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What's really ironic for me is that I joined the game's Facebook group when this story was posted and linked to it. I made the comment that they better hope the (sleepy town's) police force didn't get too gung-ho about doing their job. Several people replied to the effect of 'haha, those people (at BGSU) are idiots.'

They're probably not laughing too much tonight.

The story, what there is of it, is listed on the U's front page.

Sorry, but you are wrong. Back in the mid eighties, NY State decided to site a low level nuclear dump (mostly medical radiological waste) in a low lying swamp on an active fault line in the southern tier of the state (Alleghany County). Why did they pick that site? Low population and low income. They figured they could do it quietly and that the local population did not have the money for a legal fight and that they could be bought with 'jobs'.

The siting commision was wrong, and they were received by armed locals. Luckily the state police running escort were all senior officers and kept a level head. It could have turned into a real fiasco but ended as a minor disturbance. There were a few legal battles after that, then the whole issue faded. The siting commission regrouped and did a fairly extensive analysis of the process. (The last link)

Speak not of that which you do not know.

http://www.piercelaw.edu/risk/vol7/spring/vari.htm
http://herrick.alfred.edu/special/collections/LLRW .asp
http://www.nap.edu/execsumm/0309055393.html

IDL may be the language you are referring to. IDL is indeed based on FORTRAN, and is pretty good at efficiant matrix calculations. While expensive, it is still in use in the astronomical circles, due to the efficiancy with which it can manipulate CCD images.

While an undregraduate at Alfred University, I used IDL quite a bit in my upper level astronomy classes. A friend of mine is part of the University of Rochester Near Infrared Astronomy Group, where his main task is to code monstrosities in IDL to deal with all their astronomical data.

While I do have some experience with pottery, I have a degree in ceramic engineering from Alfred University http://www.alfred.edu/ and currently work with microelectronics. Most ceramic engineers consider all inorganic non-metal materials as ceramics, and that includes both amorphous, polycrystalline, and single crystal.

Yes. Mutant children were born like this poor baby.

When the Mindcraft benchmarks came out, I found this article: What the tests prove. Basically says benchmarks are pointless cause the bottleneck is your connection.
From the end of the article: "Let's be clear about this: if you have only 5 T1 lines or less, a single CPU Linux box with 256 MB RAM will wait on your internet connection and not be able to serve up to its full potential. Let me reemphasize this: ZD's tests prove that a single CPU Linux box with 256 MB RAM running apache will run faster than your internet connection!. Put another way, if your site runs on 5 T1 lines or less, a single CPU Linux box with 256 MB RAM will more than fulfill your needs with CPU cycles left over."

get it here.

As I remember the ZD benchmark comparing NT & Linux last year did not do that well, remember, I hope they will run a second one this year... running TUX as HTTP software and beat the crap out of NT.

Disclaimer: "These opinions are my own, though for a small fee they be yours too"

But mention Red Hat and Linux to Aubrey Edwards, group product manager for Microsoft's forthcoming Windows NT upgrade Windows 2000, and he seems almost on the verge of stifling a yawn. ''When you look at the hype versus the reality today,'' says Edwards, ''there is a big disconnect.''

Never trust a man who uses the word "disconnect" inappropriately. It's a variety of corporate slang common to PHBs.

Discrepancy. Difference. Not disconnect.

For example, Java was originally designed to prevent users from saving files to a computer's hard drive - a good security precaution, but worse than useless for word processing.

Once again, a journalist who can't differentiate between Java and Applets. Java applications have always been able to read from hard drives. Say what you want about the language, but it's not a toy. (It may not be possible to make this statement of applets.)

Talk to Microsoft executives and they'll tell you that a similar fate awaits Linux. Charles Fitzgerald, director of business development in Microsoft's software development unit, says the Linux hype has already peaked. ''Cold hard reality is coming to bear,'' he says.

>sarcasm<
If I were looking for a good source of unbiased Linux coverage, I'd look to IT professionals. Hey, the director of business development for Microsoft looks like a good choice!
>/sarcasm<

Seriously - doesn't anyone find it odd that Troan's comments only address the comparison of Linux to Java, and not allegations by Microsoft executives? I'd like to see a little bit more balance in this story.

Fitzgerald points to recent benchmark tests by the research firm Mindcraft Inc., which found Windows NT performs a variety of tasks faster than Linux.

What more needs to be said about this?

#define SARCASM TRUE

Computer Companies can't inovate because the government doesn't let them. Every time a company inovates, be it integrating a web browser directly into the operating system, inventing the WIMP interface, the mouse, the internet, and multimedia, or creating valuable new productivity and educational paradigms, the government swoops in and calls it 'anti-trust' or 'a monopoly'.

HOGWASH! If you want better inovation - write the government and tell them to stop persecuting inovators like Bill Gates and Microsoft - the leading inovators of some of the most poserful computer systems around (see the recent benchmarks). After all, the free market system, the greatest economic system ever, has valued Bill at more money than all of the people who came before him. Who are you to compain?

To me this highlights the one true evil force in the world. No, not Microsoft. Ignorance. Dr. Science once said "Ignorance is bliss, and tonight, we're a happy country." I could not agree more.

The basic problem is not Microsoft. Not their products, not their technology (or lack thereof), not their marketing people. The problem is the number of people who do not think critically. The NT benchmark does not lie. It simply tells a very narrow slice of truth and "positions" that truth to show NT and IIS in the best possible light.

To me, the one outrageous thing in Microsoft's benchmark page is the chart that shows total cost of ownership. Now, I'm not a CIO, CEO, or CFO, but it seems the me that cost per transaction per unit time is completely irrelevant. What matters (as the author of the article we are commenting on here points out) is cost per transaction and can you handle your transaction volume?

When decision makers look no deeper than the cooked figures from NT's benchmark, when they fail to see if the scenario represents their business and technical reality, then their business gets what they deserve.

What the "Microsoft Advertising for Linux" article does that is lauditory is it cuts through to a core question. Which is cheaper given a certain use case? It wisely does not answer, but merely points out that in most cases, even in most intranets the Mindcraft/Microsoft scenario is extremely unlikely and that Linux/Apache on even limited hardware will handle most loads anyone would reasonable expect.

It also wisely points out that if you are a site in the tiny fraction that will exceed Linux/Apache's capacity, then by all means use NT/IIS.

Then, one more dig of my own at the TCO figures. Even if we grant the validity of the figure cost per transaction unit time (which I do not), what happens if you set up ten servers, or twenty? Linux costs nothing more for ten servers than it does for one. I haven't the time to see how many servers it would take, but there would come a break even point and then a point where Linux/Apache is cheaper even using the dubious measure in the Microsoft study.

Finally, I just want to congratulate the author of "Microsoft Advertising for Linux?" for showing the value of just trying some of your own math and asking, "Hey, is this reasonable?" If we all did this routinely regarding everything from computer bechmarks to medical scare news stories we would live in a much saner and less stressful world. Whichever operating system you buy.

The average file in ZDNet's WebBench (You can download it, if you wish to) is approximately 10kb big. 10342.3 bytes, to be exact. Use this number when reading the web page.

In other words, a single-processor 256meg box can saturate a T3 with plenty of room to spare (107 MBps). The four-processor Linux box will almost saturate an OC3 (150 Mbps).

- Sam

The average file in ZDNet's WebBench (You can download it, if you wish to) is approximately 10kb big. 10342.3 bytes, to be exact. Use this number when reading the web page.

In other words, a single-processor 256meg box can saturate a T3 with plenty of room to spare (107 MBps). The four-processor Linux box will almost saturate an OC3 (150 Mbps).

- Sam

for those of us with mice
http://cs.alfred.edu/~lansdoct/mstest.ht ml


Gotta love numbers. I think this puts more a real world spin on the whole thing.

To paraphrase metaphorically....

My New Tech car goes 5000 MPH.
Oh yea, my Free Open car goes 2000 MPH.

But the speed limit is 55.

Yea, but who obeys the speed limit.

O.k, but the ROAD breaks down at about 500 MPH, so where does your car go after that?

And BTW, how often does your car break down? How much did it cost?

..and the final sentence:
I thought everyone flew planes in the real world?

http://cs.alfred.edu/~lansdoct/mstest.ht ml

Kinda puts the whole shebang into perspective. Watch out for the twist of irony at the end.



Regards,