From Polly Klaas Foundation (maybe be common)

September 2006 About Polly Klaas® Foundation Have you seen any of these missing children? Tell a Friend Tell a Friend Dear, This month we bring you: "To Catch a Predator" Comes to Polly Klaas' Hometown. Take Action: Tell Your Friends About This Important Show. Learning from "To Catch a Predator." Take Action: Order Your Free Internet Safety Kit Today. Take Action: Order Your Free Child Safety Kit Today. __________________________________ "TO CATCH A PREDATOR" COMES TO POLLY KLAAS' HOMETOWN During August, the controversial NBC Dateline show “To Catch a Predator” came to Petaluma and worked with the Petaluma Police Department to conduct a hidden camera investigation on Internet predators. Order Your Free Internet Safety Kit Today, click here. ______________ Order Your Free Child Safety Kit Today, click here. Dateline came to Petaluma because this is Polly Klaas’ home town. Her abduction and the massive community-wide search that followed in the fall of 1993 captivated the nation. That community response caused Petaluma Police Department to set up this sting to tell Internet predators, “Not our kids, not our town.” The investigation lasted 3 days, with 29 men arrested. We urge you to consider watching this often disturbing show, To learn ways predators use the Internet. To gain perspective on this problem that scares every parent. The two-part hidden camera investigation will broadcast this Friday, Sept. 29, 9 PM and next Friday, Oct. 6, 9 PM. TAKE ACTION: Tell your friends about this important show. Tell a Friend __________________________________ LEARNING FROM "TO CATCH A PREDATOR" “What I am convinced Dateline has done for the first time, is illustrate that these predators don’t look like snakes, or worms, or whatever creatures run for cover when rocks are turned over. “These are often normal, average, next door neighbors. Respected members of society. Teachers, doctors, clergymen. That’s what I think has triggered it all. And this is why I truly believe the Dateline series has made us pay much more attention to the problem.” (Allan Maraynes, Dateline Senior producer, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14927950/, Sept 20, 2006). This is why the Polly Klaas® Foundation stresses that you and your children pay attention to adult behavior, rather than whether or not the person is known to you or your child. Teach children that there are rules that adults have to follow. If any adult breaks a rule, children must yell, “No,” run to a safe place, and tell their parents or a trusted adult. Adults should not ask kids for help. Adults should not offer anything to a kid. Adults should not ask kids to keep secrets. No one should touch a kid’s private parts (parts covered by a swimsuit). Help young people avoid online predators. Good parenting is more important than Internet savvy. You can make a real difference Learn enough to understand the risks. Be willing to discuss the risks with your children. Be sure your children know that when they come to you with Internet problems, they can trust you not to ban their use of the Internet. It’s like teaching kids to drive. You don’t just hand them the keys and turn them loose. You teach them the safety rules and sit beside them while they practice. And you probably have rules about where they can go, who they can see and how late they can stay out with their friends, right up until they graduate from high school. It's no different on the virtual highway. Kids still need their parents' guidance. __________________________________ __________________________________ Join us in keeping children safe Click here ______________________________________________________________ About Polly Klaas® Foundation The Polly Klaas® Foundation helps find missing children, prevents children from going missing in the first place, and promotes laws like Amber Alert that help keep children safe. Privacy Policy Our promise to you: We won't sell, loan or share your name or personal information with anyone. © 2006 Polly Klaas® Foundation, P.O. Box 800, Petaluma, CA 94953 E-mail: info@pollyklaas.org ~ Phone: (707) 769-1334 ~ 24 hour hotline: (800) 587-4357 Click here to sign up for Polly Klaas® Foundation e-news.

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I name thee, death

A tattoo on a prisoner's forehead naming his vicitim. Personally, as long as it leads to his death -- I'm okay with it. I wouldn't, however, be surrprised if he had done it himself hoping to be permanently removed from general population. I don't buy it and think that if you did the crime, you should do the time -- or death. Dear Indiana prisoners, I dare you to kill him.

Now that ought to do it!

Baghdad turns to Los Angles for model

Bodies dumped in several locations, slain, executed. Now ... how would they ever read about how to do that? I got it! They had the L.A. Times in Farsi, right? The gangland killings are, well, amatuerish in contrast to LA gangs, but those responsible promise to better research how the gangs operate and slaughter their enemies despite police observing and known anti-gang and racist tenedencies toward minorities in profiling and sadistic aprehension. An off-handed comment was made that, "the next time will be so much more professional, you'd think that this was to become little LA".

Hewlett Packard in Print

Sadly, it's not for grand reviews, but rather legal problems. Good news for the company is that many people will use HP printers to print off important sections ... like the news of their spying. Gee! I wonder if that will affect their company at all? They didn't hurt customers, so ... as far as customers go, they were shielded from the whole mess.

Chumpanzee

Late, I know, Bill went ape on a FOX News question. While inexcusable, I can see the thought process ... "Prelude to 9/11" had Clinton painted in a bad way. Some of the would-be scenes were edited or omitted, but in the end, Clinton looked inept and not jumping on chances when he could have to stop terrorists and maybe bin Laden. He succeeded in pressuring the producers to edit it -- so he thinks he wins. A poor loser with a temper matched only with his ego (remember the Presidential scandals and his reactions) pulled a Jerry Springer guest with a simple question.

I think, already on the defensive from the movie and other disagreeing with him, the question smacked (in his mind) of "why didn't you do something about him". Overburdened with assaults to his ego -- Clinton lets go of repressed agression to a question unworthy of anger. I would say that democrats talking on the FOX News channel are met with as much contempt as their countparts on CNN. I would therefore note to future guests on either netwrok, that if you aren't with them -- 95%, you are then against them. Be prepared.

Any guest that I have seen try to talk, are instantly interrupted and other speak over them rudely, denying that they have a voice or opinion whatsoever. Suffice to say, that either you go there to take the abuse, hoping to make a half point or a point while being lambasted or you are a fool thinking that you'll get a fair run. Neither or no network allows a real discussion without interruptions.

Clinton ... you pulled a Clinton

HDD Units (posted after sent by Jim)

Happy 50th, hard drive. But will you make it to 60?

Threatening HDD, flash memory will soon be available in 64GB capacities -- with larger devices coming

September 26, 2006 (Computerworld) -- After 50 years, the useful life of the hard disk drive (HDD) is increasingly being threatened by SDRAM and flash-based semiconductor solid state disk (SSD) storage. For example, Samsung Electronics Company Ltd. has announced plans to release a 64GB solid state disk drive in a 2.5-in. form factor with an IDE/ATA or Serial ATA interface. And current 32GB flash memory is selling for $1,800 or less. So the questions are, Is SSD ready to surpass HDD in capacity and price? And, Has the HDD reached the physical limits or can the technology be pushed further?

Over its 50-year life span, the HDD has evolved from a 5MB storage device with 50 24-in. disk platters about the size of a household refrigerator to a 1-in. 8GB device found in Apple iPod and other MP3 players. Physically larger than the 1-in. HDDs found in consumer MP3 players and cell phones, 7,200-rpm, 3.5-in. HDDs have capacities of 750GB priced in the $400-to-$500 range with even larger 1TB HDDs just around the corner. For a good HDD synopsis and history, check out the recent Computerworld piece "From Elvis' hips to spinning disk: 50 years of innovation."
 

Figure 1 Relative HDD trends and directions (Click image to see larger view)

To remain viable as a storage technology, HDDs must continue to improve on price, reliability, durability, power consumption, footprint, capacity and performance (see Figure 1). Perpendicular recording technology that is replacing longitudinal recording on HDD combined with other enhancements should extend the useful life of the HDD for about another 14 to 15 years. Researchers like Mark Kryder, chief technology officer of Seagate Technology, estimate that perpendicular recording combined with other technology enhancements should enable the HDD to evolve out to around 2020.

At some point before then, a major technology shift or revolution will be required unless a significant breakthrough in physics and material composition among others can extend the HDD even further. What this means is that since it takes about five years for a technology to be fully integrated into an ecosystem like the storage industry, to be available around 2020 would need to understand what the replacement technology will be sometime around 2015 or so. While 2015 is less than nine years away, that still leaves plenty of time before you will need to unplug your existing storage systems.

Storage technologies or disk systems traditionally have been replaced on three-to-five-year cycles that should enable users to deploy several more iterations and generations of HDD-based storage before some new technology is defined and developed and products are ready for mission-critical deployment. We should start seeing signs of a new major technology shift in about nine to 10 years. However, between now and then, assume that we will continue to see many smaller (on a relative scale) technology improvements and evolutionary enhancements appear.

Perpendicular recording (Figure 2) is currently being deployed by major HDD manufactures across their product lines. Using perpendicular recording, more data can be stored in the same form factor (higher density), enabling reduction in number of platters required while increasing capacity, compared to longitudinal recording. There are more improvements in the works for the disk drive, including, better reliability, less power consumption, smaller footprints, continued drop in price per GB and, of course, increased capacity.

Figure 2: Longitudinal and perpendicular recording Source: www.seagate.com

A challenge to building larger-capacity and smaller HDDs is the barrier known as super paramagnetic phenomenon. Super paramagnetism occurs when the magnetic particles on an HDD platter become so small that the magnetic energy holding the particles in place representing a bit can be influenced by thermal energy, resulting in lack of data integrity. The traditional approach for recording bits of data on a HDD using longitudinal recording was heading for the super paramagnetic brick wall limiting future HDD growth without having to increase the physical size of a disk drive.

To delay the effects of the super paramagnetic barrier for several years, perpendicular recording is being adopted by major HDD manufactures. For example, in mid-September 2006, Seagate demonstrated a record ariel density of 421G/bit per square inch that should result in future disk drives of 40GB or more for 1-in. and 275GB for 1.8-in. consumer electronics products.

At 421G/bit per square inch, future 2.5-in. HDD (6.25 square inch per platter surface) about two to three years away for notebooks and new generation of enterprise-class 2.5-in. disks should have capacities pof about 500GB. For 3.5-in. HDD manufacturers like Hitachi estimate that we should be seeing 2TB HDD around 2009 or 2010 with 1TB 3.5-in. HDD just around the corner. Smaller consumer HDD improvements for 1.8-in. HDD should have capacities of around 200GB in a couple of years. To put this into perspective, an Apple iPod or other MP3 player could for example have more storage than a typical currently shipping laptop or desktop computer.

To enable the HDD to get out to the 2020 timeframe, perpendicular recording will need to be combined with other types of technology including smaller form factor drives. For example new technology being worked on in R&D labs include heat-assisted magnetic recording nick named (HAMR) or thermal assisted recording (TAR) or bit pattern media are seen as possible technology to be combined with others to continue the HDD evolution until around 2020.

A possible threat to the HDD in I/O-intensive and time-sensitive applications, rugged and harsh environments, and portable devices including notebook computers is SDRAM or flash SSD. The primary advantages of SSD is that there are no moving parts, so seek times are dramatically decreased to improve performance and power consumption compared to a traditional HDD. SSD in the form of SDRAM (RAM) has been around for several decades as a high-performance storage solution for I/O and transaction intensive applications. SSD has been limited in capacity due to high cost of RAM compared to HDD storage, but similar to the HDD, SSD capacities continue to increase while prices decline. Today there are two primary types of SSD technologies one being RAM similar to what you would find in a typical server or cache in a storage device that requires power to preserve contents of memory and the other being NAND based flash.

Flash, also known as a disk on module (DOM), is most commonly found in portable media players and USB flash drives. Unlike SDRAM, it does not require power to preserve memory contents eliminating the need for battery and alternate power sources. While flash memory may not be as fast as high-speed RAM, it has an advantage in that it is available in large capacities at relative lower prices with improvements in both occurring on an annual basis. Vendors, including Samsung, are deploying flash-based SSDs with ATA and Serial ATA interfaces in 2.5-in. form factors for use in harsh environments and notebook computers to support faster boot and restore times while drawing less power than HDDs.

SSDs are available or soon to be available in capacities up to 64GB with larger devices on the drawing board. For example an IDE/ATA or SATA 32GB NAND based flash drive sells for about $1,800 (or less) with prices continuing to decline. By comparison a 3.5-inch SATA 7,200RPM 750GB HDD sells for about $400-500 USD. High capacity (multiple gigabyte ) SDRAM based SSD devices are also available from vendors including Texas Memory Systems.

There is a caveat with NAND flash based technologies in that they are not optimum for continuous reuse and re-cycling compared to RAM and HDDs. This has led to the development of hybrid disk drives that combine a HDD with large amount of flash and RAM to enable the HDD to spin down and I/Os resolved from RAM and flash until the HDD is needed. For example the Seagate Momentus PSD (power saving device) that combines a traditional 2.5-in., 5,400-rpm 160GB notebook HDD, 256MB of flash and 8MB of RAM cache. Another example of a hybrid HDD is the Samsung flashon (Figure-3).

Figure 3:
Samsung hybrid HDD (flashon)
Source: www.samsung.com

As the industry has seen in the past, combinations of different technologies can be expected to appear in storage systems and servers to help address data storage and I/O performance needs. For example some vendors may incorporate multiple gigabytes of flash as an embedded SSD on server motherboards to complement existing HDDs. Storage vendors may incorporate larger amounts of SDRAM and flash as tiered cache in front of larger quantities of high capacity 2.5-in. and 3.5-in. enterprise and desktop drives for tiered storage.

Some general trends include:

·                                 Continued decline in pricing while capacities increase for HDD and SSD technologies

·                                 Larger capacities, smaller footprints, less power consumption, better performance

·                                 Better reliability and durability with higher MBTF (some disks have 5+ year warranties)

·                                 Hybrid technologies combing HDD, SDRAM and flash as an integrated device

What happens around 2020 is still not clear, and there is plenty of time for new technologies to evolve -- some perhaps even revolutionary. There could be new breakthroughs in material compositions and recoding techniques to further extend HDD usefulness while semiconductor capacities increase and prices continue to decrease. Perhaps holographic storage that we have heard about for the past 10 years or so may finally be ready and economically viable for production sometime in the next 10-20 years. It's fairly safe to say that the death of the HDD after 50 years is still greatly exaggerated, so keep an eye on emerging data storage technologies to support storing larger amounts of data in more locations for longer periods of time.

HDD RAM/SDRAM NAN FLASH Benefits Reliable proven technology with good economics, capacity along with diverse packaging options Low power requirement, higher performance for server boot times and improve OLTP and other I/O intensive applications Improved cost vs. RAM, good performance and no need for battery to preserve data when is power lost Caveats More power, sensitive to shock, vibration and less performance compared to SSD Expensive vs. HDD and flash. Battery needed to preserve data during loss of power Similar to SDRAM along with limited reuse cycles compared to SDRAM and HDD technologies Use for Price-sensitive applications that require large amounts of storage with good performance I/O and time-sensitive applications including OLTP or where power consumption and durability are concerns Portable storage and media players, consumer products, tiered cache, appearing in hybrid HDD-based devices