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we all know what this means!!!
YES!

Nov 15, 07 - 09:33 pm Comment from: TheConfuzed1

Actually, no, we don't. It's still just speculation at this stage.

Nov 15, 07 - 09:44 pm Comment from: Brandon Petersen

English por favor?

Nov 15, 07 - 10:02 pm Comment from: TheConfuzed1

Brandon:

Think flash memory. A lot of it.

I don't want a memory of some flashers, thanks. Especially most of the people who work at Apple.

What the heck? If you're not registered it automatically sets you to "Anonymous"?

That's nonsense.

If/when these patents are granted, it will lock out any other vendor's implementation. Imagine fitting 32768 times (10 bits) in the same space on a chip that now can only fit 1 bit. We are talking about putting terabits on a chip the size of today's gigabit! This would makebdisk drives obsolete! Imagine Apple's revenue if this was licensed to other vendor's. Apple will own the world.

Nov 15, 07 - 10:34 pm Comment from: ron

Register or be aronymous.

Apple will own the world.

maybe then apple will have time to get things right instead of releasing buggy OS's

Whoops, where is my basic binary math? Should be only 1024 times instead of 32768. Still talking about terabits, though.

Buy Apple stock!

Can you imagine Microsoft doing anything like this?

Nov 15, 07 - 10:41 pm Comment from: Hg Wells

Buy AAPL.
Buy MORE AAPL.

Fuck Anonymous.

So who's anonymous now?

MW answer, as in do you really want to answer MDNs request for personal information?

Talk about a R-tard idea to default people to anon... should just have a reg badge next to their name or some shit.

Since I am anon- suck it bitches!

w00t!

Nov 15, 07 - 11:45 pm Comment from: El Guapo

But I want to be anonymous!

Raided flash drives similar to Panasonic P2 cards. Fast.

Nov 16, 07 - 12:12 am Comment from: TowerTone

my flash memories were clouded by the jail time....

The defaulting any non-registered users to anonymous is ridiculous, and it ruins one of the things I like best about this site: that it doesn't require you to register, or even stick to one name if you don't want to. You don't have to worry about what someone thinks of your analysis, because you can just change your name.

Defaulting non-registered users to anonymous basically makes registration mandatory, since otherwise it won't even be clear who is saying what unless people start putting in-text signatures, which is just stupid. The reason people want registration is to stop spoofing, and as long as it's optional and no negative consequences befall those who choose not to register, that's fine. Making non-registered users default to anonymous is going too far.

- Jacob

Nov 16, 07 - 02:39 am Comment from: blucaso

Hey Jacob - in contrast to your thoughts, I think registering users to become named fixes one of the things I disliked most about this site - it doesn't require you to register, or even stick to one name. You don't have to worry about what someone thinks of your analysis, because you can just change your name.

Seriously - if you don't want to stand by what you say, and you want to change your name at will to avoid anyone thinking about your opinion in relation to your next post - isn't that the very DEFINITION of wanting to be anonymous?

Making non-reg users all anonymous is a great solution to separate the trolls and "hit-and-run" posters from the regular commentators who actually will stand by what they say, defend their positions in the future, and as a side benefit not have to be worried that someone will post in their name and ruin what little good reputation they might have.

Sounds like a win-win to me. Anonymous trolls, prepare to be ignored much more often. You want someone to respect your thoughts? Sign in.

You bozos are missing the point. Apple has some real potential here. What happened to all the posters that actually cared about the news items.

Who cares about the anonymous thing...

Being anonymous lets me say fuck you whining babies. Where are the intelligent posters?

fuck, fuck, shit, cunt, eat me

Nov 16, 07 - 04:06 am Comment from: British Mac Head

Hey Anonymous, stop beefing about the anonymous thing. If you want to register more than one name just try logging into your Mac as a different user and set up different name with that.

I dunno. Time after time I hear people whining on here about not having login facilities and now you have them you whine again.

Sheesh!

Quit whining already Anonymous you dumb jerk.
ROTFLMAO

Nov 16, 07 - 05:15 am Comment from: Macaday

Hey MDN, please will you turn off the auomatic tick for notifications...

My email boxes are full enough without getting troll posters messages sent to me as well...

Nov 16, 07 - 05:56 am Comment from: British Mac Head

@blucaso
Good point but there are ways round for trolls that are determined to mess about. At least they can't spoof someone else's screen name though.

Well done MDN.

"You want someone to respect your thoughts? Sign in."

It's going to take more than that blucaso. First you're going to need to have some thoughts.

I loved the way MDN initially shared every registered person's private addresses with the world.

MDN can you turn that feature back on?

Will you guys STFU about the anonymous thing and stay on subject?

You Mac people always get off subject when something odd happens.

Now just wtf does this patent mean? SOMEONE explain that in human terms.

erm..back on topic, i'd like to know how the flash drives compare with hard drives in terms of speed?

onionhead...

oops...i mean anonymous!

Nov 16, 07 - 06:45 am Comment from: Thorin

The flash drives are a bit faster.

i wonder if data fragmentation would still occur, and if it even mattered with a flash drive?

OH

Nov 16, 07 - 06:53 am Comment from: British Mac Head

aaaaarrrrgggghhhhh!

MDN you need an options link so we can turn off notifications if they are driving us mad!!

-- ping --

i wonder if data fragmentation would still occur, and if it even mattered with a flash drive?

No, there are no read/write heads to be mechanically moved, so fragmentation is irrelevant with flash memory.

Nov 16, 07 - 06:57 am Comment from: Tergenev

I *think* it has to do with the difference between NAND memory and NOR memory. NAND is what we all use every day. NOR is less common because it wears out after a few thousand read-write cycles. But NOR memory can store 8 bit values (between 1 and 256) in each memory location. NAND only stores 1 bit (ON or OFF) in each memory location. These patents seem to deal with a way to use NAND with different voltage values so that they can store more data in the same size NAND package by allowing NAND to store more than 1 bit per memory location. So a 1GB Flash chip would be able to store 16GB of data . . . if we use the suggested 4bit per memory location that seems to be suggested by the Apple patent.

And of course, all of this is written in the context of ubiquitous wireless portable flash memory and data storage devices. So we could be talking cell phones, PDAs, iPods, tablet PCs, notebook PCs, ATM machines, auto stereo head units,. . . . yadda, yadda, yadda.

That's how I read it.

-- ping --

Forcing registration just means we'll have to write our name into the text as above when not wanting to hand ofer private information. It's a silly nuisance to block the name field and just deteriorates the quality of the site, nothing else! :-(

I'm Bartsimpsonhead, and so's my wife...

@ping:
-- ping --

i wonder if data fragmentation would still occur, and if it even mattered with a flash drive?

No, there are no read/write heads to be mechanically moved, so fragmentation is irrelevant with flash memory.

so would heavily fragmented files still be just as quickly retrieved as a non fragmented file?

-onionhead

-- ping --

Why not simply add an "(unregistered)" in blue to a name entered without registration? That makes the distinction clear enough and doesn't waste the name field any more like it does now with the indiscriminate "Anonymous" now!

I am not anonymous.

Less is More

-- ping --

onionhead: so would heavily fragmented files still be just as quickly retrieved as a non fragmented file?

Yes, exactly.

RAM is "fragmented" as well, by the way, since the memory pages are swapped in and out as needed and the RAM pages belonging to a seemingly contiguous range of memory for a given application are actually scattered all over the physical RAM space installed; the Memory Management Unit in the CPU maintains mapping tables to look up the actual RAM addresses in real time.

And these mapping tables are rapidly re-mapped and modified when swapping activity occurs. What's taking the time in swapping, however, is only the transfer to and from the harddisk. The re-mapping of RAM at every access is practically without performance penalty.

And it's very similar with flash memory: Without mechanical movements involved, fragmented access is as fast as contiguous access (with a negligible difference only in special cases).

@ping

Fantastic explanation - thanks!

Now I'm thinking that the computer might also be capable of having the operating system in a constantly ready state without having to be loaded into ram at startup?

-onionhead

-- ping --

onionhead: Now I'm thinking that the computer might also be capable of having the operating system in a constantly ready state without having to be loaded into ram at startup?

In principle that's possible indeed - and that's how it was with the earlier computers (mostly the eight-bit machines in the 1980s). But with the complexity and size of modern OSs that is not as simple as it once was, and flash memory is still somewhat slower in read access than RAM is as far as I'm aware.

Although it's mostly a matter of the bus or interface used. If fast flash chips were connected through a memory bus like the one used for RAM, the performance difference could probably be eliminated.

But at least on the Mac boot or wakeup times aren't a big concern anyway. Windows users might benefit more from "OS in flash"...

@ping

Could ram and storage eventually converge if the speed and capacity could be increased? This could mean a lot of flexibility for us photoshop users who depend on 'scratch disks' for dealing with very large files?

sorry to bug you so much but i'm on a roll and you have the answers!

- onionhead

-- ping --

onionhead: Could ram and storage eventually converge if the speed and capacity could be increased?

That is indeed an old idea... needing flash for firmware, RAM for the actual work and harddisks for mass storage is not ideal by far. It's just a necessity at this point because

- RAM is volatile

- flash is not quite as fast as RAM and not nearly as cheap as harddisks per gigabyte

- harddisks are slow and prone to mechanical wear and tear (hence the need for backups!)

Eliminating all these problems and just using one kind of storage for everything has been the idea for a long time already; They've just not found the all-encompassing solution yet.

MRAM might be an option if it can be manufactured in sufficient quality and quantity: It's solid state, (pretty) fast, (hopefully) reliable and non-volatile. But we'll have to see if it's really feasible in practice.

onionhead: sorry to bug you so much but i'm on a roll and you have the answers!

Oh, what else would I do with my time anyway? Work?? Are you mad??

-- ping --

P.S.:

- Flash is especially much, much slower than RAM is when writing to it, even still slower than harddisks in many cases.

- Apple is obviously contributing to the intensive attempts to close up with flash to harddisk storage, so at least harddisks will probably see gradual replacement in the coming years as the flash music players already exemplify today. The "cost gap" in $/GB is slowly narrowing, but it will still be a while before it's gone away completely.

What are the odds that there are x amount of people in this world, that read MDN, are named anonymous?

Now I'm anonymous.....

Hey 'wft' and 'stfu' people:

You just look like foolish with idiotic nonsense like that.

-- ping --

Just add the name to the post...