IMHO, all operating systems follow design trends. First it was just plain buttons. Then 3D buttons in the early 1990s. Then color and graphics.
Now, the cycle has begun anew and we are back to flat buttons. Next thing we will see will be NeXTStep style black/white icons with a philosophy of "the content in the app is the stuff with colors, everything else is black/white/grey to support it."
I've always wanted a way to earn skills that become a permanent part of your character (as EQ2's class epic weapons can), or perhaps part of the account (as some stats in Wizardry Online.) This came from the old school MUDs where equipment was nice, but learning a critical spell/skill was the way to go.
That way, equipment wouldn't have to keep being mudflated as much. Instead, characters could earn some permanent abilities on endgame raids that would always be useful, even in future expansions. Of course, something on an endgame boss this patch can be moved to a quest arc for solo/small group content the next, so it wasn't a be-all and end-all like Journeyman's Boots or some class epics were in EQ1.
Of course, there is another way to deal with mudflation -- have one expansion's gear work in a diminished capacity in the next. That way, the BiS item would still be useful, but nowhere near as useful as something with similar stats in the next expansion. EQ1 also did something like this when the corruption resistance stat was introduced, making all new gear necessary to survive endgame raids with that stat only on newer items.
What I like best is multiple paths to end game gear. Raiding is one of the quickest paths, but PvP is another way, so are tradeskills/professions, and finally, good old fashioned quest arcs. That way, someone who spends their time making armor can do OK in a raid until they gear up.
Of course, real money should have no effect on stat gear. At best, it should allow appearance items, mounts, and perhaps XP potions. I know a few PTW MMOs that do OK, but most just die out because there isn't any real fairness nor point to play.
Pretty much. The biggest difference would be removing the Voltec engine out of the drivetrain. The electric motor would be 100% of the vehicle's propulsion.
The generator would be a completely separate mechanism, and because it has nothing to do with the drivetrain, it would be easier to use a particular fuel of choice. For example, a diesel generator tends to have a longer run time per gallon of fuel than a gasoline genset, and both are better than LP gas.
Of course, there is mounting the generator to minimize noise and vibration, but that is nothing new to automotive engineers (especially with diesels.)
If one listens to "trust me" ads, then that is the case. However, when it comes to a web of trust, a key from a Fortune 10 company is just the same as a key from some nobody in Elbonia.
Yes, it does take time to vet people, but that is what "honest" third party CAs are for. If a person doesn't like the CA, they just don't listen to their results.
For example, one "CA" I use is Symantec/PGP's. It provides me with one detail -- that someone cared enough about their key to submit it, then go and click a confirmation button on a website. In the scheme of things, it doesn't mean much, but it means that it wasn't just automatically generated and tossed on a keyserver.
As time goes on, I wouldn't be surprised to find CAs that would offer the service to vet that a key belongs to a certain person, and perhaps other things (over 18, etc.) If the CA was found lacking, one just yanked them off the trust list and moved on.
The small guys would be the people I'd end up explicitly vetting/trusting and anyone that considered my opinion worth anything might consider that positive, so reputation would propagate.
Of course, the perfect is the enemy of the good, but this is something better than what we have now (as we have either 100% trust, no info, or 100% distrust with no way of passing that info on automatically.)
GM has one advantage though. In some states, Tesla is forbidden to sell cars because they are not going through dealers. Plus, GM also has a lot larger advertising warchest.
It is taking time, but I think the GM is wising up to the same lesson that smacked them in the '80s -- either you do something for the demands of the customers, or lose market share to a company who does. Ford knows this, and is putting out hybrid cars, and the 100% electric Focus [1]. Dodge is still out in left field, but their parent company, Fiat, has the 500e which can go head to head with the Leaf.
Here is the ironic thing: If I want a hybrid pickup truck, GM is the only game in town. Yes, the Silverado doesn't have the tow capacity as a pure gasser, but the ability for it to use zero fuel when idling is a big feature on jobsites (to keep the heater/AC going) as well as in traffic.
[1]: I know there is a market for 100% electric cars, but I still worry I wouldn't be able to find a charging station if some situation arose. Of course, I can always stick a portable Honda generator in the trunk, but that isn't exactly the fastest way to charge the vehicle's batteries.
Maybe the best compromise for a 100% electric car is a built in Onan generator that can be flipped on for battery charging while on the go. That way, the fuel system can be gasoline, LP gas, or diesel and not affect anything but the generator and the charge controller.
The trustworthy sources are whom you (as an individual) trust. If you know a site that is shilling, you mark it as not trusted, which can lower the reputation of the shill's signed keys. Of course, if you don't know a site, you can trust a friend and if they consider a CA trustworthy enough to sign a key and mark that CA's key as trustworthy, the target CA's key trust will go up the chain.
A WoT is something one controls, and by extension, their website.
The nice thing about this system is that when trolls/shills get found, their reputation hits the skids as fast as it takes for key certificates to update or a revocation certification to propagate to keyservers. People making shill CAs/introducers will get flagged as distrusted and will pretty much vanish.
Of course, a WoT takes some time because one's reputation is at stake when a key is signed, but one can always sign a key as "not trusted/not distrusted", and edit trust later on.
I've always wondered about some web of trust available for this. For example:
I have a website, and want people to comment. Someone decides to authenticate with a keyID. My server checks what certificates are associated with the public key. One cert from a semi-trustworthy source shows the anon ID is actually associated with a live person. Another cert from a decently trustworthy source shows the person is a frequent poster at a website. Still another shows that the ID has been in use on sites on a daily basis without any site bans for a few years.
With this info in mind, even though I have no clue whom the person is, I can reasonably assume that it will be either someone good at ID theft, or someone that likely won't be trolling/spamming.
A reputation based system would be useful. The public key can be anonymous, but with CAs (of varying trust levels), I can find that the person has been proven to be not a bot, has a positive reputation on various sites, is known by friends and people I do trust, etc. Of course, on the other hand, I get a key that has absolutely zero certificates on it, I'd probably not bother to allow it on.
Part of the issue is that this is the "revise the device" year for Apple. Even with their immense cash reserves, it takes a lot of time to design a phone, design its form/function, test it internally, and make sure all is in order for their legal department before it makes it out the door. Then, they have to make sure the ODM/OEM are ready to produce the device in the needed numbers.
Because the 5S/5C are not "groundbreaking", Apple ends up with not as many sales as the year when they have something with a completely new design.
Another part is that the 5C models are cheaper to make, so Apple still turns a tidy profit either through lower priced, but less cost to them models or higher cost, higher overhead offerings. The 5C appears intended to help get a foothold in other markets, but in the US, it will do well against the entry level Android devices or the back-generation iPhones that are sold to keep people on contracts.
As for the "hero" phone, the 5C really isn't aimed that direction. The 5S seems to have made to toss a bone to the enterprise, adding another useful (even though this can be argued) security feature so data on the device has another layer of protection.
The only downside of the Powercube is that the fuel it uses, ammonia, is also one of the primary chemicals used for making meth, so buying ammonia in the quantities required to use it puts someone on a lot of lists.
Solar will not replace the power plant, but it does come into handy during the peak times. What would be a breakthrough would be having research done for a storage medium for solar energy, be it batteries or being able to effectively make/store/use hydrogen.
I wouldn't be surprised to see some battery advances soon. Phone and electronic device makers have to deal with customer demand for more functionality and thinner devices so they are interested in better batteries, and a battery for a cell phone can be scaled up to solar storage batteries.
In some parts of the US, getting a utility company to drop a pole can be $10,000 a mile. For the cost of what it would be for a power pole a few miles out, one could buy themselves a good off-grid system with multiple inverters, good storage batteries, decent MPPT charge controllers, and even single axis trackers.
Solar is becoming one of those "why not" things, rather than "why". Even if one just slaps some panels on the south side of their roof, it will help things, either grid-tied to help with the electric bill or off-grid with batteries as a separate electrical circuit for the computer stuff.
Generators are cheap to transport, but they are relatively expensive to keep running.
Every 40 hours is an oil change. For a small generator, that's about $7.50 a quart for a decent synthetic [1].
Then there is gasoline. For my 3000 watt one, I'd get about eight hours on it if it is fully loaded, and that is from ~3 gallons of gas. So, with gas at $4.00 a gallon, I'd be spending $36.00 a day.
Then, there are other items like air filters and spark plugs. So, for a week of runtime, it would be $40 (guesstimate) for filters and replacement oil, plus 252 for fuel used.
Then there are the other issues of a portable generator, like theft. Those chains look strong, but a thief will just cut the generator handles and be off with the unit, or just tear the places the generator is chained to off the truck bed.
If I'm dry camping way out in the middle of nowhere and need to recharge my RV's batteries, a generator is a no-brainer. However at best, it is a stopgap measure due to the large economies of scale the grid provides.
[1]: Portable generators are splash lubricated which works, but is very hard on the oil, so synthetic is worth the price premium.
Both grid-tie systems (selling power to the utility company) and off-grid systems (completely disconnected from mains power) have their benefits and drawbacks.
The nice thing about off-grid power from a properly sized inverter is that you are getting extremely clean power. Essentially this functions similar to a whole-house online (not standby) UPS. This helps prolong the life of virtually any electrical gizmo in the house.
Of course, there are shortcomings. Energy-intensive appliances like HVAC systems, washers, dryers, and others will need to have the panels and the batteries to back those up. The weather can bring issues.
One idea, if one doesn't want to do a grid-tie system, would be to have the big appliances on mains power, the other stuff on off-grid batteries. That way, the computers and other items get the clean power, while the A/C can run fairly cheaply from the grid, and if there are power issues, it might not impact as hard.
I've seen some panels that use monocrystalline silicon, then areas of polycrystalline because one is better for sun, one for shade. I've also been seeing polycrystalline panels getting about as much efficiency as the single crystals.
It takes a bit for stuff to go from lab to market. Part of it is testing because solar installations are usually thought of as very long term investments, amortized in the terms of 5, 10, or 20 year increments. So, solar makers tend to be fairly conservative on what they put out.
The solar industry also went through a big shakedown, so they are playing cards close to their chest for fear that their R&D will just end up a target for foreign intruders and wind up on panels being fabbed overseas for pennies on the dollar. With the fact that new R&D doesn't pay off much, at best, we see only incremental improvements in the field.
Where we are seeing improvements are solar charge controllers. MPPT controllers that can use a voltage greater than what the batteries need are almost as cheap as PWM controllers that lop off and don't use anything over what they don't need.
IMHO, the best way to have a fingerprint done is to hash the data with the has algo of choice, then use that hash to encrypt a salt. Then, store the salt and the encrypted part.
This way, there is no way to recover any usable fingerprint data. Even if the hashed fingerprint data is obtained, trying to find the original data is like trying to run a meat grinder in reverse in hopes to get the pig back.
HP's memristor/ReRAM hasn't been mentioned in a while. That technology looks promising, and like the parent states, Crossbar has 1TB chips in testing. Does that mean there will be a USB flash drive with this technology? I'd not hold my breath, especially remembering how holographic storage was always just around the corner, from back in 1992 with a company called Tamarak to a few years ago with InPhase (well, their stuff is now owned by the state of Colorado, so who knows what state their IP is in...)
However, SSD isn't the be-all and end-all in storage. One can always make an array using battery backed up DRAM if needed and had the cash.
Here in my neck of the woods, there are plenty of toll roads, and none will accept cash. One uses a TXTag transponder, or it will snap a pic of the license plate and mail a bill. No cash booths since January.
That would be nice, perhaps separating metadata into multiple, redundant areas. No metadata, no translation tables, and the drive has no clue what logical sector is stored on what set of physical cells.
I think a lot of SSD makers are going for capacity/price, and the failure rate being close to HDD is "good enough", although done right, it should be a lot lower, just due to the fact that there are no moving parts that can wear out. I'd definitely pay more for drives which address the weakest points (power going off unexpectedly) of SSDs, and some type of pre-fail system that warns, then sets marginal sectors read-only as opposed to just dropping the drive off the face of the earth when the wear limit is reached.
I second the recommendations for a power conditioner, or perhaps an online (not standby) UPS [1]. You can make your own online UPS with a Victron or Magnum Energy "hybrid" inverter/charger and a couple 12 volt AGM [2] batteries. Clean power can make a big difference in drive and component life.
[1]: An online UPS always uses the batteries, a standby only switches to the batteries when mains power is out. I'm sure one can guess which will help with voltage sags and other dirty power issues.
[2]: AGM batteries are better since they don't outgas, so can be used indoors.
Another idea is to mount a partition using a junction point (Windows's analog to UNIX mount points.) That way, it might be happy storing its stuff under c:\Program Files\blarf, while directory blarf is actually a different partition.
I do this for Cygwin which makes so many small files that a chkdsk takes forever, so the Cygwin stuff goes on a different partition.
SSDs have their place. However, they need to have a good backup mechanism to go along with them. However, backups for all but the enterprise are still in the Stone Age. There are backup programs like Retrospect which have very useful features (deduplication), but it can be finicky about what optical drives it will work with (it will happily show you your new BD-R drive, but laugh in your face if you actually want to use it for anything.)
For UNIX, I'd probably give the nod to BRU just because unlike other backup programs, you can install them, and it doesn't demand a license key during the restore process (which can be a big catch 22 with other products unless someone has an "oh shit" binder in the tape safe with license keys in it.) For Windows, hard to say. The backup utility on the server side (wbadmin) is decent.
Of course, there is storing documents on a service like Dropbox and just rebuilding the OS and apps if there is a drive failure, but (and this is IMHO, of course), it is better to be able to restore the whole machine as an image than rebuild it from scratch, in a lot of cases.
This may be a waste of engineering, but if a HDD is enterprise grade with a high MTBF, I wonder how difficult it would be to make a RAID 1 controller that would do loosely coupled writes, and keep a ring buffer in battery backed up RAM (so if power goes out, the in-flight writes to the slower drive would be stored.) That way, writes to the SSD would complete, and with enough RAM, the writes to the HDD can complete when it gets around to it. Of course, when the RAM is full, I/O gets blocked until the buffer is dealt with so the drives may be out of sync time-wise, but are always consistent with each other.
For a lot of things, Cisco is the only game in town these days. Well, unless you want to pony 10 times as much for carrier-grade Alcatel-Lucent stuff that has a lifetime warranty. The A-L stuff is great, but to use a car analogy, it would be similar to asking Ferrari to custom-design and build a minivan that is used for taking kids to school and back.
I might be wrong, but generally, with the Cisco-only protocols in use, it is hard to get away from them.
I do agree with you; they will be worthless as a gestalt, but parting it out can mean some decent cash.
For example, the screen/digitizer, case, battery, Lightning connector, vibrator, microphone, speaker, camera, etc., all of those are worth something. Even if the logic board is unusable, a screen replacement can be worth something.
If I were to guess how they will go, it probably will be focusing on enterprise stuff, like 40 to 100gigabit ethernet for storage fabrics, Hyper-V clusters using Windows Server 2012's deduplication and autotiering [1].
Done right, they will have a decent SDDS stack that can go toe-to-toe with EMC and VMWare, except with an advantage in price.
Dell also has some interesting rebranded stuff. A smaller installation can use a RDX hard drive cartridge silo instead of tapes for offline saving of data.
It will be interesting to see what Dell does for the enterprise now that they will be free from the constant threat of shareholder lawsuits if they don't get the numbers each quarter.
[1]: It isn't as elegant as EMC's, but it is smart enough to move heavily used data to SSDs once set up.
Nail, head hit. Consumer-level and business grade products by any PC maker are completely different animals when it comes to service, parts, support, and repairs.
As a consumer or someone running a SOHO, the only PC vendor that has decent consumer level support is Apple. The ironic part is when one buys a business level machine (Latitude, Optiplex, Precision), the price difference between that and an Apple product of similar features [1] is fairly narrow.
[1]: Harder to make like comparisons these days, now that the Mac Pro got changed from a workstation into a toy for Batman's desk.
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IMHO, all operating systems follow design trends. First it was just plain buttons. Then 3D buttons in the early 1990s. Then color and graphics.
Now, the cycle has begun anew and we are back to flat buttons. Next thing we will see will be NeXTStep style black/white icons with a philosophy of "the content in the app is the stuff with colors, everything else is black/white/grey to support it."
I've always wanted a way to earn skills that become a permanent part of your character (as EQ2's class epic weapons can), or perhaps part of the account (as some stats in Wizardry Online.) This came from the old school MUDs where equipment was nice, but learning a critical spell/skill was the way to go.
That way, equipment wouldn't have to keep being mudflated as much. Instead, characters could earn some permanent abilities on endgame raids that would always be useful, even in future expansions. Of course, something on an endgame boss this patch can be moved to a quest arc for solo/small group content the next, so it wasn't a be-all and end-all like Journeyman's Boots or some class epics were in EQ1.
Of course, there is another way to deal with mudflation -- have one expansion's gear work in a diminished capacity in the next. That way, the BiS item would still be useful, but nowhere near as useful as something with similar stats in the next expansion. EQ1 also did something like this when the corruption resistance stat was introduced, making all new gear necessary to survive endgame raids with that stat only on newer items.
What I like best is multiple paths to end game gear. Raiding is one of the quickest paths, but PvP is another way, so are tradeskills/professions, and finally, good old fashioned quest arcs. That way, someone who spends their time making armor can do OK in a raid until they gear up.
Of course, real money should have no effect on stat gear. At best, it should allow appearance items, mounts, and perhaps XP potions. I know a few PTW MMOs that do OK, but most just die out because there isn't any real fairness nor point to play.
Pretty much. The biggest difference would be removing the Voltec engine out of the drivetrain. The electric motor would be 100% of the vehicle's propulsion.
The generator would be a completely separate mechanism, and because it has nothing to do with the drivetrain, it would be easier to use a particular fuel of choice. For example, a diesel generator tends to have a longer run time per gallon of fuel than a gasoline genset, and both are better than LP gas.
Of course, there is mounting the generator to minimize noise and vibration, but that is nothing new to automotive engineers (especially with diesels.)
If one listens to "trust me" ads, then that is the case. However, when it comes to a web of trust, a key from a Fortune 10 company is just the same as a key from some nobody in Elbonia.
Yes, it does take time to vet people, but that is what "honest" third party CAs are for. If a person doesn't like the CA, they just don't listen to their results.
For example, one "CA" I use is Symantec/PGP's. It provides me with one detail -- that someone cared enough about their key to submit it, then go and click a confirmation button on a website. In the scheme of things, it doesn't mean much, but it means that it wasn't just automatically generated and tossed on a keyserver.
As time goes on, I wouldn't be surprised to find CAs that would offer the service to vet that a key belongs to a certain person, and perhaps other things (over 18, etc.) If the CA was found lacking, one just yanked them off the trust list and moved on.
The small guys would be the people I'd end up explicitly vetting/trusting and anyone that considered my opinion worth anything might consider that positive, so reputation would propagate.
Of course, the perfect is the enemy of the good, but this is something better than what we have now (as we have either 100% trust, no info, or 100% distrust with no way of passing that info on automatically.)
GM has one advantage though. In some states, Tesla is forbidden to sell cars because they are not going through dealers. Plus, GM also has a lot larger advertising warchest.
It is taking time, but I think the GM is wising up to the same lesson that smacked them in the '80s -- either you do something for the demands of the customers, or lose market share to a company who does. Ford knows this, and is putting out hybrid cars, and the 100% electric Focus [1]. Dodge is still out in left field, but their parent company, Fiat, has the 500e which can go head to head with the Leaf.
Here is the ironic thing: If I want a hybrid pickup truck, GM is the only game in town. Yes, the Silverado doesn't have the tow capacity as a pure gasser, but the ability for it to use zero fuel when idling is a big feature on jobsites (to keep the heater/AC going) as well as in traffic.
[1]: I know there is a market for 100% electric cars, but I still worry I wouldn't be able to find a charging station if some situation arose. Of course, I can always stick a portable Honda generator in the trunk, but that isn't exactly the fastest way to charge the vehicle's batteries.
Maybe the best compromise for a 100% electric car is a built in Onan generator that can be flipped on for battery charging while on the go. That way, the fuel system can be gasoline, LP gas, or diesel and not affect anything but the generator and the charge controller.
The trustworthy sources are whom you (as an individual) trust. If you know a site that is shilling, you mark it as not trusted, which can lower the reputation of the shill's signed keys. Of course, if you don't know a site, you can trust a friend and if they consider a CA trustworthy enough to sign a key and mark that CA's key as trustworthy, the target CA's key trust will go up the chain.
A WoT is something one controls, and by extension, their website.
The nice thing about this system is that when trolls/shills get found, their reputation hits the skids as fast as it takes for key certificates to update or a revocation certification to propagate to keyservers. People making shill CAs/introducers will get flagged as distrusted and will pretty much vanish.
Of course, a WoT takes some time because one's reputation is at stake when a key is signed, but one can always sign a key as "not trusted/not distrusted", and edit trust later on.
I've always wondered about some web of trust available for this. For example:
I have a website, and want people to comment. Someone decides to authenticate with a keyID. My server checks what certificates are associated with the public key. One cert from a semi-trustworthy source shows the anon ID is actually associated with a live person. Another cert from a decently trustworthy source shows the person is a frequent poster at a website. Still another shows that the ID has been in use on sites on a daily basis without any site bans for a few years.
With this info in mind, even though I have no clue whom the person is, I can reasonably assume that it will be either someone good at ID theft, or someone that likely won't be trolling/spamming.
A reputation based system would be useful. The public key can be anonymous, but with CAs (of varying trust levels), I can find that the person has been proven to be not a bot, has a positive reputation on various sites, is known by friends and people I do trust, etc. Of course, on the other hand, I get a key that has absolutely zero certificates on it, I'd probably not bother to allow it on.
Part of the issue is that this is the "revise the device" year for Apple. Even with their immense cash reserves, it takes a lot of time to design a phone, design its form/function, test it internally, and make sure all is in order for their legal department before it makes it out the door. Then, they have to make sure the ODM/OEM are ready to produce the device in the needed numbers.
Because the 5S/5C are not "groundbreaking", Apple ends up with not as many sales as the year when they have something with a completely new design.
Another part is that the 5C models are cheaper to make, so Apple still turns a tidy profit either through lower priced, but less cost to them models or higher cost, higher overhead offerings. The 5C appears intended to help get a foothold in other markets, but in the US, it will do well against the entry level Android devices or the back-generation iPhones that are sold to keep people on contracts.
As for the "hero" phone, the 5C really isn't aimed that direction. The 5S seems to have made to toss a bone to the enterprise, adding another useful (even though this can be argued) security feature so data on the device has another layer of protection.
The only downside of the Powercube is that the fuel it uses, ammonia, is also one of the primary chemicals used for making meth, so buying ammonia in the quantities required to use it puts someone on a lot of lists.
Solar will not replace the power plant, but it does come into handy during the peak times. What would be a breakthrough would be having research done for a storage medium for solar energy, be it batteries or being able to effectively make/store/use hydrogen.
I wouldn't be surprised to see some battery advances soon. Phone and electronic device makers have to deal with customer demand for more functionality and thinner devices so they are interested in better batteries, and a battery for a cell phone can be scaled up to solar storage batteries.
In some parts of the US, getting a utility company to drop a pole can be $10,000 a mile. For the cost of what it would be for a power pole a few miles out, one could buy themselves a good off-grid system with multiple inverters, good storage batteries, decent MPPT charge controllers, and even single axis trackers.
Solar is becoming one of those "why not" things, rather than "why". Even if one just slaps some panels on the south side of their roof, it will help things, either grid-tied to help with the electric bill or off-grid with batteries as a separate electrical circuit for the computer stuff.
Generators are cheap to transport, but they are relatively expensive to keep running.
Every 40 hours is an oil change. For a small generator, that's about $7.50 a quart for a decent synthetic [1].
Then there is gasoline. For my 3000 watt one, I'd get about eight hours on it if it is fully loaded, and that is from ~3 gallons of gas. So, with gas at $4.00 a gallon, I'd be spending $36.00 a day.
Then, there are other items like air filters and spark plugs. So, for a week of runtime, it would be $40 (guesstimate) for filters and replacement oil, plus 252 for fuel used.
Then there are the other issues of a portable generator, like theft. Those chains look strong, but a thief will just cut the generator handles and be off with the unit, or just tear the places the generator is chained to off the truck bed.
If I'm dry camping way out in the middle of nowhere and need to recharge my RV's batteries, a generator is a no-brainer. However at best, it is a stopgap measure due to the large economies of scale the grid provides.
[1]: Portable generators are splash lubricated which works, but is very hard on the oil, so synthetic is worth the price premium.
Both grid-tie systems (selling power to the utility company) and off-grid systems (completely disconnected from mains power) have their benefits and drawbacks.
The nice thing about off-grid power from a properly sized inverter is that you are getting extremely clean power. Essentially this functions similar to a whole-house online (not standby) UPS. This helps prolong the life of virtually any electrical gizmo in the house.
Of course, there are shortcomings. Energy-intensive appliances like HVAC systems, washers, dryers, and others will need to have the panels and the batteries to back those up. The weather can bring issues.
One idea, if one doesn't want to do a grid-tie system, would be to have the big appliances on mains power, the other stuff on off-grid batteries. That way, the computers and other items get the clean power, while the A/C can run fairly cheaply from the grid, and if there are power issues, it might not impact as hard.
I've seen some panels that use monocrystalline silicon, then areas of polycrystalline because one is better for sun, one for shade. I've also been seeing polycrystalline panels getting about as much efficiency as the single crystals.
It takes a bit for stuff to go from lab to market. Part of it is testing because solar installations are usually thought of as very long term investments, amortized in the terms of 5, 10, or 20 year increments. So, solar makers tend to be fairly conservative on what they put out.
The solar industry also went through a big shakedown, so they are playing cards close to their chest for fear that their R&D will just end up a target for foreign intruders and wind up on panels being fabbed overseas for pennies on the dollar. With the fact that new R&D doesn't pay off much, at best, we see only incremental improvements in the field.
Where we are seeing improvements are solar charge controllers. MPPT controllers that can use a voltage greater than what the batteries need are almost as cheap as PWM controllers that lop off and don't use anything over what they don't need.
IMHO, the best way to have a fingerprint done is to hash the data with the has algo of choice, then use that hash to encrypt a salt. Then, store the salt and the encrypted part.
This way, there is no way to recover any usable fingerprint data. Even if the hashed fingerprint data is obtained, trying to find the original data is like trying to run a meat grinder in reverse in hopes to get the pig back.
HP's memristor/ReRAM hasn't been mentioned in a while. That technology looks promising, and like the parent states, Crossbar has 1TB chips in testing. Does that mean there will be a USB flash drive with this technology? I'd not hold my breath, especially remembering how holographic storage was always just around the corner, from back in 1992 with a company called Tamarak to a few years ago with InPhase (well, their stuff is now owned by the state of Colorado, so who knows what state their IP is in...)
However, SSD isn't the be-all and end-all in storage. One can always make an array using battery backed up DRAM if needed and had the cash.
Here in my neck of the woods, there are plenty of toll roads, and none will accept cash. One uses a TXTag transponder, or it will snap a pic of the license plate and mail a bill. No cash booths since January.
That would be nice, perhaps separating metadata into multiple, redundant areas. No metadata, no translation tables, and the drive has no clue what logical sector is stored on what set of physical cells.
I think a lot of SSD makers are going for capacity/price, and the failure rate being close to HDD is "good enough", although done right, it should be a lot lower, just due to the fact that there are no moving parts that can wear out. I'd definitely pay more for drives which address the weakest points (power going off unexpectedly) of SSDs, and some type of pre-fail system that warns, then sets marginal sectors read-only as opposed to just dropping the drive off the face of the earth when the wear limit is reached.
I second the recommendations for a power conditioner, or perhaps an online (not standby) UPS [1]. You can make your own online UPS with a Victron or Magnum Energy "hybrid" inverter/charger and a couple 12 volt AGM [2] batteries. Clean power can make a big difference in drive and component life.
[1]: An online UPS always uses the batteries, a standby only switches to the batteries when mains power is out. I'm sure one can guess which will help with voltage sags and other dirty power issues.
[2]: AGM batteries are better since they don't outgas, so can be used indoors.
Another idea is to mount a partition using a junction point (Windows's analog to UNIX mount points.) That way, it might be happy storing its stuff under c:\Program Files\blarf, while directory blarf is actually a different partition.
I do this for Cygwin which makes so many small files that a chkdsk takes forever, so the Cygwin stuff goes on a different partition.
SSDs have their place. However, they need to have a good backup mechanism to go along with them. However, backups for all but the enterprise are still in the Stone Age. There are backup programs like Retrospect which have very useful features (deduplication), but it can be finicky about what optical drives it will work with (it will happily show you your new BD-R drive, but laugh in your face if you actually want to use it for anything.)
For UNIX, I'd probably give the nod to BRU just because unlike other backup programs, you can install them, and it doesn't demand a license key during the restore process (which can be a big catch 22 with other products unless someone has an "oh shit" binder in the tape safe with license keys in it.) For Windows, hard to say. The backup utility on the server side (wbadmin) is decent.
Of course, there is storing documents on a service like Dropbox and just rebuilding the OS and apps if there is a drive failure, but (and this is IMHO, of course), it is better to be able to restore the whole machine as an image than rebuild it from scratch, in a lot of cases.
This may be a waste of engineering, but if a HDD is enterprise grade with a high MTBF, I wonder how difficult it would be to make a RAID 1 controller that would do loosely coupled writes, and keep a ring buffer in battery backed up RAM (so if power goes out, the in-flight writes to the slower drive would be stored.) That way, writes to the SSD would complete, and with enough RAM, the writes to the HDD can complete when it gets around to it. Of course, when the RAM is full, I/O gets blocked until the buffer is dealt with so the drives may be out of sync time-wise, but are always consistent with each other.
For a lot of things, Cisco is the only game in town these days. Well, unless you want to pony 10 times as much for carrier-grade Alcatel-Lucent stuff that has a lifetime warranty. The A-L stuff is great, but to use a car analogy, it would be similar to asking Ferrari to custom-design and build a minivan that is used for taking kids to school and back.
I might be wrong, but generally, with the Cisco-only protocols in use, it is hard to get away from them.
I do agree with you; they will be worthless as a gestalt, but parting it out can mean some decent cash.
For example, the screen/digitizer, case, battery, Lightning connector, vibrator, microphone, speaker, camera, etc., all of those are worth something. Even if the logic board is unusable, a screen replacement can be worth something.
If I were to guess how they will go, it probably will be focusing on enterprise stuff, like 40 to 100gigabit ethernet for storage fabrics, Hyper-V clusters using Windows Server 2012's deduplication and autotiering [1].
Done right, they will have a decent SDDS stack that can go toe-to-toe with EMC and VMWare, except with an advantage in price.
Dell also has some interesting rebranded stuff. A smaller installation can use a RDX hard drive cartridge silo instead of tapes for offline saving of data.
It will be interesting to see what Dell does for the enterprise now that they will be free from the constant threat of shareholder lawsuits if they don't get the numbers each quarter.
[1]: It isn't as elegant as EMC's, but it is smart enough to move heavily used data to SSDs once set up.
Nail, head hit. Consumer-level and business grade products by any PC maker are completely different animals when it comes to service, parts, support, and repairs.
As a consumer or someone running a SOHO, the only PC vendor that has decent consumer level support is Apple. The ironic part is when one buys a business level machine (Latitude, Optiplex, Precision), the price difference between that and an Apple product of similar features [1] is fairly narrow.
[1]: Harder to make like comparisons these days, now that the Mac Pro got changed from a workstation into a toy for Batman's desk.