>> ^Deano:

Here's an alternative I'm going to buy for around £300 all in that provides a solid state DDR drive that plugs in via SATA.
http://www.hyperossystems.co.uk/07042003/hardware.htm
I already use their software to provide multiple windows systems which works very well but the disk bottleneck is the main issue on any pc you use.


>> ^14703:

Here is the actual manufacturer of those hyperos cards. Acard's ANS-9010 Ram Drive. If you are running a server and want even more performance, I like this card that plugs into a pci express slot Fusion-io's iodrive
Of course the iodrive costs a couple thousand for a some 80GB drive, but it's spec'd to be equivalent in transfer, write and seek time to a bunch of raid SSD's. These are just NAND clusters that beat the speed by acting like a large RAID of small flash memory. It uses software/hardware to overcome some limitation of the number of read/write of NAND and memory keeping the data safe. As it ages, it gets less storage GBs but stay just as fast. It utilizes the bandwidth of the pci-e (x4 iirc).
The Acard ans-9010 ram drive (aka hyperos card) also do raid on a single card which does help a bit when trying to saturate some SATA bandwidth. Check out this comparison for the Acard at the tech report. The input/output benchmarks put a bunch of the other disks down. But, on efficiency, X-25m SSD's kicked the acard's ass because it doesn't use RAM meaning lower consumption/heat and does webserver expectionally well.
Intel X-25m SSD's in raid would prove to be a good combination that won't break the bank as much the more exotic options. After getting a bit intoxicated with the idea of the iodrive and acard ans-9010, it turns out what I want isn't exactly what I need, at least not at that price and definately not for my gaming. All SSDs have the advantage of seek times. The only disadvantage I see with X-25m's, as with other similar flash SSDs are the write times. Reads are hardly ever the problem especially with these built for performance disks.
The guy who does budget will kill you after seeing how much your 6TB Samsung SSD Awesomeness cost to just play with user-end desktop apps. Save the big bucks for the servers that bring in the moolah and server the clients, and even then we can't all prematurely splurge on sexy new toys.
<div><div style="margin: 10px; overflow: auto; width: 80%; float: left; position: relative;" class="convoPiece"> Deano said:<img style="margin: 4px 10px 10px; float: left; width: 40px;" src="http://static1.videosift.com/avatars/d/Deano-s.jpg" onerror="ph(this)"><div style="position: absolute; margin-left: 52px; padding-top: 1px; font-size: 10px;" class="commentarrow">◄</div><div style="padding: 8px; margin-left: 60px; margin-top: 2px; min-height: 30px;" class="nestedComment box">Here's an alternative I'm going to buy for around £300 all in that provides a solid state DDR drive that plugs in via SATA. </div></div></div>

let me see if i understand you both.

Deano, this device is just a device that holds ram, but instead of using it for temporary stoarge, allows for primary storage instead. enough to run the OS and maybe more if you have enough ram on you.

14703, It looks like what you are saying is this device is just a huge chunk of Ram for in between HDD and RAM. except it would not be able to move any files???

>> ^Ryjkyj:

Guys, guys, guys. You're missing the point.
The radiation IS a non-issue. Just like terrorists blowing up your plane is a non-issue. Yes, the idea of a bomb on your plane is scary, but the odds of that happening to you are about the same as you getting cancer from a TSA screening. Which is to say: effectively zero.
PS: Low energy or not, the rays that backscatter machines use are still x-rays. The energy is quantifiable, low or not. So to say that there are no studies on varying amounts of exposure to x-rays is, well...


The problem isn't that TSA screenings all alone are going to cause cancer, but adding this to the cumulative risk factors that people experience throughout their lives simply because some company invented the technology and wanted to sell it is fucked up. A frequent flier who already has multiple risk factors doesn't really need the added exposure. And shouldn't have to be subjected to a thorough groping for not wanting to accumulate additional free radicals twice a week

(i picked twice a week because my mom is a business traveler and she averages about 2 flights a week, 50 weeks a year ...plus with her two weeks off she usually goes on a exotic vacations and flies in and out of various airports world wide, in a given year my mom probably goes through airport security 100-110 times a year, now she's already getting radiation on her flight, what if she had cancer that was in remission or had multiple risk factors of a different nature? since shes in her 60's and has no more risk factor than the average person, I'm not worried about it. But what if she worked the job she does and was in her early 20's? had a strong family history of breast cancer? had already had a few bits of melanoma removed? and like most of the population, was poorly informed about the effects of radiation and unable to make an educated decision about whether or not she wanted to opt out and face the groping? without knowing the math, i'd say her chance of developing cancer in her lifetime had indeed risen and probably exponentially)

of course there are studies about the effects of radiation, but there are not studies about the effects of exposing millions of frequent fliers of various cohorts to a light grazing of xrays all over their bodies a few times a week throughout their careers, and what their chances of cancer look like at the end of their working lives.


i'd say the chances that this is dangerous to someone are far greater than the chance that a terrorist will hijack your flight.

also, it's times like this i wish i knew statistics and wasn't horrible at math.

... that said, exotic cats generally make ABSOLUTELY TERRIBLE PETS!

This reminds me of an 'exotic' feline rescue center I once volunteered at that got nearly a dozen tiger cubs, a few weeks old, from the FBI (taken in a drug raid). Adorable!!!

Disclaimer: I don't claim to be an authority on the topic, I just thought I'd share my musings for any who may be interested

I'm extremely surprised that none of the physicist could give a remotely satisfactory answer to the beam-hand interaction question. I realise that the energies involved are extreme so weird things may happen and they obviously specialise in more fundamental aspects of the physics but I would have expected all of them to know at least a little bit about the physics of interactions between charged particle radiation beams with solid objects or water.

I only learnt a bit about proton beam therapy used in radiation oncology during my Masters in Medical Physics, and I'll admit I've forgotten a lot of it and can't remember all the calculations or parameters involved, but it seems to me like this would be a similar although perhaps more extreme case. Ultimately you would be receiving some dose of ionising radiation, the amount would depend on various things.

As solid as our hand appears to be it is still mostly empty space on an atomic scale, and there is a very high likelihood that protons in the beam will not collide with anything as they pass through. This is particularly true at very high energies, I forget exactly why... either due to momentum or the time spent in close enough proximity with atomic nuclei or something, but protons interact relatively weakly until they lose enough energy through the few interactions that do occur, at which point the likelihood of further interactions rises exponentially dumping all the remaining energy very rapidly. It is interesting to note here that at medically relevant energies 100-200Mev (17-35 thousand times lower than the LHC) this energy dump requires between 5 and 20cm tissue for the initial slow down to take place before the beams slow enough to dump the bulk of their energy. Your hand is at most a few centimetres thick and barely sufficient enough to do this at 100MeV let alone 3.5TeV. Graph which illustrates this.

Anyway, energy from the beam would be deposited due to some deflections and collisions and result in ionisation of some atoms either directly by collisions or indirectly by xray/gamma rays produced in the interactions. The few direct collisions between protons in the beam and atomic nuclei would also likely result in exotic particles and radiation further contributing to the dose you receive.

Other things to consider are whether the protons that shoot through your hand are still following sensible enough trajectories for the LHC to bend them around for another pass. At near light speeds they would be shooting around the LHC many thousands of times per second so even if the chances of interactions occuring in your hand are slim, each proton that manages to make another pass rather than shoot off on a random path that takes it out of the LHC, will have many opportunities to interact and deposit energy.

So depending on just how many protons are in the beam, and how much energy they dump into your hand, the effect could be anywhere from increased chance of cancer to a radiation burn of some sort if not a hole in your hand (although I suspect that most extreme scenario is unlikely).

All of this assumes my understanding isn't completely void at the energies involved which, if it is, may explain why the physicists didn't mention any of this.

sounds like some exotic, tropical bird's mating call

I like the story that the Yippie Paul Krassner tells of the time he dropped acid with Groucho Marx. About an hour after taking his dose, the elderly comedian called his personal assistant, instructing him/her to bring to the mansion every sort of exotic fruit he could find.

Great crash course in "exotic fruit" as defined by us westerners

I'm a fan of Billy Holiday, so I'll say I would have also enjoyed the title "Strange Fruit"

I've had an exotic fruit that was green, slimy and seeded (like a cucumber) on the inside, but I can't remember what it's called. Anyone know? It's starting to bug me now...

EDIT: It's the Kiwano melon. And it's delicious, imo.

>> ^NetRunner:

>> ^dystopianfuturetoday:
What if we joined forces? Why don't we 4 little fleas start a movement? We could do it right here.

I'm all for it. Except...what exactly would the movement be about?
When I shout "WHAT DO WE WANT?" What's the callback?


We should keep it simple. I suggest the going after military spending, which is probably the one thing we all agree on most. Think of all the money that goes towards building new, exotic and sexy ways of killing people, futile wars in the middle east, military aid to violent and oppressive nations, propping up corrupt dictators and regimes, WW2 era bases in Japan and Germany. Wasteful and counterproductive at a time when people are hurting in this country. I do not wish to take anything away from the soldiers, no pay cuts or cuts in medical or retirement benefits.

Is this something we can all get on board with?

What do we want? A government that works for the people, not war industry!

>> ^spawnflagger:
that's Natalie (communitychannel).
She's ethnically Vietnamese, but grew up and lives in Sydney Australia.
one of the funniest people on youtube, IMHO.


Being from North America, my exotic appreciation subroutines are melting down.

>> ^NinjaInHeat:

An American father and his daughter catching giant lizards in Saudi Arabia, the father knows exactly what species it is and what to expect its behavior to be, some how I doubt they're just harassing animals for shits and giggles. All I can say is that most people should be so lucky to experience such a childhood, quality if I've ever seen it.


I know what a uromastyx is, but I wouldn't sit there chasing it all over the place, holding it down for no reason. The thing is like a giant horned lizard only more exotic. What I don't understand is why it was way out in the middle of nowhere like that--no shelter or food can be seen in the video, and it was obviously feeling very vulnerable. If this reptile were gravid, it's likely that kind of stress could kill the babies.

Do shit with your kids, fine, but teach them to respect nature, not abuse it.

Dogs, Wolves, Foxes, Coyotes from reproducing?

This guy is full of shit.

Wolf Hybrid, boom in your face fucktard.

A wolf-dog hybrid (also called a wolf hybrid or wolfdog) is a canid hybrid resulting from the mating of a wolf (various Canis lupus subspecies) and a dog (Canis lupus familiaris). The term "wolfdog" is preferred by most wolfdog proponents and breeders since the domestic dog was recently taxonomically recategorized as a subspecies of wolf. The American Veterinary Medical Association and the United States Department of Agriculture refer to them as wolf-dog hybrids.[1] Rescue organizations consider any dog with wolf heritage within the last five generations to be a wolfdog, including some established wolfdog breeds.[2]

In 1998, the USDA estimated an approximate population of 300,000 wolfdogs in the United States (the highest of any country world-wide), with some other sources giving a population possibly as high as 500,000.[1] In first generation hybrids, gray wolves are most often crossed with wolf-like dogs (such as German Shepherd Dogs, Siberian Huskies, and Alaskan Malamutes) for an appearance most appealing to owners desiring to own an exotic pet.[3] Since wolf hybrids are genetic mixtures of wolves and dogs, their physical and behavioral characteristics cannot be predicted with any certainty.[1]

Happy Fox is Happy...
Cute fox is cute...
Happy sounds sound Happy...

But
A wild animal is a wild animal.
By treating this fox like a pet, they are ensuring that it will never be able to be released back into the wild. An animal with that kind of affection for humans is bound to get itself into trouble (and ultimately killed).

So what now, does it have to spend the rest of its life in the cage. Could it be tame enough to live as a pet in a home. Red foxes are predators that instinctively hunt birds, small game and animals as large as sheep. goats and small calves. It is doubtful it could be trusted around small children and definitely not other pets.
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Fox

"In recent years, an escalating interest in exotic pets has drawn attention to the red fox. While the fox is a beautiful animal, people should remember that they are wild animals. Due to the fox's excitable and nervous nature, a fox makes a very unruly pet. If this knowledge is not enough to discourage attempts to make pets of foxes, people should also know that foxes have a very strong odor to their bodies and their waste, much like that of a skunk." - http://www3.northern.edu/natsource/MAMMALS/Redfox1.htm

Thanks. I switch between Firefox and IE. I will check it out.



In reply to this comment by conan:
>> ^ABTechie:
Title, tag or video is wrong. I watched Will Ferrell in "The Landlord.


That's because of Internet Explorer. Seems that FoD is still not able to serve millions of users that use IE. But i guess that's ok because IE is a rather unusual and exotic browser. Sarcasm.