would prefer that the practical considerations come first and the visual nonsense is only applied later once the important details are dealt with.
"Designers" are so full of themselves claiming ownership on simple things that require no real creativity at all.
This very article articulated problems with various brands and models of drives for a particular NAS. If the entire unit goes out, how do you know that you will ever be able to get a completely compatible replacement chassis? That's never a problem with just running a regular OS.
You don't have to write your own NAS software. It's already baked into most modern operating systems.
Building your own puts you in complete control. Simple mods (like SMART alerts) are possible without adding much more bother. The problem with NAS kit is that it represents a market segment that already has to be in the top 1% of geekiness just to be aware of the product.
> If you have a problem with a mac, you will find people with the exact same problem, and among them you'll find those who have found a solution.
...unless you manage to use computers in a remotely interesting or creative fashion. Then the wagons start to circle and you get berated and accused of being a pirate.
It sounds like someone that can't handle being judged based on his merits.
He's been judged harshly by the community so he has to make up some nonsense and lash out. Ironically he's engaging in exactly the sort of juvenile nonsense he's trying to accuse the community at large of. He's making up baseless and wildly inflammatory accusations.
He's trying to exploit similar current media narratives.
Pulseaudio is only tolerable because it's trivial to get rid of. If you have some stripped down HTPC machine, you can easily and quickly ditch pulseaudio. SystemD doesn't seem to be like that. It seems to have it's hooks into a lot of things at a low level that makes ripping it out a fatal proposition.
The key feature of Unix is that you can ignore a component that you don't like.
> Apart from it's lack of market share for anything other than web servers and embedded devices/mobile phones.
You mean any market that didn't already have a deeply entrenched monopoly before Linux ever even existed?
Thriving everywhere except DOS legacy apps is not at all bad.
> No I don't expect you to use the soft keyboard, any more than I expect you to click on the onscreen keyboard on a PC.
Then you simply distorted the tablet until it was something else entirely... a quasi-PC with parts from the last decade (or the one before that) and less choices about available software and less ability to directly control the system.
You're describing a very dedicated attempt to slam a square peg into a round hole regardless of whether it makes an sense or not.
No. The it's the Apple product that introduced the Wal-mart price tag. There is a natural price for these things and Apple found it. They also figured out what kind of cheap hardware they need to put into it in order to make the price point. Since they didn't have a decades long desktop monopoly, they weren't tied to the x86. As a failure at the desktop, they were free to ignore it.
There simply may be no "Herrods" niche when it comes to tables. The same goes for video streamers. Google tried selling a "premium" product and got slapped down in the same way Microsoft did.
It's possible that the price collapse in PCs got everyone used to the idea that hardware should be cheap making it an uphill battle for ANY "premium" option.