A late 2004 release in Japan would coincide with an early to mid 2005 release in the US. This is plausable, but it's ridiculous to debate at this stage anyway.
So long as this thing clamps your head in a vice 6 feet away and does a laser scan of your cranium, inner ear, and the room it's in, I'll believe that it produces accurate "Surround Sound", but until then, all it's doing is cutting the audio out of phase enough that it appears to sound as if it's coming from a different direction than the speaker itself. It sounds cool to a lot of people, and that's just fine, but the reproduction is not especially accurate. A regular 4, 5.1, etc setup will do a lot better job, but I can see where the ease of setup and the space considerations will sell this product to a good number of people.
I got a prodikeys for my girlfriend for her birthday last year. I got a bad one out of the box, but they replaced it. I was kind of dissapointed to find that while it advertises standard MIDI compatibility, this is provided by a software driver only, and the keyboard still plugs into the PS/2 port.. Thus it requires a special driver to show up as a MIDI device.. no working in Linux, etc. yet anyway... I really wonder why they didn't make it USB and have it show up as two USB devices (one MIDI interface, one HID keyboard).. makes no sense, but it works as advertised. The action on the keys is as good as most any of the synthesizers that do not have full size keys. It's not even moderately professional, but it works better than 'toy' keyboards..
Yes, I know. It's a neurotoxin, just like Asparthame (Nutra-Sweet), only more people are affected by MSG than Asparthame.
The problem is that MSG is used in great quantities at fast food establishments and hardly at all in Chinese food (at least not anymore) -- but the Chinese food places have traditionally been the ones taking the heat for it. I know plenty of people who are unaffected by MSG that will refuse to eat at a Chinese food place without a "No MSG" policy, but they will happily go to McDonald's and wolf down some of that shit.
Jesus, man, have you *SEEN* a McGriddle? You get sticky hands when you touch it!
Also, most of McDonald's food is laced with MSG. You get far less of the stuff at your local Chinese food place -- where, for some reason, MSG has become a huge public health issue prompting Chinese places everyhere to evict massive "No MSG" signs.
Linuxant has a short and torrid history in the Linux driver scene. They pretty well burst onto the scene after Marc Boucher got the rights from Conexant to develop kernel drivers for their HSF/HCF chipsets. Users enjoyed a couple years of very well supported drivers (apparently with the manufacturer's financial backing) until about two months ago when Linuxant "announced" their new and improved version of the HCF/HSF modem driver.
Guess what? They decided that development costs were too great and thus, they charge for it now. On top of that they removed all prior free releases of the driver (which worked just fine for all but some of the newest cards and/or some of the more esoteric modem features) from their website. There was no warning for this change, and they began sending marketing emails to their driver -announce list.
With this kind of history, I am wary of supporting any kind of use of their windows-driver wrappers for wireless cards. I am wary that I or my users will grow to rely on these drivers and then have the rug pulled from under our feet. I am wary that hardware manufacturers will grow indifferent to providing native Linux drivers while this product is available and works well. When the time comes that you have to fork out an extra $40 to Linuxant.
Please be aware that I am not opposed to Linuxant marketing their products commercially. It has been my experience that they produce very good work and code that does what it says. It's a shame that the hardware manufacturers cannot seem to support their work financially, as I believe it is in the manufacturers' best interests to see that their hardware works with a wide variety of software and operating systems. For Linuxant not to be up front about this matter is pretty low-brow.
The similarities to their namesake are striking... Linuxant: Keeping the business ideals of Conexant alive and well in the Linux community!
Have you looked at the aging workforce lately? People can't retire over here because they haven't saved any money to do it. If you're under 40 years old, it's likely that there will be no social security when you get older, so unless you want to have to work a minimum wage job when you are 80 years old so that you can afford to eat dog food, then by all means, SPEND SPEND SPEND!
That's because you didn't actually get a hardware RAID card with that Highpoint piece of shit... The way that card (and the cheaper promise ones) work is that they have a ROM on there that handles Int13 disk access via the BIOS (for OS loading and whatnot).. but your CPU still does all the work -- it's software raid stored in the card's firmware.
When the OS loads, the card's driver takes over, doing software raid there..
beware your last statement, though -- the cheap promise cards that claim raid 5 ARE NOT HARDWARE RAID! They will experience the same problems as the Highpoint card you described.
I wish there was some sort of convention that distinguished this kind of nonsense, but there isn't.. Promise's higher-end IDE RAID controllers are OK, but bang for the buck -- some of the best IDE RAID controllers out there come from 3Ware. I use a lot of them with much success..
Damnit people, you can get devices that do this better and faster than repurposing your damn walkman to do it!
I have an iPod and $99 for this big bulky media reader junk is just stupid. I currently use some off-brand (sigma is maybe the brand name, i think..) device that has a compactflash port and takes a 2.5" HDD. It dumps out the cards to the HDD at 5-10MB/s and sometimes a little faster with microdrives.. It was about $200 including a 30GB drive. When I need to get the files off of it, it's got a slick USB2.0 or Firewire bridge board in it so that it can work as a standard HDD on pretty much any computer..
Do you know of a USBSerial dongle that is actually GOOD? I have problems with my belkin piece of crap all the time.. I have to reset the com port so that it starts receiving every byte that comes in, etc... Don't even get me started on how the bastard device supports (or rather doesnt) power management. I am looking for port-powered if possible but using an external power supply will work also if it's simply the only way to get a good device...
Man you are doing the wrong kind of financial planning if your bills and expenses run so close to the line that you budget for an estimated bonus and spend it before you get it..
Q: Why does Bridge It only run on NVIDIA video cards?
A: Bridge It is a collaboration of three great companies - NVIDIA, Auran and Chronic Logic. As much fun as Bridge It is to play, it was also developed as a great technology showcase for NVIDIA and Auran. Bridge It was designed to utilize NVIDIA hardware and the Auran Jet software to achieve its outstanding visual quality. We would like Bridge It to work on all cards (obviously), but Bridge It was specifically designed as graphics demo to show off NVIDIA graphics cards. Bridge It is based on Chronic Logic's game Bridge Construction Set. Bridge Construction Set has very similar game play as Bridge It and supports all brands of OpenGL video cards, you can check it out here.
Q: What role did NVIDIA, Auran and Chronic Logic each play in the development of Bridge It?
A: Bridge It is the brainchild of Chronic Logic. Bridge It's design is based on Chronic Logic's game Bridge Construction Set. Auran's artists and programmers, armed with the Auran Jet software engine, consulted with Chronic Logic to transform the original Bridge Construction Set into a new gaming experience. NVIDIA joined these two companies together and provided its 3D graphics expertise, as well as moral support, and turned Bridge It into one of the most compelling 3D games on the market today.
Q: How is Bridge It different from Bridge Construction Set?
A: Bridge It is a much more graphic-intense version of BCS. While the gameplay in Bridge It and BCS is similar, the intended audiences for the two games are slightly different. Bridge It was designed with casual gamers in mind and is designed for gamers of all skill levels. BCS is slightly more flexible and challenging and is geared towards the more experienced gamer. Hence, the change of name of BCS to Bridge It (and not BCS 2). See below for more information.
Q: Will your future games require NVIDIA cards?
A: No, Bridge It's graphics are based on technology developed by Auran and NVIDIA. Our current projects are all OpenGL based and will run on all brands of OpenGL cards. They will also support Linux and OSX. However our current projects will look great on NVIDIA cards, because of their excellent developer support.
Q: I understand that Chronic Logic was not involved in the decision to develop Bridge It for NVIDIA cards only. I understand that Chronic Logic did not sell their souls. I understand that without NVIDIA's participation Bridge It would not exist. I understand that serious problems face this world such as wars, nuclear proliferation, world hunger, and Ben and J-Lo's wedding. However I still want to write Chronic Logic and complain about Bridge It (a game developed for NVIDIA) only working on NVIDIA cards. I also want to tell them I will no longer support them by purchasing their products even if I never did (if you have purchased games from Chronic Logic, we appreciate your support very much and feel free to send us your comments). I understand that everyday I purchase products from huge corporations that exploit other humans worldwide while destroying the environment, but I think Chronic Logic is worse and deserves my personal attention. I want to tell Chronic Logic I am so pissed off I won't even support them by pirating their games anymore, what can I do?
A: Then please send your comments to hatemail@chroniclogic.com
Well actually no.. at least not if you use USB 1.1 cameras which most cheap webcams still are. The OS has nothing to do with it.
USB1.1 devices on a USB2.0 controller can be difficult.. If you didn't put them on seperate controllers you'd have to put them on a USB hub with multiple USB1.1 USB2.0 TT's. The Transaction Translator is the device responsible for translating the USB1.1 data to USB2.0 and vice versa. There is typically only one TT per USB controller in the chipset. Webcams are especially nasty since they take up almost the complete bandwidth of USB1.1. If you have two usb 1.1 cameras and only one TT, they're still going to be fighting for that 12Mb/s bandwidth into/out of the TT, even though the bus is capable of a lot more.
The problem is similar to the migration from 10Mb/s ethernet to 100Mb/s ethernet if you were ever doing that.. Some "dual speed" hubs only had a single switch path to get from 10 megabits to 100 megabits, so putting a 100Mb/s card in the server and leaving all the clients at 10Mb/s didn't actually create any performance increase. In many situations where idiot admins swapped in a 10/100 hub to replace 10Mb switches they killed their perforamnce. I had quite a few of those. The solution? Buy a 10 megabit switch with a 100Mb uplink port and plug the uplink into the 100 megabit hub. This is the same problem all over again, except that it's on your desk this time and not in the walls!
Another cheap solution is to put one of the USB1.1 cameras directly into a port from the motherboard and another one on a USB2.0 hub. That way one camera will use the chipset's TT and the other one will use the hub's TT.
What is it you're trying to do? The words "Span" and "Branch" mean about as much to me as.. Saying you want the webcams to "Regulate" and "Press"..
Likewise "One device pulling signals from both" is equally nondescript. I have plugged two USB cameras into one machine before. There is no problem doing this. If you want them to both work at the same time, you'll have to use seperate host controllers or USB 1.1 cameras on a USB 2.0 bus.
It's overpriced mainly because it's not really being produced on a large scale yet. Even still it's less than half the price of the car in this article.
I use BulkRegister and like it a lot. It's very easy to manage domains for a lot of people with it since you can just 'play registrar' with them and change any info you need without complication. They also have some nice tools for managing a lot of domains at the same time.
The price difference between what it costs to store 13TB of data vs 30GB of data is astronomical, especially when that extra 12.9TB is just temporary storage! The article says it's processed in real time to 30GB, so why write out the entire datastream to disk in the first place? It'd probably be cheaper to add a few machines with gobs of ram to cache the data then write out the 'processed' stream than to buy all that extra disk.
I'm sure they have a reason for needing it though that this article fails to cover. I'd hope that almost anyone needing 13TB of storage is a smart person who evaluated their needs correctly.
Visit the "official" via support forums at viaarena.com and you will find a plethora of posts. I put "official" in quotes because it seems the only VIA person who responds there is just a PR person.
To back it up, I own about 5 of the various models of EPIA boards. I can demonstrate that they do this on all models from the 500 to the M10000. If you want to see yourself, get a board, plug in some USB hardware that draws its power from the computer -- a hub or mouse or whatever, and shut the machine down. You'll quickly see that it remains fully powered. For extra fun, get one of those doodads like the USB light or fan that draws lots of current and do the same experiment. It won't turn off either! To get technical you can hook up an ammeter on the 5VSB line, plug some peripherals in and read the huge current draw yourself.
VIA's Mini-ITX boards might have low power consumption while operating but they are total shit for power management. They leave practically everything they can powered up even during S3 suspend when only ram is supposed to be fully powered. Even when totally powered OFF they operate USB, SuperIO, and PS2 ports at FULL power, no matter what the OS asks for, totally failing their own specifications.
The boards are capable of pulling up to 2A off of ATX 5VSB in flagrant overconsumption. Even if the power supply is capable of providing that current on 5VSB, providing it continuously without the internal fans operating (which they don't in suspend) could be dangerous. The ATX specification provides for an absolute maximum current draw way below what the average Mini-ITX board draws from 5VSB when idle or off.
This problem was identified over a year ago after the ITX boards were initially released; however VIA has never issued a single fix for it, although it's apparently not the hardware preventing the fix from being implemented! Needless to say, their customer support in the Mini-ITX department is also shit. Is it so bad to want the board to work as advertised?
Luckily, I haven't even gotten into the processor or video driver issues, which many people see as an even larger problem than the power issues.. To each his own:) At least VIA has some truthful advertising on one point: the board is indeed a very small 170x170mm!
If 13TB can be compressed into 3GB then the system/code responsible for generating the original 13TB datastream should be reassesed as it is absolutely shit.
Also, I never said anything about report generation, I said that I can process the logs and retain the important data that I need in a few KB - Most of the good web stats packages out there consolidate large log files into much smaller databases from which they can then run reports and get meaningful data from. Nobody ever said the 'compression' was lossless.
Here's a better example, then. Take a simple voice recording: The original might be a 96KHz 24bit 8-channel file of someone saying "Hi" that is 50MB or so uncompressed. It could be compressed with some low bitrate codec to ~2400bps or so yeilding a file of 1-2KB. Finally I can 'compress' it even further and give you a 2 byte transcript of the file "Hi". From this, I could apply a simple text compression algorighm that uses 5 bits each to encode only letters A-Z and get the 2 byte string down to 10 bits: "HI" and you'd still have all the important content. Essentially this is 'compression' from 50MB -> 10bits or 41,943,040:1; however it's definately highly situation and highly data dependent -- and the article did not claim otherwise. 30GB->3KB is only 10,091,558:1, so my simple example is not that far fetched...
I quite liked the simple comparison. I have a small mailserver and reading large Maildir folders is actually something I do constantly. It has a nice IDE subsystem, but I can sure see that SCSI would be a much better choice. I don't much care the difference in between a 10K and 15K rpm scsi drive.. On my low end server, if it's faster and not too much more expensive, I'm all for it!
I'm sure that they are not processing web traffic statistics, but that is an application that mirrors the data needs in a similar situation. I imagine many other applications have similar data needs. No doubt, the 3K is not re-expandable to 13TB, and probably neither is the 30GB.
For instance, I might be generating 10GB of logs per day. To save disk space, the streams might be written out with gzip compression (it's write-only, after all), or I might rewrite the formats to conserve space - write the IP addresses in 4 bytes rather than writing out the full ASCII dotted quad, etc. Since it's text and the format is highly redundant, it compresses very well.. I might end up with a 50-500MB log file depending on how things are done. At the end of the day, I could process the statistics and generate report/archive data of several KB that retains all the important data I want to keep from the logs.
Slashdot Mirror
A late 2004 release in Japan would coincide with an early to mid 2005 release in the US. This is plausable, but it's ridiculous to debate at this stage anyway.
So long as this thing clamps your head in a vice 6 feet away and does a laser scan of your cranium, inner ear, and the room it's in, I'll believe that it produces accurate "Surround Sound", but until then, all it's doing is cutting the audio out of phase enough that it appears to sound as if it's coming from a different direction than the speaker itself. It sounds cool to a lot of people, and that's just fine, but the reproduction is not especially accurate. A regular 4, 5.1, etc setup will do a lot better job, but I can see where the ease of setup and the space considerations will sell this product to a good number of people.
I got a prodikeys for my girlfriend for her birthday last year. I got a bad one out of the box, but they replaced it. I was kind of dissapointed to find that while it advertises standard MIDI compatibility, this is provided by a software driver only, and the keyboard still plugs into the PS/2 port.. Thus it requires a special driver to show up as a MIDI device .. no working in Linux, etc. yet anyway... I really wonder why they didn't make it USB and have it show up as two USB devices (one MIDI interface, one HID keyboard).. makes no sense, but it works as advertised. The action on the keys is as good as most any of the synthesizers that do not have full size keys. It's not even moderately professional, but it works better than 'toy' keyboards..
Yes, I know. It's a neurotoxin, just like Asparthame (Nutra-Sweet), only more people are affected by MSG than Asparthame.
The problem is that MSG is used in great quantities at fast food establishments and hardly at all in Chinese food (at least not anymore) -- but the Chinese food places have traditionally been the ones taking the heat for it. I know plenty of people who are unaffected by MSG that will refuse to eat at a Chinese food place without a "No MSG" policy, but they will happily go to McDonald's and wolf down some of that shit.
Jesus, man, have you *SEEN* a McGriddle? You get sticky hands when you touch it!
Also, most of McDonald's food is laced with MSG. You get far less of the stuff at your local Chinese food place -- where, for some reason, MSG has become a huge public health issue prompting Chinese places everyhere to evict massive "No MSG" signs.
~GoRK
Linuxant pulled a similar stunt in the past. Please see my other comment for details...
~GoRK
Linuxant has a short and torrid history in the Linux driver scene. They pretty well burst onto the scene after Marc Boucher got the rights from Conexant to develop kernel drivers for their HSF/HCF chipsets. Users enjoyed a couple years of very well supported drivers (apparently with the manufacturer's financial backing) until about two months ago when Linuxant "announced" their new and improved version of the HCF/HSF modem driver.
Guess what? They decided that development costs were too great and thus, they charge for it now. On top of that they removed all prior free releases of the driver (which worked just fine for all but some of the newest cards and/or some of the more esoteric modem features) from their website. There was no warning for this change, and they began sending marketing emails to their driver -announce list.
With this kind of history, I am wary of supporting any kind of use of their windows-driver wrappers for wireless cards. I am wary that I or my users will grow to rely on these drivers and then have the rug pulled from under our feet. I am wary that hardware manufacturers will grow indifferent to providing native Linux drivers while this product is available and works well. When the time comes that you have to fork out an extra $40 to Linuxant.
Please be aware that I am not opposed to Linuxant marketing their products commercially. It has been my experience that they produce very good work and code that does what it says. It's a shame that the hardware manufacturers cannot seem to support their work financially, as I believe it is in the manufacturers' best interests to see that their hardware works with a wide variety of software and operating systems. For Linuxant not to be up front about this matter is pretty low-brow.
The similarities to their namesake are striking... Linuxant: Keeping the business ideals of Conexant alive and well in the Linux community!
~GoRK
Have you looked at the aging workforce lately? People can't retire over here because they haven't saved any money to do it. If you're under 40 years old, it's likely that there will be no social security when you get older, so unless you want to have to work a minimum wage job when you are 80 years old so that you can afford to eat dog food, then by all means, SPEND SPEND SPEND!
That's because you didn't actually get a hardware RAID card with that Highpoint piece of shit... The way that card (and the cheaper promise ones) work is that they have a ROM on there that handles Int13 disk access via the BIOS (for OS loading and whatnot).. but your CPU still does all the work -- it's software raid stored in the card's firmware.
When the OS loads, the card's driver takes over, doing software raid there..
beware your last statement, though -- the cheap promise cards that claim raid 5 ARE NOT HARDWARE RAID! They will experience the same problems as the Highpoint card you described.
I wish there was some sort of convention that distinguished this kind of nonsense, but there isn't.. Promise's higher-end IDE RAID controllers are OK, but bang for the buck -- some of the best IDE RAID controllers out there come from 3Ware. I use a lot of them with much success..
~GoRK
Damnit people, you can get devices that do this better and faster than repurposing your damn walkman to do it!
I have an iPod and $99 for this big bulky media reader junk is just stupid. I currently use some off-brand (sigma is maybe the brand name, i think..) device that has a compactflash port and takes a 2.5" HDD. It dumps out the cards to the HDD at 5-10MB/s and sometimes a little faster with microdrives.. It was about $200 including a 30GB drive. When I need to get the files off of it, it's got a slick USB2.0 or Firewire bridge board in it so that it can work as a standard HDD on pretty much any computer..
Speaking of...
Do you know of a USBSerial dongle that is actually GOOD? I have problems with my belkin piece of crap all the time.. I have to reset the com port so that it starts receiving every byte that comes in, etc... Don't even get me started on how the bastard device supports (or rather doesnt) power management. I am looking for port-powered if possible but using an external power supply will work also if it's simply the only way to get a good device...
Man you are doing the wrong kind of financial planning if your bills and expenses run so close to the line that you budget for an estimated bonus and spend it before you get it..
$1500.00 CDN .. so that's about, what, $375 bucks or so? haha
From http://www.chroniclogic.com/bridgeitfaq.htm
Q: Why does Bridge It only run on NVIDIA video cards?
A: Bridge It is a collaboration of three great companies - NVIDIA, Auran and Chronic Logic. As much fun as Bridge It is to play, it was also developed as a great technology showcase for NVIDIA and Auran. Bridge It was designed to utilize NVIDIA hardware and the Auran Jet software to achieve its outstanding visual quality. We would like Bridge It to work on all cards (obviously), but Bridge It was specifically designed as graphics demo to show off NVIDIA graphics cards. Bridge It is based on Chronic Logic's game Bridge Construction Set. Bridge Construction Set has very similar game play as Bridge It and supports all brands of OpenGL video cards, you can check it out here.
Q: What role did NVIDIA, Auran and Chronic Logic each play in the development of Bridge It?
A: Bridge It is the brainchild of Chronic Logic. Bridge It's design is based on Chronic Logic's game Bridge Construction Set. Auran's artists and programmers, armed with the Auran Jet software engine, consulted with Chronic Logic to transform the original Bridge Construction Set into a new gaming experience. NVIDIA joined these two companies together and provided its 3D graphics expertise, as well as moral support, and turned Bridge It into one of the most compelling 3D games on the market today.
Q: How is Bridge It different from Bridge Construction Set?
A: Bridge It is a much more graphic-intense version of BCS. While the gameplay in Bridge It and BCS is similar, the intended audiences for the two games are slightly different. Bridge It was designed with casual gamers in mind and is designed for gamers of all skill levels. BCS is slightly more flexible and challenging and is geared towards the more experienced gamer. Hence, the change of name of BCS to Bridge It (and not BCS 2). See below for more information.
Q: Will your future games require NVIDIA cards?
A: No, Bridge It's graphics are based on technology developed by Auran and NVIDIA. Our current projects are all OpenGL based and will run on all brands of OpenGL cards. They will also support Linux and OSX. However our current projects will look great on NVIDIA cards, because of their excellent developer support.
Q: I understand that Chronic Logic was not involved in the decision to develop Bridge It for NVIDIA cards only. I understand that Chronic Logic did not sell their souls. I understand that without NVIDIA's participation Bridge It would not exist. I understand that serious problems face this world such as wars, nuclear proliferation, world hunger, and Ben and J-Lo's wedding. However I still want to write Chronic Logic and complain about Bridge It (a game developed for NVIDIA) only working on NVIDIA cards. I also want to tell them I will no longer support them by purchasing their products even if I never did (if you have purchased games from Chronic Logic, we appreciate your support very much and feel free to send us your comments). I understand that everyday I purchase products from huge corporations that exploit other humans worldwide while destroying the environment, but I think Chronic Logic is worse and deserves my personal attention. I want to tell Chronic Logic I am so pissed off I won't even support them by pirating their games anymore, what can I do?
A: Then please send your comments to hatemail@chroniclogic.com
Well actually no.. at least not if you use USB 1.1 cameras which most cheap webcams still are. The OS has nothing to do with it.
USB1.1 devices on a USB2.0 controller can be difficult.. If you didn't put them on seperate controllers you'd have to put them on a USB hub with multiple USB1.1 USB2.0 TT's. The Transaction Translator is the device responsible for translating the USB1.1 data to USB2.0 and vice versa. There is typically only one TT per USB controller in the chipset. Webcams are especially nasty since they take up almost the complete bandwidth of USB1.1. If you have two usb 1.1 cameras and only one TT, they're still going to be fighting for that 12Mb/s bandwidth into/out of the TT, even though the bus is capable of a lot more.
The problem is similar to the migration from 10Mb/s ethernet to 100Mb/s ethernet if you were ever doing that.. Some "dual speed" hubs only had a single switch path to get from 10 megabits to 100 megabits, so putting a 100Mb/s card in the server and leaving all the clients at 10Mb/s didn't actually create any performance increase. In many situations where idiot admins swapped in a 10/100 hub to replace 10Mb switches they killed their perforamnce. I had quite a few of those. The solution? Buy a 10 megabit switch with a 100Mb uplink port and plug the uplink into the 100 megabit hub. This is the same problem all over again, except that it's on your desk this time and not in the walls!
Another cheap solution is to put one of the USB1.1 cameras directly into a port from the motherboard and another one on a USB2.0 hub. That way one camera will use the chipset's TT and the other one will use the hub's TT.
~GoRK
What is it you're trying to do? The words "Span" and "Branch" mean about as much to me as.. Saying you want the webcams to "Regulate" and "Press"..
Likewise "One device pulling signals from both" is equally nondescript. I have plugged two USB cameras into one machine before. There is no problem doing this. If you want them to both work at the same time, you'll have to use seperate host controllers or USB 1.1 cameras on a USB 2.0 bus.
It's overpriced mainly because it's not really being produced on a large scale yet. Even still it's less than half the price of the car in this article.
I use BulkRegister and like it a lot. It's very easy to manage domains for a lot of people with it since you can just 'play registrar' with them and change any info you need without complication. They also have some nice tools for managing a lot of domains at the same time.
The price difference between what it costs to store 13TB of data vs 30GB of data is astronomical, especially when that extra 12.9TB is just temporary storage! The article says it's processed in real time to 30GB, so why write out the entire datastream to disk in the first place? It'd probably be cheaper to add a few machines with gobs of ram to cache the data then write out the 'processed' stream than to buy all that extra disk.
I'm sure they have a reason for needing it though that this article fails to cover. I'd hope that almost anyone needing 13TB of storage is a smart person who evaluated their needs correctly.
~GoRK
Visit the "official" via support forums at viaarena.com and you will find a plethora of posts. I put "official" in quotes because it seems the only VIA person who responds there is just a PR person.
To back it up, I own about 5 of the various models of EPIA boards. I can demonstrate that they do this on all models from the 500 to the M10000. If you want to see yourself, get a board, plug in some USB hardware that draws its power from the computer -- a hub or mouse or whatever, and shut the machine down. You'll quickly see that it remains fully powered. For extra fun, get one of those doodads like the USB light or fan that draws lots of current and do the same experiment. It won't turn off either! To get technical you can hook up an ammeter on the 5VSB line, plug some peripherals in and read the huge current draw yourself.
~GoRK
VIA's Mini-ITX boards might have low power consumption while operating but they are total shit for power management. They leave practically everything they can powered up even during S3 suspend when only ram is supposed to be fully powered. Even when totally powered OFF they operate USB, SuperIO, and PS2 ports at FULL power, no matter what the OS asks for, totally failing their own specifications.
:) At least VIA has some truthful advertising on one point: the board is indeed a very small 170x170mm!
The boards are capable of pulling up to 2A off of ATX 5VSB in flagrant overconsumption. Even if the power supply is capable of providing that current on 5VSB, providing it continuously without the internal fans operating (which they don't in suspend) could be dangerous. The ATX specification provides for an absolute maximum current draw way below what the average Mini-ITX board draws from 5VSB when idle or off.
This problem was identified over a year ago after the ITX boards were initially released; however VIA has never issued a single fix for it, although it's apparently not the hardware preventing the fix from being implemented! Needless to say, their customer support in the Mini-ITX department is also shit. Is it so bad to want the board to work as advertised?
Luckily, I haven't even gotten into the processor or video driver issues, which many people see as an even larger problem than the power issues.. To each his own
~GoRK
Correction: I did mention report generation; sorry.
If 13TB can be compressed into 3GB then the system/code responsible for generating the original 13TB datastream should be reassesed as it is absolutely shit.
Also, I never said anything about report generation, I said that I can process the logs and retain the important data that I need in a few KB - Most of the good web stats packages out there consolidate large log files into much smaller databases from which they can then run reports and get meaningful data from. Nobody ever said the 'compression' was lossless.
Here's a better example, then. Take a simple voice recording: The original might be a 96KHz 24bit 8-channel file of someone saying "Hi" that is 50MB or so uncompressed. It could be compressed with some low bitrate codec to ~2400bps or so yeilding a file of 1-2KB. Finally I can 'compress' it even further and give you a 2 byte transcript of the file "Hi". From this, I could apply a simple text compression algorighm that uses 5 bits each to encode only letters A-Z and get the 2 byte string down to 10 bits: "HI" and you'd still have all the important content. Essentially this is 'compression' from 50MB -> 10bits or 41,943,040:1; however it's definately highly situation and highly data dependent -- and the article did not claim otherwise. 30GB->3KB is only 10,091,558:1, so my simple example is not that far fetched...
~GoRK
I quite liked the simple comparison. I have a small mailserver and reading large Maildir folders is actually something I do constantly. It has a nice IDE subsystem, but I can sure see that SCSI would be a much better choice. I don't much care the difference in between a 10K and 15K rpm scsi drive .. On my low end server, if it's faster and not too much more expensive, I'm all for it!
I'm sure that they are not processing web traffic statistics, but that is an application that mirrors the data needs in a similar situation. I imagine many other applications have similar data needs. No doubt, the 3K is not re-expandable to 13TB, and probably neither is the 30GB.
For instance, I might be generating 10GB of logs per day. To save disk space, the streams might be written out with gzip compression (it's write-only, after all), or I might rewrite the formats to conserve space - write the IP addresses in 4 bytes rather than writing out the full ASCII dotted quad, etc. Since it's text and the format is highly redundant, it compresses very well.. I might end up with a 50-500MB log file depending on how things are done. At the end of the day, I could process the statistics and generate report/archive data of several KB that retains all the important data I want to keep from the logs.
~GoRK