Darren New wrote:
> Mike Raiford wrote:
>> Sidekick comes to mind as a particularly troublesome TSR.
> 
> But very popular. Indeed, Sidekick was why people invented the SysRq key.
> 

So, that's why the SysReq key ...

-- 
~Mike

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Nicolas Alvarez <nic### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> News today: an 8GB *RAM-based* solid-state drive:
> http://tinyurl.com/8d64qv

Hum... why would anyone want such a thing?

For persistent storage of data, I guess it would be a *very* bad idea. Lose
power = lose data.

For nice fast swap space, I guess it would make more sense to put those 8GB
right onto the mainboard, so you don't need the swap space in the first place.

For fast temporary storage of mass data (like, say, in scientific simulations),
it's plain too small...

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Mike Raiford <"m[raiford]!at"@gmail.com> wrote:
> And whatever you do, don't get me started on Harley Davidson motorcycles.

I heard they're actually for bad combustion, in order to get that typical
sound...

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Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> I'm still puzzled about the Race of Champions. They raced several
> designs of car which seemed to be using *external combustion* to propell
> themselves, rather than the more traditional *internal combustion*. (As
> evidenced by the huge flashes and bangs as they raced round the track.)

Military planes do it, so why shouldn't a car benefit from an afterburner, too?
=B)

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clipka wrote:
> Nicolas Alvarez <nic### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
>> News today: an 8GB *RAM-based* solid-state drive:
>> http://tinyurl.com/8d64qv
> 
> Hum... why would anyone want such a thing?
> 
> For persistent storage of data, I guess it would be a *very* bad idea. Lose
> power = lose data.
> 
> For nice fast swap space, I guess it would make more sense to put those 8GB
> right onto the mainboard, so you don't need the swap space in the first place.
> 
> For fast temporary storage of mass data (like, say, in scientific simulations),
> it's plain too small...
> 
> 

It would make a darned nice Photoshop scratch disk. Make it about 50GB 
and it would make a decent video editing scratch disk.

-- 
~Mike

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"scott" <sco### [at] scottcom> wrote:
> Maybe someone could find a way to convert the sound energy from an engine
> into mechanical or electrical energy...

Some do, in a way: Resonance exhausts. They're designed to use the acoustic
"bang" produced when a cylinder is opened to expel the exhaust gases, to
resonate in the exhaust system in such a way that a lower-than-average pressure
is achieved when the next cylinder opens, helping expel it.

Probably must be tuned to some certain rpm optimum though.

So that may be another reason why racing cars are particularly loud - and why
the statement "loud == inefficient" is not totally true.

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Patrick Elliott <sel### [at] npgcablecom> wrote:
> > - It appears that "solid state harddrives" are now reaching useful sizes
> > and sane pricing levels. (E.g., when I first looked at this it was


> >
> Only problems are: a) slow (faster isn't much faster, and costs double),
> and b) limited number of "write cycles". And, no, the 250GB one is not
> $2/GB. lol

Just recently read about SSD's; two things to consider:

- If they're reasonably good quality, it seems you can't really "kill" them,
even in years of excessive abuse... because they can only do so many write
cycles a second ;)

- If you don't need to *write* too much, then faster *is* much faster! (Don't
try to replace a speed-optimized RAID box that already maxes out the connection
speed though ;))

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Mike Raiford <"m[raiford]!at"@gmail.com> wrote:
> Magnesium. The ultimate in portability. My camera still blows me away,
> the chassis is a Mg alloy and feels like plastic.
>
> Of course, I don't know how well Mg deals with heat.

I bet the game geeks will discover that material soon enough - if only because
it makes car wheels faster as well :)

(IIRC you shouldn't try to build something out of pure Mg though... unless the
thing to build is an outdoor fire starter ;))

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On Fri, 23 Jan 2009 12:46:14 -0600, Mike Raiford <"m[raiford]!at"@gmail.com>
wrote:

>
>Of course, I don't know how well Mg deals with heat.

Woosh! Thermite :)
-- 

Regards
     Stephen

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On Fri, 23 Jan 2009 12:56:10 -0600, Mike Raiford wrote:

> Jim Henderson wrote:
> 
> 
>> They could, but my experience was generally good.  Unless the TSR was
>> poorly written, in which case it got used only once. :-)
>> 
>> 
> Sidekick comes to mind as a particularly troublesome TSR.

Yeah, it had some useful features, but not *that* useful.

Jim

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