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Who's in the corner?
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WTVN Radio • Columbus, Ohio • Sunday morning from 8 until 9 |
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June 20, 2004 |
Random thought:
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Kill pop-ups (even with IE)Once upon a time, only smarmy sites used pop-up ads. Now it seems that everybody has gotten into the act. It's time to fight back! Now there is a website (www.popuptest.com) that will let you test your pop-up blocker against a variety of techniques. In addition being a way to test your browser (Mozilla and Opera are quite effective at blocking trash but IE lets many of the pop-ups through, even with AdAware turned on) it also provides descriptions of and links to 50 or more pop-up blockers. Gizmo moves files from hither to yon
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Technology corner rating for GIZMO USB 2 SOLID-STATE DRIVES |
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TEN CATS: The technology isn't so much different from what other manufacturers are offering, but Crucial's complete, accurate, and well written instructions make the Gizmo stand out. The price is right. It works. And they tell you how it works. What more could you ask for? |
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For more information, see the Gizmo website.
Disk drives last longer than they used to and it is now possible for people to buy a disk drive, put it in a computer they use for 5 years or so, and never have a disk failure. It's also possible that the disk drive will fail the instant it's switched on. Drive manufacturers calculate mean-time between failure (MTBF) rates that attempt to estimate how long the "average" disk drive in the production run will operate.
Seagate is releasing a bunch of new drives and some of them claim a MTBF of 1.4 million hours.
How long is that, really? Well, if I divide 1,400,000 by 24, that tells me the MTBF is 58,333.333333... days. I'll round that off to 53,333 days and divide by 365.25 (the number of days in an average year) to learn that the disk drive should live to be 159.70704 years old. Or about 107 days shy of 160 years.
How can anyone have the chutzpah to claim that a mechanical device will still be running far into the 22nd Century? That's not to say I don't trust Seagate, but I'm fairly sure that I'll never know for sure what the MTBF is on the new drives. When I build or buy computers, I usually specify Seagate drives because they've served me well over the years -- unlike some other brands.
The drives I'm talking about are in Seagate's Cheetah 15K line of drives. These are super-fast drives that run on Fibre Channel or Ultra320 SCSI controllers and spin at 15,000 RPM. What's exciting to me about this is that Seagate plans to release a SATA (serial ATA) version of the drives before the end of the year. These aren't the largest drives in the stable -- just a modest 36GB drive and two others, 73GB and 147GB.
If you're looking for big drives, Seagate is set to start shipping drives in the NL35 series and one of these is a 500 GB unit with a Fibre Channel interface. Pop in a couple of these and you have a terabyte of on-line storage.
Consumers who demand speed and size will find Cheetah 10K drives in capacities ranging from 36 GB to 300 GB. These drives spin at 10,000 RPM and find their way into servers and high-end workstations. Seagate claims the MTBF for these is just shy of 160 years, too. (But I'll bet they come with a 3-year warranty!)
For average desktop PCs, Seagate will have Barracuda drives that spin at 7200 RPM -- capacities up to 400 GB with Ultra ATA and SATA interfaces.
Notebook manufacturers will be able to offer the Momentus 7200 drives in the standard mobile 2.5-inch form factor. As you've guessed from the number, these spin at 7200 RPM, which beats most drives used in portables today. Seagate says sizes will range up to 100 GB with Ultra ATA and SATA interfaces. The company will also offer a Momentus 5400 line for economy notebooks.
Woody Leonhard, the author of the well-respected Woody's Windows Watch (and other) publications (subscribe here) is warning about the soon-to-be-released service pack 2 for Windows XP. The name of the game for SP2 is security, but Microsoft tends to go overboard when it finally gets a clue about security. Remember the initial Outlook "security" patch that made it impossible to open any kind of attachment, even the ones you wanted to open? SP2 will go far beyond that and will probably break a lot of computers.
Says Woody: "I can almost guarantee you that some of your existing applications are going to break when you install the service pack. Some may break just a little and will be easily fixed; others will break hard. Even some of your hardware may not work correctly once you install SP2.
"The delays we've seen so far are partly to give Microsoft time to respond to feedback by beta testers, and partly to ensure that third-party software makers test SP2 thoroughly and ensure it works with their software.
"Those delays are good for you and me, as the extra testing and tweaking will hopefully minimize problems when SP2 hits the real world. Don't think it's going to eliminate the problems -- it won't -- but Microsoft is doing the right thing by taking its time over releasing SP2.
"Even so you should ensure that any major programs you have are certified by the makers as compatible with Windows XP SP2. Especially any anti-virus, diagnostic, firewall or networking programs. Microsoft’s own programs are not necessarily certain to be SP2 compliant in the first instance."
And for those who are thinking about obtaining the "Technical Preview version" from Microsoft, Woody has a single word of advice: DON'T! He continues, "unless you have a spare machine sitting there with Windows XP and nothing of importance on it; a machine which you're happy to trash and then reformat if necessary. As it stands, the Technical Preview is not ready for real-world PCs."
The Federal Trade Commission's Do Not Call database has been a hit. Millions of people who don't want to hear from lawn care services and long-distance services at dinnertime have signed up. And, surprise! It's working. The number of bozos calling the homes of those who have put their numbers on the list is down significantly. So this would be a good idea for e-mail, right?
Some dunderheads have proposed that as a "solution" to spam. What they seem not to have noticed is that telemarketers, by and large, are legitimate businesses while spammers are not. Telemarketers tend to be selling long-distance services from companies you've heard of or other legitimate products and services from real companies.
Spammers, on the other hand, tend to be selling "products" and "services" that are illegal or fraudulent.
Telemarketers generally play by the rules. Spammers do not. Why would anyone with any amount of intelligence think that a "Do Not E-mail" list would do anything but give spammers a list of live addresses they could exploit?
Fortunately, the FTC understands this and has patiently explained to the folks who want a Do Not E-mail list that this is not the way to go at this time.
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Privacy Guarantee:I HATE SPAM and will not sell, rent, loan, auction, trade, or do anything else with your e-mail address. Period.
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This is the only ad you'll ever see on this site. It's for my website host, BlueHost in Orem, Utah. Over the past several years, they have proven to be honest, reliable, and progressive. If you need to host a website, please click the banner below to see what BlueHost has to offer. As if you didn't already get enough weather on the radio! Annoying legal disclaimer
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I use Mozilla as my default browser and keep Opera open with a dozen or so tabbed sites that I use regularly. Both of these browsers can be set to block pop-ups and they are highly effective. Even so, I still run AdAware. 
The 1 GB USB 2.0 Gizmo is a little pricey ($230) but compare that to the cost of buying Zip drives for at least two computers and a stack of Zip disks. Then compare the ease of use. The Gizmo wins easily, in my opinion. And it will work with any computer that has a USB connector -- if the computer has a standard USB 1.1 connector, the device will still work, but slowly.
