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But only 5Gb? A little stingy for Google, better with at least 10 Gb. Seems like it will be reasonable. DropBox should be scared.

I've experienced a number of hard drive failures these past 3 weeks, surprisingly all clustered around the same time. Two things come to mind: a. the power company had a big power spike that killed the drives, or b. drive manufacturers have discovered that they can manufacture drives to lower standards such that they die within the first 18 months, and that just causes people to buy more drives. I am inclined to believe the later.

In any event, I've experienced no data loss. All the drives were Western Digital units, which in my experience tend to fail slowly over time vs. other brands fail suddenly, which is worse. I was running in RAID 5 mode. Hardware-based.

In total about 9 Tb of capacity went kaput. So far I've replaced 3 Tb, and I have RMA'd the other 6 Tb to WD, who supposedly should replace the drives since they were under warranty. Let's see how well this works out.

All in, my max live capacity is currently about 23 Tb, so still have 16 Tb online while I wait to restore the other 6 Tb.

Reading up on the coefficient of restitution

The coefficient of restitution (COR) of two colliding objects is a fractional value representing the ratio of speeds after and before an impact, taken along the line of the impact. Pairs of objects with COR 1 collide elastically, while objects with COR < 1 collide inelastically. For a COR = 0, the objects effectively "stop" at the collision, not bouncing at all. An object (singular) is often described as having a coefficient of restitution as if it were an intrinsic property without reference to a second object, in this case the definition is assumed to be with respect to collisions with a perfectly rigid and elastic object. COR = (relative speed after collision)/(relative speed before collision).

Rumor has it the new iPhone 5 will be announced in October and will be made of Liquidmetal, a CalTech developed alloy marketed under that name, which has a " very high coefficient of restitution and excellent anti-wearing characteristics"

Mia Hamm's write up on Messi, the best player in the world, who made it into Time Magazine's Top 100 Most Influential People in the World for 2012.

Wow, it's hot. It's past 1 am and over 75 F outside. It's been warm all day. I think we will hit the mid 80s tomorrow, seems crazy. I wonder whether it will stay like this, or go back to normal like it did a couple of weeks ago. Anyway, not complaining, I like the warmer weather