Whilst I'm no expert in fire supression systems, I have studied a few data centres in my time as a Senior Sys Admin for a number of companies. Most (decent) NOC's have a fire *supression* system based on gas or (more likely these days) some form of liquid (gas has the nasty side-effect of potentially killing humans).
These are for small fires that can be contained within a data centre, ie. a computer catching fire or emitting smoke. Really good systems are very localised (racks or cage specific). A big fire just isn't going to be stopped by such a system.
I haven't read too much into this particular incident (ie. not at all), but my initial thought was that something more serious must have happened (well, duh!), perhaps a fire outside of the main suppression system (outside of the raised floor area?). Or perhaps the paint on the walls/carpet wasn't fire resistant and just took hold very quickly.
Or a large initial fire (gas leak?) that just didn't die down when the supression system kicked in. Maybe the type of fire (again, gas? oil?) didn't die down because Data Center supression systems presumably focus on electrical fires.
Moving parts are a Bad Thing(tm). They're always the first thing to go wrong, and the most expensive to replace.
*Sigh*
KISS is a sensible design methodology that I fear organiser manufacturers are forgetting.
Stuff that Matters
on
World Cup Final
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
How about the other part of the site's title? "Stuff That Matters", just because it's not geeky doesn't mean there's no interest on this site, and therefore matters to readers.
Good grief, it's the single biggest sports event in the world.
I see that, according to NTK, the Parliamentary vote has been put back a week to Monday 24th, June. Round one to the activists who faxed/wrote/called, but keep those faxes rolling!!!!
In my ranting to various friends on various mailing lists, one chap (Martin R) suggested the following:
You could also try calling the labour party on 08705 900200 (UK Number, so +44 8705 900200 from outside the UK)
choose option 3 to be put through to a Goverment Information Adviser. A report of the calls they receive is sent out to Number 10.
They will tell you it is for law enforcement purposes (so why aren't the police doing it), but don't know very much about it. Quoting directly from the order will fox them thoroughly.
They have already received a number of calls.
There is also an option to contact Labour Party Head Office, although they don't seem to be answering right now.
I've done plenty of ranting/cross-posted between here and k5 with these links, hopefully there should be a varied selection for those really not wanting to use a little creativity. sigh
You're right about the electoral dictatorship we seem to have right now, and pretty much with every government since the war, however that doesn't mean we should do nothing.
Whilst you're right about the disgust perhaps being the most significant factor, apathy in this matter is dangerous. Doing nothing is fare worse than doing something, and that matters even at elections (I always suggest people spoil their ballots if they disagree with the options, at least it's registered!).
Britains can sometimes surprise, and Blair is doing a superb job at the moment of stamping all over the will and mandate he claims he was given. It's a slow process affecting change in our system, but it will catch up eventually.
In the meantime, scream about the abuses, cock ups and problems. Look what happened to Byers? Bit by bit, change can be affected. I believe that Britain is, by nature, a tolerant country.
Our current goverment is very much about doing what they want whether we want it or not, I'm afraid.
Sounds a bit like almost every government since the war really, such is the elected dictatorship system we have in this country. It's really at times like this I wish we had a proper system of checks and balances, but that fact seems to be missed by the constitutional reformers Blair claims to have working for him.
If you're like me, you'll find writing to your MP about matters like this very rewarding. Saying that, I neglected to write or fax when the RIP bill first came up, despite my intentions to do so.
I last wrote (dead tree, rather than fax) to my MP at the time regarding Higher Education funding (at the request of my old University), and got a nice reply back saying he'd deal with it in due course. Subsequently, I received a pp'd letter saying he'd contacted the appropriate people.
Ok, it changed nothing - higher education is still poorly funded - but I felt I'd done 'my bit'. Multiply that out, and it could have an effect. Although with the almost dictatorial goverment system we have, it's hard to imagine enough Labour MP's rebelling against a 3-line whip to reject the amendment.
It makes a lot more sense to write something you have thought about, rather than copy/pasting somebody else's letter. If the same MP (well, secretary) receives a few similair messages through the same format (ie. fax), they IMNSHO are (even though they shouldn't) more likely to discount your views.
Different letters, especially if they are dead-tree compliant (come on, how many tech savy MP's have you ever seen or heard from?) go so much further.
So do it, people. This extension of power is extreme, and deserves a letter writing campaign and far more attention.
So:
# Write to your MP. It'll only take a few minutes to write it, print it, sign it, and send it. # Write again after a few weeks if you've not heard back. # Forward the link to this story (when it hits the front page or sections) to your friends. # Mention it to friends at the pub. It's ridiculous, and i'd be startled if anybody - even the non-techies in your circle of friends - agree it makes sense for these organisations to have this amount of power. # Check that newspapers are giving this coverage. # Write letters to newspapers on the subject, expressing your feelings.
None of this takes a huge amount of time. It's worth it, and you'll feel a lot better for doing it.
And if anything, it might start to pursuade the government and media that techy's can actual get themselves organised into a politicial pressure group.
Soon, there will be more than just FTP/HTTP... Imagine it...
telnet girlfriend Trying 192.168.23.45 Connected to girlfriend Escape characters are 'Football'. What do you want? rm/dev/complaints What do you want? mknod 5 12/dev/do_the_washing_for_me_love What do you want? mknod 5 13/dev/happy_to_let_you_surf_til_late What do you want? cat/proc/wallet | grep 'enough_for_a_pizza' | mail me@me.com rm: cannot open `/proc/wallet': Permission denied. You are barred from the house until further notice.
Warning! Liberties quota exceeded.
Give them a chance...
on
KDE 3.0 is Out
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Good grief.
Give the poor sods a chance to get the distribution ready, please. Perhaps they didn't WANT people downloading it just yet... Hence no announcement, just yet??
Bandwidth and hosting costs money, as poor old distributed.net is finding out. A few mirrors being updated, and then linking to the appropriate announcement would be a bit more considerate than putting up the first submission on the 3.0 release.
It wasn't my intention to give you a -1 flamebait. Apologies. Konqueror and my mouse wheel got the better of me I'm afraid, and I inadvertently mod'd you down. Child +1'd because I came back to check how it was doing, and well, it is Interesting.
The article doesn't say the thief was caught. To quote the guy himself: "So the conclusion to the story is: iMac and Lexmark printer recovered, one female pled out to possession of stolen property and got a year's probation.".
Possession of stolen property is very different to theft. She claims to have bought the imac from "some guy". Ok, she might be complicit, but we won't ever know.
We've been there, and discussed that (almost word for word it seems). I do think most agree it should be done - it's just what.
There was a great gif of the ring somebody had done in the thread, which gets my vote (and probably avoids copyright issues of JRRT logo's some were suggesting - as much as I liked the idea).
I think the question is right - most people are relying upon the big DBMS players, using big iron boxes to host their systems data, and that's unlikely to change this week, next week, or next year. Heck, we did when i was at beenz.com even though the code was originally written with mysql.
I think we're going to see things change gradually as acceptance grows. Don't rush things. People will move when they're ready, and trust is there. Redhat's worth watching. And it doesn't have to be big vendors, as so much less functionality is needed in the DBMS in these days of N-tier & appservers based infrastructures
And how about designing FOR failure and using commodity boxes (running a free OS?) at the same time? Check out Clustra for a RDBMS that runs on Linux & Solaris, runs over LOTS of small, cheap commodity boxes, and is as a result, very reliable (yes, I do use it). Ok, so it's not free in any sense, but it's good and solid, and used by some big players in the telecoms industry.
* Day 1 - You must register to download product, but server overloaded due to demand and/. effect.
* Day 2 - You must still register to download product, but server takes ages to allow you to download. Give up.
* Day 3 - You've forgotten your password, re-register, to find that server's been misconfigured by some Sun intern SA who doesn't know his apache rewrites from his linux rawrite.
* Day 4 - You get registered, get the software, and find the file got corrupted in the download.
* Day 5 - Internet connection down, so nothing to do but work.
* Day 6 - Internet connection up, remembered password, downloaded product, ran of out of disk space.
* Day 7 - Having mentioned the product was out to your colleagues, a week ago now (without having seen it), you are ridiculed when they realise
you're still using MS-Office on the sly.
* Day 8 - Hurrah! Downloaded, installed and running. Success. Treat yourself to visit a conference that's on in town. Some bloke hands you a "special edition CD", featuring beta of staroffice 6. Go home to weep.
*WHY* is there this damn registration. *WHY* aren't there loads of mirrors (sunsite!!!!). You know they'll be dishing out the damn CD's eventually.
And they say the network is the computer....
and after all that, my downloads working, on day one.
Disclaimer: I'm not a legal or constitutional expert. Happy to be corrected by others.
For the Americans and non-Europeans amongst the/. readership, this doesn't in itself mean much (legally) right now. By agreeing on the directive, the member states of the EU have committed themselves to putting forward (similair) legislation in their respective national parliaments to the effect.
The council of ministers are simply ministers of the various memberstates having a chat about policy and direction. The European parliament doesn't really (unfortunately) have much bite (nor much of a bark either).
Don't hold your breath. Things move slowly at the EU level. But it's something, all be it small. Let's hope it's enforceable, too.
* A simple gold ring? (the merest of trinkets)
* A small icon of a hobbit (cf. GNU)?
* "LotR" letters?
* A v. small pic of tolkien + pipe (cf. biography pic)
I vote for the gold ring.
simple, effective, and we *know* what it signifies.
Oh for god's sake grow up. That sort of immature broadswipe at a now very much a peace loving nation, is simply not funny, not clever, and not the sort of comment i've come to expect at/. - not to mention the sort of insult that it conveys for the many german readers of this site.
Slashdot Mirror
Very handy indeed.
Whilst I'm no expert in fire supression systems, I have studied a few data centres in my time as a Senior Sys Admin for a number of companies. Most (decent) NOC's have a fire *supression* system based on gas or (more likely these days) some form of liquid (gas has the nasty side-effect of potentially killing humans).
These are for small fires that can be contained within a data centre, ie. a computer catching fire or emitting smoke. Really good systems are very localised (racks or cage specific). A big fire just isn't going to be stopped by such a system.
I haven't read too much into this particular incident (ie. not at all), but my initial thought was that something more serious must have happened (well, duh!), perhaps a fire outside of the main suppression system (outside of the raised floor area?). Or perhaps the paint on the walls/carpet wasn't fire resistant and just took hold very quickly.
Or a large initial fire (gas leak?) that just didn't die down when the supression system kicked in. Maybe the type of fire (again, gas? oil?) didn't die down because Data Center supression systems presumably focus on electrical fires.
A well, just my 2p's worth.
*Sigh*
KISS is a sensible design methodology that I fear organiser manufacturers are forgetting.
How about the other part of the site's title? "Stuff That Matters", just because it's not geeky doesn't mean there's no interest on this site, and therefore matters to readers.
Good grief, it's the single biggest sports event in the world.
News alert: Some geeks like sport.
That doesn't mean I'm any good at sport though...
I see that, according to NTK, the Parliamentary vote has been put back a week to Monday 24th, June. Round one to the activists who faxed/wrote/called, but keep those faxes rolling!!!!
Stand report has more detail.
Might be worth faxing again to advise your MP of the new date?
In my ranting to various friends on various mailing lists, one chap (Martin R) suggested the following:
You could also try calling the labour party on 08705 900200 (UK Number, so +44 8705 900200 from outside the UK)
choose option 3 to be put through to a Goverment Information Adviser. A report of the calls they receive is sent out to Number 10.
They will tell you it is for law enforcement purposes (so why aren't the police doing it), but don't know very much about it. Quoting directly from the order will fox them thoroughly.
They have already received a number of calls.
There is also an option to contact Labour Party Head Office, although they don't seem to be answering right now.
I've done plenty of ranting/cross-posted between here and k5 with these links, hopefully there should be a varied selection for those really not wanting to use a little creativity. sigh
You're right about the electoral dictatorship we seem to have right now, and pretty much with every government since the war, however that doesn't mean we should do nothing.
Whilst you're right about the disgust perhaps being the most significant factor, apathy in this matter is dangerous. Doing nothing is fare worse than doing something, and that matters even at elections (I always suggest people spoil their ballots if they disagree with the options, at least it's registered!).
Britains can sometimes surprise, and Blair is doing a superb job at the moment of stamping all over the will and mandate he claims he was given. It's a slow process affecting change in our system, but it will catch up eventually.
In the meantime, scream about the abuses, cock ups and problems. Look what happened to Byers? Bit by bit, change can be affected. I believe that Britain is, by nature, a tolerant country.
Please be careful using form letters. If an MP gets too many identical letters/faxes, it'll reduce the impact they have.
Take points from the form letters that have been posted here and elsewhere, by all means, but don't just copy/paste it!
A little bit of thought and attention to the points that matter most to you will significantly increase the impact it will have on the recipient.
Sounds a bit like almost every government since the war really, such is the elected dictatorship system we have in this country. It's really at times like this I wish we had a proper system of checks and balances, but that fact seems to be missed by the constitutional reformers Blair claims to have working for him.
I've posted this already to kuro5hin, but it can't hurt to repeat my comments to a possibly wider audience. A few sample letters are also here.
If you're like me, you'll find writing to your MP about matters like this very rewarding. Saying that, I neglected to write or fax when the RIP bill first came up, despite my intentions to do so.
I last wrote (dead tree, rather than fax) to my MP at the time regarding Higher Education funding (at the request of my old University), and got a nice reply back saying he'd deal with it in due course. Subsequently, I received a pp'd letter saying he'd contacted the appropriate people.
Ok, it changed nothing - higher education is still poorly funded - but I felt I'd done 'my bit'. Multiply that out, and it could have an effect. Although with the almost dictatorial goverment system we have, it's hard to imagine enough Labour MP's rebelling against a 3-line whip to reject the amendment.
It makes a lot more sense to write something you have thought about, rather than copy/pasting somebody else's letter. If the same MP (well, secretary) receives a few similair messages through the same format (ie. fax), they IMNSHO are (even though they shouldn't) more likely to discount your views.
Different letters, especially if they are dead-tree compliant (come on, how many tech savy MP's have you ever seen or heard from?) go so much further.
So do it, people. This extension of power is extreme, and deserves a letter writing campaign and far more attention.
So:
# Write to your MP. It'll only take a few minutes to write it, print it, sign it, and send it.
# Write again after a few weeks if you've not heard back.
# Forward the link to this story (when it hits the front page or sections) to your friends.
# Mention it to friends at the pub. It's ridiculous, and i'd be startled if anybody - even the non-techies in your circle of friends - agree it makes sense for these organisations to have this amount of power.
# Check that newspapers are giving this coverage.
# Write letters to newspapers on the subject, expressing your feelings.
None of this takes a huge amount of time. It's worth it, and you'll feel a lot better for doing it.
And if anything, it might start to pursuade the government and media that techy's can actual get themselves organised into a politicial pressure
group.
Maybe. Perhaps.
Mmmmm.
Well, one step at a time, then, eh?
Soon, there will be more than just FTP/HTTP... Imagine it...
/dev/complaints /dev/do_the_washing_for_me_love /dev/happy_to_let_you_surf_til_late /proc/wallet | grep 'enough_for_a_pizza' | mail me@me.com
telnet girlfriend
Trying 192.168.23.45
Connected to girlfriend
Escape characters are 'Football'.
What do you want? rm
What do you want? mknod 5 12
What do you want? mknod 5 13
What do you want? cat
rm: cannot open `/proc/wallet': Permission denied. You are barred from the house until further notice.
Warning! Liberties quota exceeded.
Good grief.
Give the poor sods a chance to get the distribution ready, please. Perhaps they didn't WANT people downloading it just yet... Hence no announcement, just yet??
Bandwidth and hosting costs money, as poor old distributed.net is finding out. A few mirrors being updated, and then linking to the appropriate announcement would be a bit more considerate than putting up the first submission on the 3.0 release.
...except by posting to a thread I'd mod'd on, I blew away all the mod's. hoho. Definately no harm done now... ;-)
It wasn't my intention to give you a -1 flamebait. Apologies. Konqueror and my mouse wheel got the better of me I'm afraid, and I inadvertently mod'd you down. Child +1'd because I came back to check how it was doing, and well, it is Interesting.
Personally, I'd like the software to detect that the phone was in your pocket, and disable the unlock!
Oh, the times I've pulled my phone out of my pocket, and it's been about to dial some strange telephone number in some far off place.
You've not experienced the privatised, "competitive" railways in Britain, have you...
Ah, the joy of editors. There's always that other place, as an alternative ;-)
The article doesn't say the thief was caught. To quote the guy himself: "So the conclusion to the story is: iMac and Lexmark printer recovered, one female pled out to possession of stolen property and got a year's probation.".
Possession of stolen property is very different to theft. She claims to have bought the imac from "some guy". Ok, she might be complicit, but we won't ever know.
There was a great gif of the ring somebody had done in the thread, which gets my vote (and probably avoids copyright issues of JRRT logo's some were suggesting - as much as I liked the idea).
I think we're going to see things change gradually as acceptance grows. Don't rush things. People will move when they're ready, and trust is there. Redhat's worth watching. And it doesn't have to be big vendors, as so much less functionality is needed in the DBMS in these days of N-tier & appservers based infrastructures
And how about designing FOR failure and using commodity boxes (running a free OS?) at the same time? Check out Clustra for a RDBMS that runs on Linux & Solaris, runs over LOTS of small, cheap commodity boxes, and is as a result, very reliable (yes, I do use it). Ok, so it's not free in any sense, but it's good and solid, and used by some big players in the telecoms industry.
Oh, don't you just hate it:
/. effect.
* Day 1 - You must register to download product, but server overloaded due to demand and
* Day 2 - You must still register to download product, but server takes ages to allow you to download. Give up.
* Day 3 - You've forgotten your password, re-register, to find that server's been misconfigured by some Sun intern SA who doesn't know his apache rewrites from his linux rawrite.
* Day 4 - You get registered, get the software, and find the file got corrupted in the download.
* Day 5 - Internet connection down, so nothing to do but work.
* Day 6 - Internet connection up, remembered password, downloaded product, ran of out of disk space.
* Day 7 - Having mentioned the product was out to your colleagues, a week ago now (without having seen it), you are ridiculed when they realise
you're still using MS-Office on the sly.
* Day 8 - Hurrah! Downloaded, installed and running. Success. Treat yourself to visit a conference that's on in town. Some bloke hands you a "special edition CD", featuring beta of staroffice 6. Go home to weep.
*WHY* is there this damn registration. *WHY* aren't there loads of mirrors (sunsite!!!!). You know they'll be dishing out the damn CD's eventually.
And they say the network is the computer....
and after all that, my downloads working, on day one.
strange things are afoot at the circle-k.
(no, i don't work weekends these days)
Disclaimer: I'm not a legal or constitutional expert. Happy to be corrected by others.
/. readership, this doesn't in itself mean much (legally) right now. By agreeing on the directive, the member states of the EU have committed themselves to putting forward (similair) legislation in their respective national parliaments to the effect.
For the Americans and non-Europeans amongst the
The council of ministers are simply ministers of the various memberstates having a chat about policy and direction. The European parliament doesn't really (unfortunately) have much bite (nor much of a bark either).
Don't hold your breath. Things move slowly at the EU level. But it's something, all be it small. Let's hope it's enforceable, too.
Agreed. It's high time it happened.
But what should it be?
* A simple gold ring? (the merest of trinkets)
* A small icon of a hobbit (cf. GNU)?
* "LotR" letters?
* A v. small pic of tolkien + pipe (cf. biography pic)
I vote for the gold ring. simple, effective, and we *know* what it signifies.
any other suggestions?
Oh for god's sake grow up. That sort of immature broadswipe at a now very much a peace loving nation, is simply not funny, not clever, and not the sort of comment i've come to expect at /. - not to mention the sort of insult that it conveys for the many german readers of this site.