Shark-finning gangsters assault celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay

Benjamin SchollnickNo Comments

\"ramsey.jpg\"

Shark-finning gangsters assault celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay: \”If you\’ve ever watched shows like Hell\’s Kitchen or Kitchen Nightmares, you\’d know not to cross incendiary celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay. Well, maybe his shows don\’t air in Taiwan, because a crew of Taiwanese shark-fin smugglers wasn\’t too impressed by Ramsay\’s reputation, holding the TV host at gunpoint and pouring gasoline over him during the taping of a documentary in Costa Rica.

Ramsay was in Central America to film segments of a program dedicated to shark finning, the cruel and deadly practice responsible for endangering shark populations around the world that the U.S. finally outlawed a couple of weeks ago. Shark fins are highly prized in Asia for their use in shark fin soup, and overfishing for their fins has driven many shark populations down 95 percent or more in recent years.

The gasoline-dousing and gun-pointing were actually two separate incidents. Ramsay told The Telegraph that shark-finning gangs \’operate from places that are like forts, with barbed-wire perimeters and gun towers.\’ Ramsay was trying to film one of these sites, but was being kept away.

I managed to shake off the people who were keeping us away, ran up some stairs to a rooftop, and looked down to see thousands and thousands of fins, drying on rooftops as far as the eye could see. When I got back downstairs they tipped a barrel of petrol over me. Then these cars with blacked-out windows suddenly appeared from nowhere, trying to block us in. We dived into the car and peeled off.

View the rest of the article at Extinction Countdown: Shark-finning gangsters assault celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay

 

Traveling in a straight line? Think Again…

Benjamin SchollnickNo Comments

A Mystery: Why Can\’t We Walk Straight? from NPR on Vimeo.

A Mystery: Why Can\’t We Walk Straight? from NPR on Vimeo.

Try as you might, you can’t walk in a straight line without a visible guide point, like the Sun or a star. You might think you’re walking straight, but as NPR’s Robert Krulwich reports, a map of your route would reveal you are doomed to walk in circles.

New Patlabor (related) book by Mamoru Oshii

Benjamin SchollnickNo Comments

Anime News Network has indicated that Bankuruwase: Keishi-chō Keibi-bu Tokushu Sharyō Ni-ka slated for January 31 by Mamoru Oshii.
For those not familiar with Patlabor, the story takes place in what was, at the time of release, the near future of 1998-2002. Robots called \”Labors\” are employed in heavy construction work. The Tokyo Metropolitan Police has its own fleet of Patlabors (Patrol-Labor)  to combat crimes and deal with accidents involving Labors. The story arcs usually revolve around Tokyo Metropolitan Police Special Vehicle Section 2, Division 2, where Noa Izumi is the main protagonist of the series, but all of Division 2 play roles.

Debunking Misconceptions in SSD Longevity

Benjamin SchollnickNo Comments

I just noticed that Bit Micro has a web page discussing the issues of SSD Longevity…

In a recent article on write endurance published in STORAGEsearch.com, editor Zsolt Kerekes provided theoretical computations on the longevity of solid state flash drives deployed in enterprise server applications. His test solid state drive had the following specifications: total capacity of 64GB, sustained write speed of 80MBps and a write endurance rating of 2 million cycles. By assuming that data is written in big blocks and there is perfect implementation of wear leveling techniques, Kerekes estimates disk endurance at 1.6 billion seconds, which translates to 50.74 years.
…..
\”I\’ve assumed perfect cache operation – and sequential writes – because otherwise you don\’t get the maximum write speed. Conversely if you aren\’t writing at the maximum speed – then the disk will last longer……. And as there is no wear-out or endurance limit on read operations – the implication is to increase the operating life by the read to write ratio.\”

While I have only included snippets from the web page, the current crop of SSD drives certainly can last a significantly longer period that the previous generations.  I have heard estimates ranging from 12 Years to decades…  I believe the larger issue is the case around the SSD, not the hardware itself…
Take a look at BitMicro\’s Debunking Misconceptions in SSD Longevity page, and feel free to include your comments…

The Mac App Store: What you need to know

Benjamin SchollnickNo Comments

The newly launched Mac App Store may sport a familiar, iTunes-like face. But there’s still plenty to discover with Apple’s new source for buying Mac software.

We asked if you had any questions about the Mac App Store and came up with a list of our own. Then, we spent Thursday diving into the Mac App Store to get some answers to those questions. Here’s what we’ve been able to find out so far.


MacWorld discusses the The Mac App Store: What you need to know