Yes, a perfect mechanical system will eventually fail, but the failure in most cases can be predicted and the failing part replaced.
In the real world, we have mechanical systems that are closer to perfect than software. When I read the release notes of, say, an updated video card driver, I always notice that the problems were very specific (running a certain game at certain resolution, with a subset of cards that the driver actually supports and with certain settings will cause a problem) - must have taken a long time to find that one.
Also, a car is and will always be a mechanical system (unlike, say a computer that can be all mechanical, all electronic or something in between). Steering in old cars works something like this: Driver turns steering wheel -> a rod connected to another rod forming a rack and pinion system turns the about their vertical axis.
A lot of moving parts that can fail.
With new cars it works something like this: Drivers turns steering wheel -> signal goes to a microcontroller -> microcontroller sends signal to actuators that turn the wheels.
The components from the old car are still there, but now we also have even more parts that can fail.
I still have the electromechanical electricity meter:)
Anyway, true, electronics and software in most of the devices made them better, however there are cases where this is wrong. My car tape deck can scan the frequency range and find the radio stations automatically, which is great, until I want a specific station that has weaker signal. Then I have to find the nearest strong station and push the "tune" button a lot of times.
Electronic volume control buttons might not wear out as fast as a simple potentiometer, but they are much less convenient than the potentiometer, especially when I want to turn down the volume really fast.
(addition - the external sound card that I use with my laptop (Creative Surround 5.1) has a volume knob, but it is software controlled, that is, turning it sends a command to the PC to change the volume, which uses a lot of CPU cycles (Creative and their bloated drivers) and is useless to me because I wanted an analog volume control so I could change the volume while playing a game without the computer freezing for a few seconds - well, I can still have my tube headphone amplifier with its potentiometer volume control).
Software is very useful, but not where it is unnecessary. For example, steering and brakes. Last time I checked, wheels (and brakes) were mechanical, so they still need to be turned with mechanical force.I assume, in new cars, this is done by small motor(s) controlled by the computer that is controlled by the steering wheel. So, the (un)reliability of a mechanical system was just increased by the addition of a new clink in the chain - software. What if it locks up when I'm driving? I can inspect a mechanical shaft to try to determine whether it is likely to break, I cannot do that with software. Even if I had the source code, it would be much more difficult to spot a flaw in it than to see that "this thing is all rusty and only held by one screw, and the other three are missing, probably not safe".
Electronic, remote locks - well, if I am driving a car, it is safe to assume I have at least one functional hand. I can use the key to unlock the car like I unlock my house. Also, it is cheaper to make a backup copy of a simple metal key than the electronic one. If the key fob has a battery and it dies (no battery lasts forever), then I will have a problem operating the car.
Miles of wiring have been replaced by a lighter, more reliable bus system for all electric functions in the car.
And made all parts more expensive, since every light has to be able to decode the commands from the bus, so it has to have a processor.
The only time I have problems with wiring in my old car is when the wires corrode and no longer conduct (or a connection snaps off), so a specific device might no longer work (and it is easier to trace the problem, since if that device does not have power, but the voltage exists on the other end of the wire then the wire is most likely the problem). I assume the wires in the bus can corrode too, so it's not that much better.
I still don't get it - why cars need so much software? Older cars worked quite well with just mechanical controls, so why there are so many computers in new cars?
Non-essential systems do not count - if the radio/usb player fails, I'll be annoyed (and I can replace the player with a simpler tape deck if I want to), if the steering or brakes fail, I'll be injured or dead.
So, why the millions of lines of code? Are they really necessary for the system to do the job what simpler (and more reliable) mechanical linkages did in the past (steering, brakes, throttle, clutch, gear selector)? Mechanical devices fail, but they usually give "notice" before doing so - you can see the rusty rod or the cracked link before it fails. Oh, and you still need the mechanical device (the wheels somehow have to turn in the direction that the user turned the steering wheel). Also, people seem to be able to design mechanical devices that work as intended, while software is almost always buggy.
My 28 year old car somehow seems to be able to work and get me from point A to point B even though the tape deck has more complex electronics (well, it has a RDS decoder, Dolby B and C NR, logic controls, LCD display, ability to control CD and MD changers etc) and the electronics of the car itself consist of a few relays.
but I've never found that a 24Hz - 30Hz refresh rate kept me from being immersed in a good film, and I've never found myself lamenting a lack of smoothness.
Neither have I, but I also use VHS for recording stuff from TV and not care about the lower resolution, that is, if I enjoy the program in the first place. However, when I found out that DScaler could deinterlace video so that the result is 50FPS and not 25FPS I am now exclusively using it, because the 50FPS video looks much better.
* Thanks to interlacing - whee.
Well, that depends. Interlacing is quite a good compression method - static picture has full resolution (so it looks better than half resolution, 50Hz progressive scan video). If the video has a lot of action, the areas with a lot of action will have half the resolution, but 50 frames per second, so it is much smoother than 25Hz, but progressive scan video and you are less likely to notice the lower resolution on the fast moving parts. 50Hz progressive scan takes twice the bandwidth.
When I notice MP3 compression artifacts they really annoy me, however, I am much more tolerant of low quality analog signal. I have a few tapes that are really low quality (some of them I recorded at a too low level, others were eaten by the tape decks a few times), but I really enjoy the music and do not care that the noise is probably at -30dB and the frequency response ends with 8kHz. And that is why I have problems when I want to compare the quality of different types of tape - i start enjoying the song and do not notice the difference in quality. Well, at least a 3 head tape deck lets me compare source to tape quickly, then I can hear the difference, but if I had to listen to the same song twice I wouldn't.
Yes, but what if I bought the cheaper car and invested the rest of the money somewhere? Would I have more money at the end of the 6, 10 or whatever year period? What if I continued to use my old car and invested all the money I did not pay for a new car?
It does not have to be. Minimal monthly salary for full time employees (and a lot of people get that, well those that have a job, anyway) in Lithuania is around $320 before tax, so it would qualify that $20 is more than a days wage. However, a lot of young people (who is the demographic for computer games) learned English as a second language in school (it is mandatory in a majority of schools, some others teach French or German instead). On the other hand, high speed fiber connection (200mbps both ways in Lithuania, 80mbps both ways to other countries) costs ~$38/month, this is the fastest connection, others are cheaper, for example, 20mbps local 5mbps to other countries costs ~$14/month.
So, a bit more than a month of 20 (5) mbps connection or one game?
Still, the inside of a working computer on a hot day can be 50 degrees. Any beer stored there would be the same temperature, so it looks like a computer would be better storing coffee or tea, since hot tea is better than hot beer.
Losing 1/8 of the space to parity is better than losing 1/5. Plus, it gives you greater versatility. 8 drives lets you run RAID 5+0, for example.
However, the probability of two drives failing at once (or another drive failing during rebuild) is higher for an 8 drive array instead of a 5 drive array.
Still, if you need that much speed, just use SSDs - they have faster seeks than any spinning disk.
But that's about it.
Also price.
That's why I'm planning to buy a server that has 8 3.5" hard drive slots. I would be able to use 2 fast drives in RAID1 as system drive and 4 1.5-2TB 7200RPM drives for data and also have 2 empty slots for additional drives when I run out of space. The speed will be enough for me.
In that case you can use SSDs - even faster seek. Also, 15000RPM drives are even faster (though they are only 2.5" with larger drives being the same small disks but in a bigger case). I usually need capacity and do not really care about speed - as long as the drive can sustain 40MB/s linear read to feed the LTO2 tape drive.
As the system drive on my main PC I use a 36GB 15kRPM drive. All other computers have 10kRPM but quite old (9 - 18GB) drives as system. Data storage drives usually are 7200RPM and connected to IDE (two drives per cable, 4 drives per two port controller plugged in a PCI 32bit/33MHz slot).
Yea. I have one of those. It has 11 5.25" bays, so I am using 6 of them to mount 8 hard drives, I also have mounted a DDS4 tape drive and a DVDRW drive (I also had a LTO drive in there, but moved it to an external enclosure to better cool it) and have 3 bays left for another 4 hard drives. Though I would need a IDE or SATA controller (or buy SCSI drives) since all I have left now is one connector on an IDE cable.
I bought a used LTO2 tape drive for ~$190. While the tapes are more expensive per GB and only 200GB, the drive was affordable and since I mostly use tapes for archiving and record whole tape at once, 200GB is enough for me for now. When 200GB starts being too small, I'll probably be able to get a LTO4 tape drive for $200...
HP diagnostic software says that my drive still has ~99% of head life left.
I still use them. Floppy disks are faster than CDRW if you need to write a small amount of information (that fits on one floppy), it is also easier to make older PCs boot from them, unlike USB flash or hard disk drives. So, for example, a copy of MHDD goes to a floppy disk.
My main PC has a LS120 drive though. It can read/write regular floppies faster than the standard drive.
Oh, and all floppy disks have a hardware write protect switch, if I put a disk in a virus infected PC (to, for example, find out what hardware it has so I can find drivers for when I format the disk and reinstall Windows), I'd rather write protect it.
However, physically large drives would be great for storing information that is not accessed frequently or does not require fast access. The access times would still be much better than those of tape and their price per terabyte would be lower than that of faster HDDs and especially SSDs.
For example - I want to keep system files (and the page file) on a very fast drive, but I don't really care if my movie takes 0.1s longer to start playing. So, I could use a small, but fast drive and a slower but very high capacity drive.
Actually, I think they should concentrate on making hard drives even bigger, for example, returning to 5.25" size with modern technologies (perpendicular recording etc). A hard drive with 8-16 5.25" platters would have quite high capacity (probably 10-20TB). Also, linear speed would still be pretty fast (the edge of a 5.25" platter spinning at 5400RPM travels about as fast as the edge of a 3.5" platter spinning at 8000RPM)
Oh, and I would buy a smaller, faster drive (say 146GB-300GB, 15000RPM) for stuff like system files too. I do not need 5ms access time on my movies/flac files etc.
Also install Classic Shell. Now if I could find a way to move the address bar on Windows Explorer below the menu and toolbar (like it is on XP) it would be really nice.
I am still using XP (Win7 runs in a virtual machine so I can experiment with changing the UI), but I know that sooner or later I am going to have to upgrade (if I buy a new laptop, for example, it's almost certain that I will not be able to install XP on it).
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Yes, a perfect mechanical system will eventually fail, but the failure in most cases can be predicted and the failing part replaced.
In the real world, we have mechanical systems that are closer to perfect than software. When I read the release notes of, say, an updated video card driver, I always notice that the problems were very specific (running a certain game at certain resolution, with a subset of cards that the driver actually supports and with certain settings will cause a problem) - must have taken a long time to find that one.
Also, a car is and will always be a mechanical system (unlike, say a computer that can be all mechanical, all electronic or something in between). Steering in old cars works something like this:
Driver turns steering wheel -> a rod connected to another rod forming a rack and pinion system turns the about their vertical axis.
A lot of moving parts that can fail.
With new cars it works something like this:
Drivers turns steering wheel -> signal goes to a microcontroller -> microcontroller sends signal to actuators that turn the wheels.
The components from the old car are still there, but now we also have even more parts that can fail.
I still have the electromechanical electricity meter :)
Anyway, true, electronics and software in most of the devices made them better, however there are cases where this is wrong. My car tape deck can scan the frequency range and find the radio stations automatically, which is great, until I want a specific station that has weaker signal. Then I have to find the nearest strong station and push the "tune" button a lot of times.
Electronic volume control buttons might not wear out as fast as a simple potentiometer, but they are much less convenient than the potentiometer, especially when I want to turn down the volume really fast.
(addition - the external sound card that I use with my laptop (Creative Surround 5.1) has a volume knob, but it is software controlled, that is, turning it sends a command to the PC to change the volume, which uses a lot of CPU cycles (Creative and their bloated drivers) and is useless to me because I wanted an analog volume control so I could change the volume while playing a game without the computer freezing for a few seconds - well, I can still have my tube headphone amplifier with its potentiometer volume control).
Software is very useful, but not where it is unnecessary. For example, steering and brakes. Last time I checked, wheels (and brakes) were mechanical, so they still need to be turned with mechanical force.I assume, in new cars, this is done by small motor(s) controlled by the computer that is controlled by the steering wheel. So, the (un)reliability of a mechanical system was just increased by the addition of a new clink in the chain - software. What if it locks up when I'm driving? I can inspect a mechanical shaft to try to determine whether it is likely to break, I cannot do that with software. Even if I had the source code, it would be much more difficult to spot a flaw in it than to see that "this thing is all rusty and only held by one screw, and the other three are missing, probably not safe".
Electronic, remote locks - well, if I am driving a car, it is safe to assume I have at least one functional hand. I can use the key to unlock the car like I unlock my house. Also, it is cheaper to make a backup copy of a simple metal key than the electronic one. If the key fob has a battery and it dies (no battery lasts forever), then I will have a problem operating the car.
both can fail if designed wrong.
Yes, but it seems that currently people can design a mechanical systems (and simple electrical systems) better than software.
Miles of wiring have been replaced by a lighter, more reliable bus system for all electric functions in the car.
And made all parts more expensive, since every light has to be able to decode the commands from the bus, so it has to have a processor.
The only time I have problems with wiring in my old car is when the wires corrode and no longer conduct (or a connection snaps off), so a specific device might no longer work (and it is easier to trace the problem, since if that device does not have power, but the voltage exists on the other end of the wire then the wire is most likely the problem). I assume the wires in the bus can corrode too, so it's not that much better.
I still don't get it - why cars need so much software? Older cars worked quite well with just mechanical controls, so why there are so many computers in new cars?
Non-essential systems do not count - if the radio/usb player fails, I'll be annoyed (and I can replace the player with a simpler tape deck if I want to), if the steering or brakes fail, I'll be injured or dead.
So, why the millions of lines of code? Are they really necessary for the system to do the job what simpler (and more reliable) mechanical linkages did in the past (steering, brakes, throttle, clutch, gear selector)? Mechanical devices fail, but they usually give "notice" before doing so - you can see the rusty rod or the cracked link before it fails. Oh, and you still need the mechanical device (the wheels somehow have to turn in the direction that the user turned the steering wheel). Also, people seem to be able to design mechanical devices that work as intended, while software is almost always buggy.
My 28 year old car somehow seems to be able to work and get me from point A to point B even though the tape deck has more complex electronics (well, it has a RDS decoder, Dolby B and C NR, logic controls, LCD display, ability to control CD and MD changers etc) and the electronics of the car itself consist of a few relays.
but I've never found that a 24Hz - 30Hz refresh rate kept me from being immersed in a good film, and I've never found myself lamenting a lack of smoothness.
Neither have I, but I also use VHS for recording stuff from TV and not care about the lower resolution, that is, if I enjoy the program in the first place. However, when I found out that DScaler could deinterlace video so that the result is 50FPS and not 25FPS I am now exclusively using it, because the 50FPS video looks much better.
* Thanks to interlacing - whee.
Well, that depends. Interlacing is quite a good compression method - static picture has full resolution (so it looks better than half resolution, 50Hz progressive scan video). If the video has a lot of action, the areas with a lot of action will have half the resolution, but 50 frames per second, so it is much smoother than 25Hz, but progressive scan video and you are less likely to notice the lower resolution on the fast moving parts. 50Hz progressive scan takes twice the bandwidth.
When I notice MP3 compression artifacts they really annoy me, however, I am much more tolerant of low quality analog signal. I have a few tapes that are really low quality (some of them I recorded at a too low level, others were eaten by the tape decks a few times), but I really enjoy the music and do not care that the noise is probably at -30dB and the frequency response ends with 8kHz. And that is why I have problems when I want to compare the quality of different types of tape - i start enjoying the song and do not notice the difference in quality. Well, at least a 3 head tape deck lets me compare source to tape quickly, then I can hear the difference, but if I had to listen to the same song twice I wouldn't.
Yes, but what if I bought the cheaper car and invested the rest of the money somewhere? Would I have more money at the end of the 6, 10 or whatever year period? What if I continued to use my old car and invested all the money I did not pay for a new car?
The 64bit plugin was discontinued without alternative.
I think that's good news actually. It means that Adobe realized that Flash should not use more than 2-4GB of RAM.
It does not have to be. Minimal monthly salary for full time employees (and a lot of people get that, well those that have a job, anyway) in Lithuania is around $320 before tax, so it would qualify that $20 is more than a days wage. However, a lot of young people (who is the demographic for computer games) learned English as a second language in school (it is mandatory in a majority of schools, some others teach French or German instead). On the other hand, high speed fiber connection (200mbps both ways in Lithuania, 80mbps both ways to other countries) costs ~$38/month, this is the fastest connection, others are cheaper, for example, 20mbps local 5mbps to other countries costs ~$14/month.
So, a bit more than a month of 20 (5) mbps connection or one game?
And what is the piracy rate of DRMed games, like Spore?
So, if 10% of pirates would just have not downloaded and played the game (and not bought too), the company would have made more money?
:)
Still, the inside of a working computer on a hot day can be 50 degrees. Any beer stored there would be the same temperature, so it looks like a computer would be better storing coffee or tea, since hot tea is better than hot beer.
Losing 1/8 of the space to parity is better than losing 1/5. Plus, it gives you greater versatility. 8 drives lets you run RAID 5+0, for example.
However, the probability of two drives failing at once (or another drive failing during rebuild) is higher for an 8 drive array instead of a 5 drive array.
Still, if you need that much speed, just use SSDs - they have faster seeks than any spinning disk.
But that's about it.
Also price.
That's why I'm planning to buy a server that has 8 3.5" hard drive slots. I would be able to use 2 fast drives in RAID1 as system drive and 4 1.5-2TB 7200RPM drives for data and also have 2 empty slots for additional drives when I run out of space. The speed will be enough for me.
In that case you can use SSDs - even faster seek. Also, 15000RPM drives are even faster (though they are only 2.5" with larger drives being the same small disks but in a bigger case). I usually need capacity and do not really care about speed - as long as the drive can sustain 40MB/s linear read to feed the LTO2 tape drive.
As the system drive on my main PC I use a 36GB 15kRPM drive. All other computers have 10kRPM but quite old (9 - 18GB) drives as system. Data storage drives usually are 7200RPM and connected to IDE (two drives per cable, 4 drives per two port controller plugged in a PCI 32bit/33MHz slot).
You like 50C beer?
Yea. I have one of those. It has 11 5.25" bays, so I am using 6 of them to mount 8 hard drives, I also have mounted a DDS4 tape drive and a DVDRW drive (I also had a LTO drive in there, but moved it to an external enclosure to better cool it) and have 3 bays left for another 4 hard drives. Though I would need a IDE or SATA controller (or buy SCSI drives) since all I have left now is one connector on an IDE cable.
2.5" drives are more expensive per gigabyte than 3.5" ones.
Also, they are smaller in capacity, probably 5 3.5" drives would have the same capacity as 8 2.5" drives.
I bought a used LTO2 tape drive for ~$190. While the tapes are more expensive per GB and only 200GB, the drive was affordable and since I mostly use tapes for archiving and record whole tape at once, 200GB is enough for me for now. When 200GB starts being too small, I'll probably be able to get a LTO4 tape drive for $200...
HP diagnostic software says that my drive still has ~99% of head life left.
LTO4 can store 800GB on a single tape and LTO5 can store 1.4TB, so you only would need a few tapes to back everything up.
Or you could buy another hard drive, place it in an external enclosure and back up to that.
I still use them. Floppy disks are faster than CDRW if you need to write a small amount of information (that fits on one floppy), it is also easier to make older PCs boot from them, unlike USB flash or hard disk drives. So, for example, a copy of MHDD goes to a floppy disk.
My main PC has a LS120 drive though. It can read/write regular floppies faster than the standard drive.
Oh, and all floppy disks have a hardware write protect switch, if I put a disk in a virus infected PC (to, for example, find out what hardware it has so I can find drivers for when I format the disk and reinstall Windows), I'd rather write protect it.
However, physically large drives would be great for storing information that is not accessed frequently or does not require fast access. The access times would still be much better than those of tape and their price per terabyte would be lower than that of faster HDDs and especially SSDs.
For example - I want to keep system files (and the page file) on a very fast drive, but I don't really care if my movie takes 0.1s longer to start playing. So, I could use a small, but fast drive and a slower but very high capacity drive.
Actually, I think they should concentrate on making hard drives even bigger, for example, returning to 5.25" size with modern technologies (perpendicular recording etc). A hard drive with 8-16 5.25" platters would have quite high capacity (probably 10-20TB). Also, linear speed would still be pretty fast (the edge of a 5.25" platter spinning at 5400RPM travels about as fast as the edge of a 3.5" platter spinning at 8000RPM)
Oh, and I would buy a smaller, faster drive (say 146GB-300GB, 15000RPM) for stuff like system files too. I do not need 5ms access time on my movies/flac files etc.
Ubuntu supports even less Windows XP software than Windows 7.
Also install Classic Shell. Now if I could find a way to move the address bar on Windows Explorer below the menu and toolbar (like it is on XP) it would be really nice.
I am still using XP (Win7 runs in a virtual machine so I can experiment with changing the UI), but I know that sooner or later I am going to have to upgrade (if I buy a new laptop, for example, it's almost certain that I will not be able to install XP on it).