Yes there saving money on cooling cost, or at least they seem to believe that and I am sure when they fail to take everything into account this is true.
The reality it the server room still has to pull that heat out. Increased Delta T is just lost energy.
Here is really why it's a terrible idea.
1.) Component failures. Of all parts from bearing in the drives, and fans to the silicon itself has a much higher failure rate.
2.) The components use more power at higher temperatures! This is from increased leakage currents in the silicon.
They really need to used ducted air or any other technology to reduce the Delta T! By this I mean bring the cooling as close to the components as possible. Right now server rooms need to run internally at 10C to 15C to keep the CPU chips below 60C. If they just brought the cooling directly to the cpu's and let that cool spread from there they could use out door passive radiators! 0 air conditioning cost and the most power savings.
This is what my start was doing till someone tried to steal the who damb thing and sunk the company.
I remember getting flamed something terrible when SSL was first announced and I said at that time there was no way to stop a Man In the Middle Attack.
All sorts of irrelevant counter arguments were made at that time too.
Certificate and DNSSEC are also useless.
Why, because if your using your PC from 1 ISP or your employers fire walled Intranet, then from the time you install a browser on your PC there, nothing can be trusted.
Certificates and DNSSEC would also come from MITM servers. There firewall could send you bogus certs and then give you valid connections as if they were the real web site. In turn there fire wall could unwrap your encrypted traffic, then repack it in to the real cert for connection to the SSL'ed web site.
Unless you are going to manually install your keys that you brought from a second clean source there is nothing your going to be to be able to even tell that you've been compromised.
So SSL's largest problem is when your sitting at your office in your big corporate job, and it's got the SSL lock, your lulled in to a false sense of security!
I worked for a German Multinational. All net traffic from my US office went through Germany to get on to the net. I'd find it impossible to believe that if they had wanted to, that they couldn't do a very complete MITM attack.
My solution was to do SSH over SSL, where I'd bring my own SSH keys in on USB Stick. then I could run X over that SSL to a Firefox running on my own Personal CoLo running Linux.
I could also have done a VPN over SSH over SSL. Nice thing about these are canned large corporate attacks wouldn't be geared to deal with it.
Problem is everyone arguing about security it thinking hackers and not corporate spying of employees or government spying of foreigners or it's citizens.
I just remember that German Citizen while in the USA had to be given special internet and phone because under German law they weren't allowed to be monitored and because it was a German company they had to be given the same rights as if they were in Germany.
So I'd say it was safe to assume, I wasn't given that special privilege of not being monitored.
On the subject of recorded IP traffic logs, if it's an after some incident, they can put lots of time and money into cracking your encrypted traffic. Some of these Intellectual property law suites can go on for 10 years. You are a fool to think that they wouldn't crack your keys and see everything that you ever viewed over the web while at work.
It's for this reason why I love one time pads, it's a real loss that security people keep dismissing them.
I mean for me, it's that they are being upfront about it. They aren't messing with your traffic, or saying you can't have the higher bandwidth and traffic, but if your going to use that much you must pay. I think that is more then fair. Sadly us heavy bandwidth users will ending up having to pay more now. That $140 seems steep but it is a lot of bandwidth, especially if they can offer some level of improve quality, because they have provisioned for it.
And he certainly copied documents he was not allowed to copy as an employee.
But it's not theft, but evidence of his employers misconduct. I think there are several laws that protect him, like whistle blower laws. The only difference is he was a victim before an employee.
Also I don't think an employment agreement can invalidate a patent. Even if it was written in a Judge would most likely toss it out.
I guess part of the question will be did he know before taking the job, or find out accidentally while working for them.
Microsoft has filed a lawsuit against a former employee, charging him with taking a job at the software giant in order to steal information that would be helpful in his patent infringement case against the company.
Stealing information, Ah wouldn't that mean stealing incriminating evidence against MicroSoft?
I have watch this unfold from the side lines (friend of a friend) since Ancore was founded, and it's not a surprise.
It's a desperate act from Microsoft to try to keep evidence suppressed. Ancore was mostly dead due to Microsoft, They should have known better then to steal a guys patents then hire him. Oh, and then Microsoft acts righteous when he sues them after finding out they ripped his technology, because he came across the proof while he worked for them.
This assumes we just stop outputting CO2 at some point and are passive. But humans are anything but passive, this is what got us into this mess in the first place.
So the article doesn't take into things like sequestration and other active attempts to reverse the trend.
I am confident in 50 year we will be able to completely re-terraform earth back to normal.
We will be able to deliberately control the amount of atmospheric gases, solar radiation reaching earth, and chemistry of the oceans and become the masters of our climate.
Why do I think this?
GA, AI, super computers. And progress in Material science, renewable energy, Self replicating robotics, genetics and artificially accelerated evolution, Computational chemistry and simulation of quantum molecular dynamics.
The machines (beyond computers) under human guidance will do the research needed to reverse things.
So it's will be just a matter of energy required needed to do this.
I believe it will take more power to put the CO2 back then when we released it from burning fossil fuels. Essentially give back that energy that we used for the past 100 years + interest.
As much as I disagree with Kurzwell on many things, some parts of his Singularity theory are dead on and will be able to reverse this trend.
So getting fusion working, space solar or some other massive power source going is critical to do this.
The key here is to use the amount of available resources as best as possible to devise future solutions before we get wiped out as a species.
Mineral oil is a complete mess. A friend of mine wanted to do it and that's how I got into coming up with alternatives.
With mineral oil it's a disaster waiting to happen. Imagine a gallon of that on your carpet? What about fires? Yes a few gallons of flammable oil in your bedroom is just genius. Then run electricity through it.
Why don't you just keep a full gas can under your bed while your at it.
Mineral oil also tends to wick up the cables and dissolve some plastics.
Great stuff. But you prove my point even further then.
Didn't you...
So it's even more embarrassing that there are RFC already out there to solve this and they choose not to implement this.
I don't claim to be the first to figure this out. I didn't even bother to research it, just put my idea out there for what ever it's worth back in 2001.
I think that is not a correct assumption. The freeze spray will could go directly onto the silicon, like in the AMD processors.
But cooling the surface of the heat spreader just a little further will be almost the same effect, unless the power densities get crazy.
But I have found even a passive phase change directly on a chip surface is plenty efficient for limiting chip temperatures. Problem is making good seals then.
Even passive thermal conductors we found that we could pull 400+ watts from a CPU chip and keep it under 70C in a room that was 35C!
why didn't you just slather a layer of nonconductive lacquer over the motherboard?
Because that would cause other components to overheat like the North Bridge and CPU power regulator on the MB. It's also just wet and ugly and makes it hard to maintain, not something we could put into a commercial product. Also you really need to make sure water doesn't get under the CPU. So you'd have to permanently glue the CPU to the MB with varnish to do what your suggesting.
Carnot efficiency:
E = 1 - Tl/Th
coefficient of performance:
COP = 1/(Th/Tl -1) in one book
COP = Tl / (Th - Tl) in another and COP = Th / (Th - Tl) in yet another.
I can't get any clear definition of COP! So I choose not to use it until I can find someone who can give me a clear definition.
I can't find my references on efficiency of different cooling now. But I know freon systems were 25 to 50% efficient and Thermoelectric was like 5% It's been 6 years since I dove into this.
But Know we had to dump something like 200 Watts to remove 100 with Thermoelectric. So our heat sink had to cope with 300W and not just the 100 from the CPU.
Peltier/Seebeck and Thomson effects are only 5% where compressor based systems are more like 50%
So Peltier thermoelectric coolers actually create almost as much heat as they remove. You also end up with condensation problems when the chip drops below room temperature.
We were able to reach -90C with a stack of Peltier cooler, but it was terrible efficiency. Didn't really matter for overclocking anyhow. But we had to hermetically sealed the computer and fill it with Dry gas and desiccant to prevent icing and condensation. We lost a few motherboards before we went to that level.
There is also Thermionic cooling, that promises to be much more efficient.
With my old company we experimented with many forms of cooling some passive (high thermal conductivity) and some active.
One of the ones I liked best was a Micro Acoustic Cooler we made. Never did get to do enough testing, but it also looked very promising, using a gas in a very small tube that was hit with high powered ultrasonic sound waves. It was amazing to see it work.
Magnetic cooling was also interesting.
One very effective solution was a (active phase change) micro compressor based system that was equivalent to a continuously hitting the CPU with freeze spray.
These idiots are still tiring to just use credit card numbers stored in people phones. Like this isn't a security disaster just waiting to happen. If someone get a CC number tied to someone checking account, they could take 10's of 1000's of dollars from just one individual.
There is no way to limit ones exposure of the vulnerability like paper money does.
With paper money, if I loose my wallet, they only get the $200 or what ever I just took from my ATM and no more. But with the cards, sky's the limit. If I have a CC card with a 10K limit they can take it all, and leave me on the hook!
This limits one liability, not with legalize but technology, where cash is transferred to the phone like real money. It's done like you would with an ATM! If the phone is compromised, they only get the cash loaded onto the phone and more more.
Governments globally are starting to realize that the OS that it's citizens use are more then just some toy, but an integral part of communications and a nations GNP, and security. As govs become more aware of how damaging cyberattacks are, they are realizing that they need to start regulating the Operating system that 90% of there population is using.
So they are just running out of patients with Microsoft's games. It's not just the EU, but India, Russia, China, and many Asian and South American countries.
So we are just seeing the beginning of a trend. A good one if you ask me too.
One that will really level the playing field of Linux.
We really need Windows to ship with something like the Synaptic package manager, that allow many applications to be searchable and super easy online installation.
This way user and see a menu of browsers to choose from and can install several with just the click of a mouse.
And how does one stop a microscopic Black whole that suck up everything it touches? What happens if this dot were to fall through the metal of the LHC, dissolving and incorporating all until it hits dirt. Slowly at first eating it's way to the core, where it will just continue to absorb all matter till there is nothing more.
Eventually nothing will be left of the Earth but an almost invisible pinpoint that is emitting Hawking radiation.
I am sure this will really perplex some future alien cosmologists who would have a hard time to explain how a black hole could exist where a planet would be expected.
All traces of life and civilization will be gone other then some distant radio signals and a few scraps of odd metal left on the moon and mars and the voyager probes will be all there is left to mark our very existence.
I guess we will not have to worry about Global Warming then after all.
I don't think bad management is all that prevalent. There is also no shortage of it either.
I think this is mostly in larger companies that can live with the inefficiency. If this happens in a small company, then that company will be dead in short order.
Anyhow this story is about a single instance. Hardly enough to draw out some statistical conslusions. I am sure it's happened in the past too and will continue to happen in the future.
Consider that some times being an Asshole and bossy are more important then technical competence. Think Drill Sargent.
They kiss managements ass, sort of an emperors wears no cloths deal. They tell management what they want to hear, where the more competent engineer is more accurate but may lack tact and tactics. I know I've walked in to that one a few times.
There is a sort of used car sales men skills required not to spook customers or investors.
For example, I had a friend who sold 1U servers, that were the best. When I was at some company and we needed about 100 of these servers, I recommended him as first choice. While on the phone with purchasing, he started to go in to how he doesn't have the fans, and it will take x long to get them. Then something about the special screws. He gave them an honest of a 1 month delivery time.
He spooked management, "What's with this guy? He's not professional.- It sounds like it's risky that he may not come through"
So they ordered with Penguin Computing, instead. They promised 2 week delivery. Well 6 weeks later we get them, most aren't even assembled correctly. Like Internal serial ports were on case, but not plugged in to the MB. So we spend a hard day of opening every case to plug in that connector.
Personally I'd take the honest engineer, and listen to him whine about needing to get the right fans. This is far better then be told a load of bull from some sales guy that is willing get that order at any cost.
But who made the money? At the end of the day isn't that all that really matters?
If you say No, then you don't realize that who get's the money, get's to expand their business.
This is why Microsoft still dominates! They will try to sell us on Vista no matter how crappy it is, and probably will succeed. With time we will forget how much crappier it is then XP or 2K.
I am trying to remember what this is called, the law of something or another.
It was explain really well in a book I read some time back. This is where once dumb managers get in, they will never hire anyone smarter then them. So only the dumb aggressive ones rise. Eventually the whole company can die from this.
This was discussed on Slashdot several years ago too. Good luck finding it.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes there saving money on cooling cost, or at least they seem to believe that and I am sure when they fail to take everything into account this is true.
The reality it the server room still has to pull that heat out. Increased Delta T is just lost energy.
Here is really why it's a terrible idea.
1.) Component failures. Of all parts from bearing in the drives, and fans to the silicon itself has a much higher failure rate.
2.) The components use more power at higher temperatures! This is from increased leakage currents in the silicon.
Below is a graph from Research My Startup company did!
http://www.silentcomputing.com/tech/market2.gif
They really need to used ducted air or any other technology to reduce the Delta T! By this I mean bring the cooling as close to the components as possible.
Right now server rooms need to run internally at 10C to 15C to keep the CPU chips below 60C.
If they just brought the cooling directly to the cpu's and let that cool spread from there they could use out door passive radiators! 0 air conditioning cost and the most power savings.
This is what my start was doing till someone tried to steal the who damb thing and sunk the company.
http://www.batteryjunction.com/solar-s-2600p.html
There are also adapter kits and a number of company's that sell the same thing, it's a no name out of china that will charge anything with USB power.
I remember getting flamed something terrible when SSL was first announced and I said at that time there was no way to stop a Man In the Middle Attack.
All sorts of irrelevant counter arguments were made at that time too.
Certificate and DNSSEC are also useless.
Why, because if your using your PC from 1 ISP or your employers fire walled Intranet, then from the time you install a browser on your PC there, nothing can be trusted.
Certificates and DNSSEC would also come from MITM servers.
There firewall could send you bogus certs and then give you valid connections as if they were the real web site. In turn there fire wall could unwrap your encrypted traffic, then repack it in to the real cert for connection to the SSL'ed web site.
Unless you are going to manually install your keys that you brought from a second clean source there is nothing your going to be to be able to even tell that you've been compromised.
So SSL's largest problem is when your sitting at your office in your big corporate job, and it's got the SSL lock, your lulled in to a false sense of security!
I worked for a German Multinational. All net traffic from my US office went through Germany to get on to the net.
I'd find it impossible to believe that if they had wanted to, that they couldn't do a very complete MITM attack.
My solution was to do SSH over SSL, where I'd bring my own SSH keys in on USB Stick.
then I could run X over that SSL to a Firefox running on my own Personal CoLo running Linux.
I could also have done a VPN over SSH over SSL.
Nice thing about these are canned large corporate attacks wouldn't be geared to deal with it.
Problem is everyone arguing about security it thinking hackers and not corporate spying of employees or government spying of foreigners or it's citizens.
I just remember that German Citizen while in the USA had to be given special internet and phone because under German law they weren't allowed to be monitored and because it was a German company they had to be given the same rights as if they were in Germany.
So I'd say it was safe to assume, I wasn't given that special privilege of not being monitored.
On the subject of recorded IP traffic logs, if it's an after some incident, they can put lots of time and money into cracking your encrypted traffic. Some of these Intellectual property law suites can go on for 10 years. You are a fool to think that they wouldn't crack your keys and see everything that you ever viewed over the web while at work.
It's for this reason why I love one time pads, it's a real loss that security people keep dismissing them.
for some interesting reading:
http://iang.org/ssl/
https://www.financialcryptography.com/
This really needs to be done by ISP's. Why do their routers even allow IP packets not from their network to be released out on to the net?
I mean for me, it's that they are being upfront about it. They aren't messing with your traffic, or saying you can't have the higher bandwidth and traffic, but if your going to use that much you must pay.
I think that is more then fair.
Sadly us heavy bandwidth users will ending up having to pay more now. That $140 seems steep but it is a lot of bandwidth, especially if they can offer some level of improve quality, because they have provisioned for it.
And he certainly copied documents he was not allowed to copy as an employee.
But it's not theft, but evidence of his employers misconduct.
I think there are several laws that protect him, like whistle blower laws. The only difference is he was a victim before an employee.
Also I don't think an employment agreement can invalidate a patent. Even if it was written in a Judge would most likely toss it out.
I guess part of the question will be did he know before taking the job, or find out accidentally while working for them.
Microsoft has filed a lawsuit against a former employee, charging him with taking a job at the software giant in order to steal information that would be helpful in his patent infringement case against the company.
Stealing information, Ah wouldn't that mean stealing incriminating evidence against MicroSoft?
I have watch this unfold from the side lines (friend of a friend) since Ancore was founded, and it's not a surprise.
It's a desperate act from Microsoft to try to keep evidence suppressed. Ancore was mostly dead due to Microsoft, They should have known better then to steal a guys patents then hire him.
Oh, and then Microsoft acts righteous when he sues them after finding out they ripped his technology, because he came across the proof while he worked for them.
Crap, is that what's been happening. Augh, it really sux.
Look, I will spend as much as it takes for me to get the broadband I want.
Problem is Cox is the only game in town, and if they start messing with me, I am hosed.
There is no place else to turn, other then move to a new city!
I tried to submit this here, but it's still pending after a week.
Cox has an auto blocking mechanism for P2P.
http://videotechnology.blogspot.com/2009/01/cox-blocked.html
> first version of Windows that makes computers run faster than the previous version.
So now it will only be 10x slower then Linux instead of 100x for the same operations.
This assumes we just stop outputting CO2 at some point and are passive. But humans are anything but passive, this is what got us into this mess in the first place.
So the article doesn't take into things like sequestration and other active attempts to reverse the trend.
I am confident in 50 year we will be able to completely re-terraform earth back to normal.
We will be able to deliberately control the amount of atmospheric gases, solar radiation reaching earth, and chemistry of the oceans and become the masters of our climate.
Why do I think this?
GA, AI, super computers.
And progress in Material science, renewable energy, Self replicating robotics, genetics and artificially accelerated evolution, Computational chemistry and simulation of quantum molecular dynamics.
The machines (beyond computers) under human guidance will do the research needed to reverse things.
So it's will be just a matter of energy required needed to do this.
I believe it will take more power to put the CO2 back then when we released it from burning fossil fuels. Essentially give back that energy that we used for the past 100 years + interest.
As much as I disagree with Kurzwell on many things, some parts of his Singularity theory are dead on and will be able to reverse this trend.
So getting fusion working, space solar or some other massive power source going is critical to do this.
The key here is to use the amount of available resources as best as possible to devise future solutions before we get wiped out as a species.
I have faith that technology will save us.
But it may get a lot worse before it gets better.
http://www.silentcomputing.com/i.html
Is this cleaner then mineral oil submersion?
Mineral oil is a complete mess. A friend of mine wanted to do it and that's how I got into coming up with alternatives.
With mineral oil it's a disaster waiting to happen. Imagine a gallon of that on your carpet?
What about fires? Yes a few gallons of flammable oil in your bedroom is just genius. Then run electricity through it.
Why don't you just keep a full gas can under your bed while your at it.
Mineral oil also tends to wick up the cables and dissolve some plastics.
What if you want to work on your PC?
Oil is just not professional.
Who mod'ed this? This wasn't off topic.
It's the reason many country's are putting pressure on MS or pushing towards Linux.
I think it's a direct reason why they are pushing for equal time for Firefox.
Because Explorer is chock full of security holes.
Great stuff.
But you prove my point even further then.
Didn't you...
So it's even more embarrassing that there are RFC already out there to solve this and they choose not to implement this.
I don't claim to be the first to figure this out.
I didn't even bother to research it, just put my idea out there for what ever it's worth back in 2001.
I think that is not a correct assumption.
The freeze spray will could go directly onto the silicon, like in the AMD processors.
But cooling the surface of the heat spreader just a little further will be almost the same effect, unless the power densities get crazy.
But I have found even a passive phase change directly on a chip surface is plenty efficient for limiting chip temperatures. Problem is making good seals then.
Even passive thermal conductors we found that we could pull 400+ watts from a CPU chip and keep it under 70C in a room that was 35C!
why didn't you just slather a layer of nonconductive lacquer over the motherboard?
Because that would cause other components to overheat like the North Bridge and CPU power regulator on the MB.
It's also just wet and ugly and makes it hard to maintain, not something we could put into a commercial product. Also you really need to make sure water doesn't get under the CPU. So you'd have to permanently glue the CPU to the MB with varnish to do what your suggesting.
Carnot efficiency:
E = 1 - Tl/Th
coefficient of performance:
COP = 1/(Th/Tl -1) in one book
COP = Tl / (Th - Tl) in another
and COP = Th / (Th - Tl) in yet another.
I can't get any clear definition of COP!
So I choose not to use it until I can find someone who can give me a clear definition.
I can't find my references on efficiency of different cooling now.
But I know freon systems were 25 to 50% efficient and Thermoelectric was like 5%
It's been 6 years since I dove into this.
But Know we had to dump something like 200 Watts to remove 100 with Thermoelectric. So our heat sink had to cope with 300W and not just the 100 from the CPU.
Other references.
http://www.coolchips.com/technology/ccalc.shtml
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_efficiency
Sorry I couldn't fit what I want into the title.
Carnot efficiency is very important.
Peltier/Seebeck and Thomson effects are only 5% where compressor based systems are more like 50%
So Peltier thermoelectric coolers actually create almost as much heat as they remove. You also end up with condensation problems when the chip drops below room temperature.
We were able to reach -90C with a stack of Peltier cooler, but it was terrible efficiency.
Didn't really matter for overclocking anyhow.
But we had to hermetically sealed the computer and fill it with Dry gas and desiccant to prevent icing and condensation. We lost a few motherboards before we went to that level.
There is also Thermionic cooling, that promises to be much more efficient.
With my old company we experimented with many forms of cooling some passive (high thermal conductivity) and some active.
One of the ones I liked best was a Micro Acoustic Cooler we made. Never did get to do enough testing, but it also looked very promising, using
a gas in a very small tube that was hit with high powered ultrasonic sound waves. It was amazing to see it work.
Magnetic cooling was also interesting.
One very effective solution was a (active phase change) micro compressor based system that was equivalent to a continuously hitting the CPU with freeze spray.
These idiots are still tiring to just use credit card numbers stored in people phones.
Like this isn't a security disaster just waiting to happen. If someone get a CC number tied to someone checking account, they could take 10's of 1000's of dollars from just one individual.
There is no way to limit ones exposure of the vulnerability like paper money does.
With paper money, if I loose my wallet, they only get the $200 or what ever I just took from my ATM and no more. But with the cards, sky's the limit.
If I have a CC card with a 10K limit they can take it all, and leave me on the hook!
http://www.decash.com/ is my solution.
http://www.wipo.int/pctdb/en/wo.jsp?wo=2005048082 my patent.
This limits one liability, not with legalize but technology, where cash is transferred to the phone like real money. It's done like you would with an ATM! If the phone is compromised, they only get the cash loaded onto the phone and more more.
Governments globally are starting to realize that the OS that it's citizens use are more then just some toy, but an integral part of communications and a nations GNP, and security.
As govs become more aware of how damaging cyberattacks are, they are realizing that they need to start regulating the Operating system that 90% of there population is using.
So they are just running out of patients with Microsoft's games. It's not just the EU, but India, Russia, China, and many Asian and South American countries.
So we are just seeing the beginning of a trend. A good one if you ask me too.
One that will really level the playing field of Linux.
We really need Windows to ship with something like the Synaptic package manager, that allow many applications to be searchable and super easy online installation.
This way user and see a menu of browsers to choose from and can install several with just the click of a mouse.
So what, it's 2001. Does that somehow make it less valid? If your right your right, 10 minutes or 10 years doesn't change that.
It's my article, and it will work, even it they choose to keep letting things like this happen.
At some point we will have to implement something, but the longer they put it off, the harder it will be to fix later.
http://www.dnull.com/dos/DOS-Block.htm
**sigh**
And how does one stop a microscopic Black whole that suck up everything it touches?
What happens if this dot were to fall through the metal of the LHC, dissolving and incorporating all until it hits dirt. Slowly at first eating it's way to the core, where it will just continue to absorb all matter till there is nothing more.
Eventually nothing will be left of the Earth but an almost invisible pinpoint that is emitting Hawking radiation.
I am sure this will really perplex some future alien cosmologists who would have a hard time to explain how a black hole could exist where a planet would be expected.
All traces of life and civilization will be gone other then some distant radio signals and a few scraps of odd metal left on the moon and mars and the voyager probes will be all there is left to mark our very existence.
I guess we will not have to worry about Global Warming then after all.
I don't think bad management is all that prevalent. There is also no shortage of it either.
I think this is mostly in larger companies that can live with the inefficiency. If this happens in a small company, then that company will be dead in short order.
Anyhow this story is about a single instance. Hardly enough to draw out some statistical conslusions. I am sure it's happened in the past too and will continue to happen in the future.
Consider that some times being an Asshole and bossy are more important then technical competence. Think Drill Sargent.
They kiss managements ass, sort of an emperors wears no cloths deal. They tell management what they want to hear, where the more competent engineer is more accurate but may lack tact and tactics. I know I've walked in to that one a few times.
There is a sort of used car sales men skills required not to spook customers or investors.
For example, I had a friend who sold 1U servers, that were the best. When I was at some company and we needed about 100 of these servers, I recommended him as first choice.
While on the phone with purchasing, he started to go in to how he doesn't have the fans, and it will take x long to get them. Then something about the special screws. He gave them an honest of a 1 month delivery time.
He spooked management, "What's with this guy? He's not professional.- It sounds like it's risky that he may not come through"
So they ordered with Penguin Computing, instead. They promised 2 week delivery. Well 6 weeks later we get them, most aren't even assembled correctly. Like Internal serial ports were on case, but not plugged in to the MB. So we spend a hard day of opening every case to plug in that connector.
Personally I'd take the honest engineer, and listen to him whine about needing to get the right fans. This is far better then be told a load of bull from some sales guy that is willing get that order at any cost.
But who made the money? At the end of the day isn't that all that really matters?
If you say No, then you don't realize that who get's the money, get's to expand their business.
This is why Microsoft still dominates!
They will try to sell us on Vista no matter how crappy it is, and probably will succeed. With time we will forget how much crappier it is then XP or 2K.
I am trying to remember what this is called, the law of something or another.
It was explain really well in a book I read some time back. This is where once dumb managers get in, they will never hire anyone smarter then them. So only the dumb aggressive ones rise. Eventually the whole company can die from this.
This was discussed on Slashdot several years ago too. Good luck finding it.