Your Ad Here

Tuesday, July 14, 2009

2 TB Hard Disk Drive Battle: Seagate Barracuda LP vs. Western Digital Caviar Green

Introduction

So far only two 2 TB hard disk drives have reached the market and both are “green” models, meaning they rotate at lower speeds in order to save energy. Models spinning at 7,200 rpm will reach the market only by the end of the year (it is more complicated to build a 7,200 rpm 2 TB drive than a 5,400 rpm one) and they will be faster than these two models we are reviewing today. Let’s compare the performance of Seagate Barracuda LP with Western Digital Caviar Green.

Seagate Barracuda LP spins at 5,900 rpm, while Western Digital does not disclosure the rotational speed from Caviar Green (5,400 rpm is our educated guess). Hard drives typically consume between 8-10 W; “green” models like the two we are going to compare consume practically half of this.

Both 2 TB models we tested have a real capacity of 1.82 TB or 1,863 GB (3,907,029,168 sectors). As you may be aware, the capacity advertised by hard disk drive manufacturers isn’t the real drive capacity. Read our Hard Disk Drives Capacity Limits tutorial for further information on this subject.

Here is a summary of the two hard drives we are going to compare:

Manufacturer

Model

Model #

Buffer

Price

Seagate

Barracuda LP

ST32000542AS

32 MB

USD 239.99

Western Digital

Caviar Green

WD20EADS

32 MB

USD 239.99

Prices were reasearched at Newegg.com on the day we published this review.

Let’s now see which drive is the fastest 2 TB product.


How We Tested

During our tests we used the configuration listed below and the only variable component between each benchmarking session was the hard disk drive being tested.

Hardware Configuration

Software Configuration

  • Windows XP Professional using NTFS file system
  • Service Pack 3
  • Intel Inf driver version: 9.0.0.1008
  • nVidia video driver version: 175.19

Benchmarking Software

We adopted a 3% error margin. So, performance differences below 3% cannot be considered meaningful. In other words, products where the performance difference is below 3% must be considered as having similar performance. Continue here


Your Ad Here
// posted by KiWi @ 4:47 PM 0 Comments

Monday, July 13, 2009

Insect Cyborgs Could Replace Smoke Detectors, Rescue Earthquake Victims

The Pentagon is known for its ominous pet projects, but here's one we can honestly say doesn't have us losing any sleep: Cyborg crickets.

No, seriously, cyborg crickets. This is a good thing!

Why? Simple. When a building collapses, say from an earthquake or a terrorist bombing, survivors are often trapped in the rubble. Sometimes they're rescued, and sometimes, due to the nature of being buried alive under tons and even tonnes of rock (something we do lose sleep over), they aren't.

Enter the cyborg crickets. What the Pentagon hopes to do is make these six-legged pests into chemical sniffers and eventually even human sniffers when catastrophe strikes.

They'll do this by implanting electrodes into winged insects to control their wing muscles. The inaugural class of crickets, cicadas and katydids are already being worked on as I type this, so that their usual calls and communication will instead only occur in the presence of certain chemicals.

Additionally, scientists would "install" an acoustic sensor on our new six-legged saviors that's "designed to respond to the altered calls of other insects." Ultimately, this final modification would ensure a cascade effect amongst the insects, so that their signals are eventually picked up by ground-based human-controlled transceivers.

So the next time you're trapped in a collapsed building, don't crush that little guy who's chirping madly into your ear. He may very well be trying to save your life. Visit Gizmodo


Your Ad Here
// posted by KiWi @ 1:51 PM 0 Comments

Tuesday, July 07, 2009

Microsoft Warns Users of Serious Security Hole in Software


Microsoft is warning users of Windows XP or Windows Server 2003 that a security hole in certain parts of Internet Explorer allows hackers to remotely install malicious viruses on unsuspecting users. The company is currently working to fix the breach. The hole, apparently caused by the interaction of IE and ActiveX, has been used for about a week to install viruses on users who click certain links in spam emails. Microsoft's stopgap solution, available here, is to disable that video software, and the company is hard at work to fix the problem. Doesn't bode well for Microsoft's push into antivirus software, does it?

Your Ad Here
// posted by KiWi @ 9:29 AM 0 Comments

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Fully Licensed Commodore 64 Emulator Rejected By Apple App Store


Quick update on the Apple App Store approval process: Shaken babies are OK, but inevitable moneymakers like a licensed, legal Commodore 64 emulator are rejected.

Why the rejection, you ask? Here's Apple's take, form letter style:

Thank you for submitting C64 1.0 to the App Store. We've reviewed C64 1.0 and determined that we cannot post this version of your iPhone application to the App Store because it violates the iPhone SDK Agreement; "3.3.2 An Application may not itself install or launch other executable code by any means, including without limitation through the use of a plug-in architecture, calling other frameworks, other APIs or otherwise. No interpreted code may be downloaded and used in an Application except for code that is interpreted and run by Apple's Published APIs and built-in interpreter(s)."

Right. All well and good, except that there are plenty of accepted apps floating around out there that do the exact same thing (including the Zork-tastic Frotz).

Worse still, the publisher, Manomio, had secured all the licenses to run such an app from Killoo Apps, the current owner of the Commodore 64 license. But that's not all. How about another kick in the nuts, just for good measure? You see, not only did Manomio have the license, it also had the blessing of Apple Europe, which was "really excited" about the app, said Manomio CEO Brian Lyscarz.

That blessing got misplaced, apparently, as Manomio learned this week. Lyscarz and others, myself included, still hold out hope that the app will be accepted in one form or another. By Jack Loftus, 3:00 PM

Your Ad Here
// posted by KiWi @ 5:13 PM 0 Comments

Monday, June 01, 2009

The Seven IMAX Wonders of the World








Your Ad Here
// posted by KiWi @ 4:11 PM 0 Comments

Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Judge to sentence Wyo. man for computer crimes

A Cheyenne man accused of writing a malicious computer program that
authorities say took over thousands of computers nationwide faces
sentencing before a federal judge in Casper on Tuesday.

Jason Michael Milmont, 20, agreed last summer to plead guilty to a
federal charge of unauthorized access to a computer to further a fraud.
Federal prosecutors say he used the program to steal credit card
information and defraud people in 2007.

Milmont's agreement calls for him to pay more than $73,000 in
restitution and he could face up to five years in prison and a $250,000
fine.

Friends and family of Milmont have written letters to U.S. District
Judge William F. Downes urging the judge to be lenient.

They described Milmont, who wrote the computer program when he was a
teenager, as brilliant computer programmer. They said he has the skills
to help the country defend itself against the growing threat of
cyberterrorism.

"Jason is no threat to society," his parents Chris and Karen Milmont
wrote. "He needs to be free to advance his knowledge for the good of our
country and all of humanity."

Prosecutors have said Milmont's case is the first prosecution in the
United States for using peer-to-peer software to deliver so-called
"malware," or a malicious computer program.

Using the same sort of computer program that allows people to find and
download music and videos on the Internet, Milmont developed a piece of
malware called the Nugache Worm, prosecutors said.

Milmont used the worm to enslave a "botnet," or network of as many as
15,000 robot computers nationwide, prosecutors said. They said he
obtained credit card and other information that he used to order
merchandise that he had shipped to vacant homes in Cheyenne.

John R. Powell, spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's Office in Cheyenne,
declined to comment on the case. Defense lawyer Robert R. Rose in
Cheyenne did not return phone calls seeking comment.

Minneapolis-based computer security analyst Bruce Schneier posted an
analysis of the Nugache work on his Web site in late 2007 that called it
"the most advanced worm/botnet yet."

Schneier said Thursday that Nugache is only one of thousands of computer
worms that exist. "He's not going to make any top-ten list of notorious
Internet criminals," Schneier said of Milmont.

But Schneier said it's important not to downplay the importance of
computer crime.

"This was really stupid," Schneier said. "The time's over when you can
just write this stuff for fun; it disrupts commerce. It disrupts
people's lives. So it's real."

Yet Schneier said everyone makes mistakes as teenagers. And he said that
if Milmont truly created the Nugache worm when he was so young, it would
show that he's likely to be a good computer programmer.

"If in fact it's true, if he did this when he was a minor, and if he's
demonstrated that he's learned better, I think that it's silly for
society to punish him later in life," Schneier said.

He added that if Milmont can go on to college and do something useful,
"the world can use good programmers."

The U.S. Attorney's Office last October asked Downes to delay a
scheduled October sentencing date. Prosecutors indicated then that
Milmont had been in contact with the FBI and was cooperating with them
on the investigation.

Wesley L. Hsu is chief of the cyber and intellectual property crimes
section in the U.S. Attorney's Office in Los Angeles, where the case
against Milmont originated.

Hsu said Wednesday that he couldn't comment on why the original
sentencing date was delayed or say anything about whether Milmont was
cooperating with the FBI.

Your Ad Here
// posted by KiWi @ 9:26 AM 0 Comments

Saturday, April 25, 2009

Ubuntu as slick as Windows 7, Mac OS X

I left Windows Vista, XP and even Debian lying bruised and battered by
the roadside some time ago.

You won't be able to notice the vast improvement in Ubuntu's desktop
experience over the past six months by browsing screenshot galleries of
9.04 or looking at new feature lists. What I'm talking about is that
elusive slick and speedy feel you get from applications launching fast,
windows moving around without jerkiness and everything simply being
where it should be in the user interface.

Launching and using Firefox on Ubuntu 8.10 on my 2GHz Core 2 Duo-based
machine with 2GB of RAM, a 7200rpm hard disk and an Nvidia GeForce
8800GTS always seemed to feel like I was going back a few years to a
time when web browsers were not considered something you always had open
to service web applications like Gmail and Bloglines.

It was the same with Windows Vista.

Now, just like Microsoft has taken the blowtorch to Vista to produce the
lightning-quick Windows 7, which so far runs well even on older
hardware, Ubuntu has picked up its own game.

I particularly noticed the Ubuntu difference when I put the operating
system to the test by simultaneously launching and using multiple
applications, listening to music and more while using my spare CPU
cycles in the background to encode high-definition video with Mencoder.
Ubuntu still felt very fast ... even with traditionally sluggy pieces of
software like OpenOffice.org.

It's not just the speed changes, however, that has got me excited about
Ubuntu 9.04. It's also the subtle additions to the interface; the
logical move of shut down and reboot options to the far right of the
menu; the slick new notifications system; the seamless (finally!)
integration of the Nvidia accelerated drivers and the cleaned-up options
and package install systems.

Want Adobe Flash or other proprietary software like multimedia codecs on
Ubuntu? Just search for them in the one location, under their own names.
No downloading anything from any websites. No package management or
dependencies. No apt-get. Point and click.

I'm not a Linux novice (in fact, I'm a former Linux and FreeBSD systems
administrator), and I've been using Linux on the desktop since the late
1990s. I usually run a combination of Ubuntu and Windows on my PC, and
the latest Mac OS X on my laptop.

So I'm in a position to notice step changes in user interface behaviour
like the one that Ubuntu has brought to the table with 9.04. In short,
Ubuntu is now as slick and beautiful as Mac OS X or Windows 7.

As we've noted in earlier articles, Microsoft has also brought its best
to the table with Windows 7. However, it's a pity Apple didn't seem to
do so with Leopard ... like some reviewers, I felt Steve Job's latest
operating system opus added a lot of new features, but also some
unfortunate erratic behavior that muddied Mac OS X's position as a user
interface leader.

As MacWorld has noted, the new Stacks feature in Leopard's Dock is a
"mess" and replaced the formerly utilitarian approach to keeping folders
in the Dock with a "snazzy but generally less useful pop-up window".

The new "Spaces" feature in Leopard is nothing new; it provides multiple
virtual desktop work spaces which Unix has had for decades; but I found
Apple's implementation erratic.

Then too, there was the speed price some users paid in Leopard for all
the upgrade, although that could just be the older hardware penalty. On
my 1.5GHz G4 laptop with 1280MB of RAM, Leopard runs sluggishly, whereas
Tiger runs like a dream. As I don't use any of the new features, the
upgrade seemed worthless.

When you consider Microsoft's remarkable rebirth with Windows 7 and the
fact that Ubuntu is free, open source and runs on anything, you would
have to wonder what sort of rabbit Steve Jobs will have to pull out of
his hat with Snow Leopard to keep growing Mac OS X's share. Sure, there
are some apps missing on Linux (say, Photoshop). But the same can be
said of Mac OS X in certain areas, and VMware and CrossOver solve a lot
of problems.

Looking back to the genesis of Ubuntu 9.04 six months ago, I suspect
that its subtle but powerful changes are due to the new user interface
team that Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth said at the time he would put
in place. If so, that team has already earned its pay checks and even
more, and we're looking forward to seeing what another six months of
development will produce. Credit to Renai LeMay of ZDnet

Your Ad Here
// posted by KiWi @ 4:40 PM 0 Comments

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?

Subscribe to Posts [Atom]