🚀 go-pugleaf

tph@longhorn.uucp (Tom Harrington) writes:

> Ray Depew (r...@fc.hp.com) wrote:
>
> : I'm not sure where I live, but I'll ask anyway:  do you by any chance
> : cross the equator on your drive to work?
> 
> Oh, THAT'S RIGHT!  Hard drives and floppy drives spin the other way
> south of the equator!  A side-effect of this is that they can't be
> used *at* the equator, because they don't spin at all.  You've also
> got to watch out if you get one close to the poles, because the spin
> velocity increases toward infinity (that's why they're called "poles",
> because if you plot spin velocity vs. latitude, the plot has a 
> pole at +90 and -90 degrees).  Usually the drives break apart 
> before you get to the pole; if you ever got one all the way there,
> it would implode on itself and create a black hole.
> 
> I believe this is becuase of the Coriolis effect.

You wouldn't believe the peak transfer rates you get on disks in the
Yukon.

Disk units used in space use a full track buffer and special logic to
reverse the bits in the track buffer when in the hemisphere opposite the
one of launch.  It's why space-rated computers are so expensive.

-- 
Steve VanDevender         USENET haiku: Take it somewhere else
email: ste...@hexadecimal.uoregon.edu   This thread does not belong here
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