Doesnt work too well for all apps, and youre keeping all your eggs in one basket there. Performance becomes an issue fast. Not to mention upgrading or restoring from backups becomes impossible without disrupting everyone's desktops settings and other files.
Solutions like yours exist already. There are terminal client versions of XP and other companies including sun were selling real cheap graphic terminal thin clients a while ago. Not a smashing success.
And yelling and screaming on slashdot doesnt convince anyone at all.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octopus..tell me that Octopi can be much bigger. I thought it was a manned sub that was attacked till I saw the sub in a picture. This is just a fishing story.
We SHOULD get our hopes up. The only other neutrino detectors I know of are the Sudbudy N Observatory and the super Kamiokande which is out of commission for the while. I dont know how much is SNO producing data and thesis papers, but one detector on the whole earth is underdoing it. And the southpole project is simply more fun while being in a cleaner environment (except possibly nearly nuclear submarines polluting the radiation space.
"is there's something we can do at the datacenter level"
Yeah use the Ultrasparc T1 CPUs, use lower power scsi disks including compactflash disks for boot and OS, keep all lights out when you dont need em, add heavy wall insulation unless youre living far north, add lots of ram in all machines so the disks can be powered down etc.
"I really don't see most games making use of 8 threads. Most games now are still single threaded"
Thats exactly the problem the industry is trying to fix. The move to more than one threads to make things efficient.
Take a look at it this way. Processors are made on 65nm processes, which will go down to 45nm processes. We're reaching the limits of moore's law. Their overclockability will increase as dies are stacked like PCBs, but that will reach an end too. Next step really is a break from the traditional single core, because what that single core really does is switch between multiple tasks. This has already been accomplished with the use of the GPU and the increasing use of sound and network processors (also high end scsi cards).
Next step is parallelizing general processes, the 'ps -e' list across cores or CPUs. Thanks to solaris and linux, such technology is already doing quite well in some markets. Only this is now going down to more advanced applications and cheaper computers. Thats the natural progression isnt it? Starting from mainframes and going down to game consoles.
I can see specialized game SDKs focusing on the seperate parts of a game, efficiently scheduling them to talk to one another etc to be able to linearly use as many cores as the game can be split into. Among other things I can think of the AI of various bots processing on different cores or dynamic worlds being generated by some cores for others. 8 is quite a good number of cores to start out. Dual cores are almost a given, most new desktop cpus are dual-core, which plus the GPU form 3 cores in the current market. Would it take a lot to go from 3 to 8?
I was reading about 'devils touch' or whatever its called, a state in which you know youre sleeping, youre really half awake but completely paralyzed. There I found it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_Paralysis
This is a possibility when you mess up your sleep cycles. It happens to me when I'm travelling, almost never in normal life. It is said that it can happen when youre brought quickly back from REM. Fear and bewilderment are felt, but it can really be scary at times.
I think other dangerous states can be entered too, and if you dont have a social life while trying various sleep patterns using drugs, you can become schizophrenic.
Well the sleep paralysis should be enough to scare anyone trying it.
My sleep cycle is really 30 to 32 hours. Thats just what feels normal. I have to force myself to sleep every night, and have trouble getting up in the morning. But on holidays, I just take the 12 hours sleep + 24 hours awake time which feels very natural. I've slept constantly for well over 24 hours, more like 28 hours, after having been awake for 48+ hours. This was when I wasnt working.
I cant do short cycles, and I could never do afternoon naps. Once I'm out, I'm out at least 7 hours, preferably 12 hours.
... and RMS and others in the free software community.
Yes I understood the question. Producing free software allows the poor to own and use computers, to run their businesses on IT foundations rather than the pencil and paper. OSS is and will be giving a boost to businesses around the world, not to mention education too.
Take everyone in third-world countries using OSS software. Swap the software with proprietary versions and total the cost. Thats how much roughly OSS has helped people. Can Gates manage that?
What gates gives to the poor really comes from the sales of Windows and Office for the most part, whose monopoly has made computers inaccessible in poorer countries, unless you count the piracy, which is worse in some ways... youre making them criminal to allow their businesses (and education) to run. So isn't Gates' net help to the poor running in the negative?
These two will really push Linux into the enterprise, and theyre 2 out of 3 reasons why we're not 100% Linux. Lotus belongs to IBM which has been pushing Linux for a while. Its a wonder why they wont compile a Java app for Linux at all. I know the Domino server exists for Linux, just why not the client??
AutoCAD and the likes of Photoshop are also really important. Acrobad reader exists thankfully, but theres a huge userbase for each of AutoCAD and Photoshop, who will be tempted to switch.
OK thats just the kernel being talked about. What about the rest of GNU/Linux?? Will it move to GPLv3?
I'm primarily concerned with gcc, glibc and the likes. X has its own license that I'm OK with. The rest of the apps are not critical and easily replaceable. gcc glibc and the kernel are damn hard to replace... they exist alone. Others have competitors.
I dont want any of GPLv3 in my system just as I dont want any of SCO code in my system. Maybe the final GPLv3 will be more palatable than it is now.
I was about to say the same thing... theres too many Shop-by-slashdot these days.
I realize many of my recent posts are sarcastic answers to extremely obvious questions posted on slashdot. That makes me wonder if slashdot is more about more novice geeks (oh boy, 64-bit! twice as fast!), than specialized people who work in their respective fields.
To get a harddisk enclosure, I'd first google the terms, calculate rate-of-transfers for usb, firewire etc, check prices on tigerdirect, do a quick look at ebay and pricewatch, pick up popular company/model names and search for them in google groups, check for issues in google groups, make a decision and make a purchase. Chances of me getting a good drive this way are way higher than having my shop-by-slashdot questions selected by editors.
To the original poster: a quick answer is at lacie.com. But I suspect your plan is flawed. You did enough research to conclude you need to boot from a USB drive, but not enough research to which drive is better. I think the first research is more worthy of a slashdot story... a repair and restore-OS mechanism for many similar desktops. For that I'd think of a knoppix-type CD with the OS image somewhere on the network.. and would try to put the knoppix-type image on a USB key. If you can network-boot the machines and have the OS installed with specialized admin apps (Windows and Linux can do these), all the better.
Other interesting questions include: Why would the OS crap out frequently or at all, and How much can I lock down the machine from the user to never have to reinstall the OS.
Sorry, but us tech support people feel we're providing tech support on slashdot too. Ask us questions we love to answer... not 'hey pick a harddisk for me'.
Hope your friend is not your dial-up vendor too. If malware connections attempt to connect to your machine, your dial-up might be saturated with the crap being downloaded, while personal info is being uploaded. Dial-up does not make you secure simply because on the network level, its just machines with IPs out there, regardless of connection. I havent heard of a virus that depends on layer 1 or 2 vulnerabilities.
I'll start a company that will freeze people and keep them in safe storage for a defined period of time for a maintenance fee. People could keep money in their savings account and freeze themselves for 10 or 100 years, and wake up to collect their money. It'd feel like a long nights sleep and winning the lottery afterwards.
But they'll have to make sure the money is in the right place, with enough interest to pull them ahead of the rest of the country/world, else its all in vain. Therefore we provide long-term financial services too.:)
I suggest customers buy lots of real-estate around cities with major natural resources and good weather. Hopefully they wont wake right after WWIII to realize their lands cost nothing.
Invesing in gold is not a bad idea either for the long term.
My freezer can take 2 persons. Who wants to be first??
You know, sometimes I think us asians have the IT market (except the management) all around. Maybe its just the places I've visited, but white IT guys are disproportionately less compared to asians, while being more compared to blacks.
I'm just glad the EO card cant be used against me.
As far as racism in IT hiring practices go, its the same level of racism you'll find elsewhere in other fields. Such racism is also more important where there are plenty of techies like A+ and MCSEs (you can pick and choose people according to your 'corporate culture'), and less so where you need someone with a CCIE as well as 6 years experience in SAP financial modules, and will grab whatever walks by.
The same real estate is also taken up on the cheap Athlon64 we all use. In time, when theres enough x64-based software out there AMD should release 64-bit-only chips (meaning remote the legacy parts... of course there are still 32-bit instruction in a 64-bit chip (think ARM)). Since theres so much software out there already, all you need is a new bootloader. The extra space could hold more cache, initial 8mb part of the RAM space running at 1x speeds or quite possibly the southbridge chip itself to cut costs much further.
But until Windows x64 is stable, I'll continue to use the 32-bit parts of my Athlon64.
I havent read the article... but I think people will be allowed to put any graphic into the maps on their servers for matches they want. If Valve allows me to mod the game, and I put a custom JPEG image in there, thats legal. What if I put my own picture into the spray marker? Am I trying to run for the mayor's seat? What if I put the peace sign? Will BMW be sued?
Either they do not allow mods at all (another fishy point if you 'own' the game) or they let people do what they want with their purchased goods. The only issue would be if people modified the game and then resold it.
Without reading the article, I think Valve will lose this.
$500 is the price of a basic deskop system. Its your average Dell machine, or the cheapest Lenovo machine.
For this money youre getting a CPU way better than most chips put into the Dells and Lenovos out there, and a graphics card to envy. Consoles have become more and more desktop-like, and the PS3 should be compared to high-end desktops. Give me a decent keyboard, mouse, possibly a PCI slot or ability to connect to most common networks, and an OS to work with and I'll call it a desktop.
The CPU however in itself is worth the pricetag. I'm considering getting the PS3, not for gaming at all, but to use as a linux desktop system running on 8 64-bit PPC cores, each of which runs at more than 2GHz. Go find that at $500.
I generally agree with you, but why did you sneak in HP into that list?
IBM is it. Just for the record they do NOT make the best hardware in the world. That would be Sun. But IBM has great designs, the most breadth in their offering, and their techies always arrive on time.
Granted the techie is just off the boat from China and can barely speak english (I can say that because I'm off the boat and Asian too), and will fiddle with the most obvious things first even though you've told him what the issue is, and will go through his blackberry a few times before simply swapping the drive, or attempting to learn how to swipe the drive/piece/hardware with the one that arrived before him. But the thing is, IBM gets it done. Period. You're services are back up and running and business shall continue. Of course you dont get fired for buying big iron partly for that reason.
I'd put Dell the lowest in that list. They have the best price/performance hardware, stuff that you can just buy and plug and get running. Everything else falls short. Dont get their warranties. If you buy PCs in bulk, its worth buying a few more PCs than buying extra warranty on all of them. Keep that in mind when they try to squeeze $150 extra for each machine for the damned 3-year warranty. If it doesnt break the first year, chances are slim it'll break from the same load the next 2 years. With Dell you can afford to buy extra machines which you can swipe with a bad machine much faster than Dell can.
Sun. Not much experience there but good stories. They make absolutely the best hardware. The drive trays, the cables, the labels, the cases, the connectors, even the screws are well-placed and well-sized. Even better is theyre the biggest UNIX out there and dont support Windows, which means good hardware is always accompanied by good software.
Now please apologize for sneakily placing HP in there.
I just find it strange that the storage of nuclear waste alone is the blocking issue. Cities produce far greater amount of waste and there are giant wasteyards collecting years of waste all over a country. Thats no issue since people will produce waste anyway and it has to go somewhere.
Circumstances will push people towards nuclear power anyway and the volume of that waste, including the much larger containment structures are still way too small compared to other common waste. A whole countrys nuclear waste can be stored in one spot, which wont take too much space. I'd be much more worried about accidents and fallout from a nuclear plant.
Think of a big room with walls 5 meters thick. place it 2km deep in stable rock regions and fill it with 10 years worth of nuclear waste. Seal it, build another on top and start collecting waste into it. Desert and rocky regions are all the better, things change less over thousands of years there... like southern Egypt or Arizona.
"even though nuclear power releases less radioactive material than burning coal."
Sure. But when it DOES release that radioactive material, I dont want it to be in my country, OR the next one. Heck the atom bomb has probably released less radiactive material in the 20th century than all other industrial processes during that time, therefore it is harmless.
I've the same thinking. I've been using serverpronto for some time. Uptimes are ok, maybe less than average (99.9% or so) and although they advertise 100mbps, you have 580mBps downloads maximum.
They said they do this to 'protect' the customer from ddos and other charges. Probably my 'worst' hosting experience. Still my uptime is upwards of 200 days on my dedicated server (at $29 per month). I still feel I need more control over everything, so I'm going for their colo service.. colopronto.com at 19 per month for 100mbps (really?) 500GB connection. In 18 months the cost of a server becomes breakeven so I'm not losing much, and its 'profit' after that.
I've almost NEVER called or emailed them (twice.. 3 years ago, billing issues), partly because its a dedicated server and I handle everything except the connection. All they have to do is manage the routers and switches and the temperature.
Hosting web + apps in linux/bsd/unix has too many complex issues, and blurry lines along what they provider should provide and what costs extra. Give them too much and the server can be brought down. Give them little and theyre unhappy.
I wonder if in the future we'll have microservers... Via/Transmeta cpus and small flash disks under one's full control for $5 or less per month. I'll take 2.
Slashdot Mirror
Doesnt work too well for all apps, and youre keeping all your eggs in one basket there. Performance becomes an issue fast. Not to mention upgrading or restoring from backups becomes impossible without disrupting everyone's desktops settings and other files.
Solutions like yours exist already. There are terminal client versions of XP and other companies including sun were selling real cheap graphic terminal thin clients a while ago. Not a smashing success.
And yelling and screaming on slashdot doesnt convince anyone at all.
Was that really all that giant?
..tell me that Octopi can be much bigger. I thought it was a manned sub that was attacked till I saw the sub in a picture. This is just a fishing story.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lusca
and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octopus
Wasnt that more like 'shook hands' with the sub?
It was like a bouncer holds a kid by the cuff and the kid starts fighting back with all he has.
PETA should intervene. The Poor Octopi.
We SHOULD get our hopes up. The only other neutrino detectors I know of are the Sudbudy N Observatory and the super Kamiokande which is out of commission for the while. I dont know how much is SNO producing data and thesis papers, but one detector on the whole earth is underdoing it. And the southpole project is simply more fun while being in a cleaner environment (except possibly nearly nuclear submarines polluting the radiation space.
youre funny.
If the machine is doing 100% cpu utilization, just replace it with a weaker CPU.
Maybe he can save more energy by running hundereds of vmware virtual machines on an Geode GX.
"is there's something we can do at the datacenter level"
Yeah use the Ultrasparc T1 CPUs, use lower power scsi disks including compactflash disks for boot and OS, keep all lights out when you dont need em, add heavy wall insulation unless youre living far north, add lots of ram in all machines so the disks can be powered down etc.
"I really don't see most games making use of 8 threads. Most games now are still single threaded"
Thats exactly the problem the industry is trying to fix. The move to more than one threads to make things efficient.
Take a look at it this way. Processors are made on 65nm processes, which will go down to 45nm processes. We're reaching the limits of moore's law. Their overclockability will increase as dies are stacked like PCBs, but that will reach an end too. Next step really is a break from the traditional single core, because what that single core really does is switch between multiple tasks. This has already been accomplished with the use of the GPU and the increasing use of sound and network processors (also high end scsi cards).
Next step is parallelizing general processes, the 'ps -e' list across cores or CPUs. Thanks to solaris and linux, such technology is already doing quite well in some markets. Only this is now going down to more advanced applications and cheaper computers. Thats the natural progression isnt it? Starting from mainframes and going down to game consoles.
I can see specialized game SDKs focusing on the seperate parts of a game, efficiently scheduling them to talk to one another etc to be able to linearly use as many cores as the game can be split into. Among other things I can think of the AI of various bots processing on different cores or dynamic worlds being generated by some cores for others. 8 is quite a good number of cores to start out. Dual cores are almost a given, most new desktop cpus are dual-core, which plus the GPU form 3 cores in the current market. Would it take a lot to go from 3 to 8?
I was reading about 'devils touch' or whatever its called, a state in which you know youre sleeping, youre really half awake but completely paralyzed. There I found it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_Paralysis
This is a possibility when you mess up your sleep cycles. It happens to me when I'm travelling, almost never in normal life. It is said that it can happen when youre brought quickly back from REM. Fear and bewilderment are felt, but it can really be scary at times.
I think other dangerous states can be entered too, and if you dont have a social life while trying various sleep patterns using drugs, you can become schizophrenic.
Well the sleep paralysis should be enough to scare anyone trying it.
My sleep cycle is really 30 to 32 hours. Thats just what feels normal. I have to force myself to sleep every night, and have trouble getting up in the morning. But on holidays, I just take the 12 hours sleep + 24 hours awake time which feels very natural. I've slept constantly for well over 24 hours, more like 28 hours, after having been awake for 48+ hours. This was when I wasnt working.
I cant do short cycles, and I could never do afternoon naps. Once I'm out, I'm out at least 7 hours, preferably 12 hours.
... and RMS and others in the free software community.
Yes I understood the question. Producing free software allows the poor to own and use computers, to run their businesses on IT foundations rather than the pencil and paper. OSS is and will be giving a boost to businesses around the world, not to mention education too.
Take everyone in third-world countries using OSS software. Swap the software with proprietary versions and total the cost. Thats how much roughly OSS has helped people. Can Gates manage that?
What gates gives to the poor really comes from the sales of Windows and Office for the most part, whose monopoly has made computers inaccessible in poorer countries, unless you count the piracy, which is worse in some ways... youre making them criminal to allow their businesses (and education) to run. So isn't Gates' net help to the poor running in the negative?
These two will really push Linux into the enterprise, and theyre 2 out of 3 reasons why we're not 100% Linux. Lotus belongs to IBM which has been pushing Linux for a while. Its a wonder why they wont compile a Java app for Linux at all. I know the Domino server exists for Linux, just why not the client??
AutoCAD and the likes of Photoshop are also really important. Acrobad reader exists thankfully, but theres a huge userbase for each of AutoCAD and Photoshop, who will be tempted to switch.
OK thats just the kernel being talked about. What about the rest of GNU/Linux?? Will it move to GPLv3?
I'm primarily concerned with gcc, glibc and the likes. X has its own license that I'm OK with. The rest of the apps are not critical and easily replaceable. gcc glibc and the kernel are damn hard to replace... they exist alone. Others have competitors.
I dont want any of GPLv3 in my system just as I dont want any of SCO code in my system. Maybe the final GPLv3 will be more palatable than it is now.
YAY. Woohoo! Go OSS!
What is FIPS Validation?
I was about to say the same thing... theres too many Shop-by-slashdot these days.
I realize many of my recent posts are sarcastic answers to extremely obvious questions posted on slashdot. That makes me wonder if slashdot is more about more novice geeks (oh boy, 64-bit! twice as fast!), than specialized people who work in their respective fields.
To get a harddisk enclosure, I'd first google the terms, calculate rate-of-transfers for usb, firewire etc, check prices on tigerdirect, do a quick look at ebay and pricewatch, pick up popular company/model names and search for them in google groups, check for issues in google groups, make a decision and make a purchase. Chances of me getting a good drive this way are way higher than having my shop-by-slashdot questions selected by editors.
To the original poster: a quick answer is at lacie.com. But I suspect your plan is flawed. You did enough research to conclude you need to boot from a USB drive, but not enough research to which drive is better. I think the first research is more worthy of a slashdot story... a repair and restore-OS mechanism for many similar desktops. For that I'd think of a knoppix-type CD with the OS image somewhere on the network.. and would try to put the knoppix-type image on a USB key. If you can network-boot the machines and have the OS installed with specialized admin apps (Windows and Linux can do these), all the better.
Other interesting questions include: Why would the OS crap out frequently or at all, and How much can I lock down the machine from the user to never have to reinstall the OS.
Sorry, but us tech support people feel we're providing tech support on slashdot too. Ask us questions we love to answer... not 'hey pick a harddisk for me'.
Hope your friend is not your dial-up vendor too. If malware connections attempt to connect to your machine, your dial-up might be saturated with the crap being downloaded, while personal info is being uploaded. Dial-up does not make you secure simply because on the network level, its just machines with IPs out there, regardless of connection. I havent heard of a virus that depends on layer 1 or 2 vulnerabilities.
I'll start a company that will freeze people and keep them in safe storage for a defined period of time for a maintenance fee. People could keep money in their savings account and freeze themselves for 10 or 100 years, and wake up to collect their money. It'd feel like a long nights sleep and winning the lottery afterwards.
:)
But they'll have to make sure the money is in the right place, with enough interest to pull them ahead of the rest of the country/world, else its all in vain. Therefore we provide long-term financial services too.
I suggest customers buy lots of real-estate around cities with major natural resources and good weather. Hopefully they wont wake right after WWIII to realize their lands cost nothing.
Invesing in gold is not a bad idea either for the long term.
My freezer can take 2 persons. Who wants to be first??
You know, sometimes I think us asians have the IT market (except the management) all around. Maybe its just the places I've visited, but white IT guys are disproportionately less compared to asians, while being more compared to blacks.
I'm just glad the EO card cant be used against me.
As far as racism in IT hiring practices go, its the same level of racism you'll find elsewhere in other fields. Such racism is also more important where there are plenty of techies like A+ and MCSEs (you can pick and choose people according to your 'corporate culture'), and less so where you need someone with a CCIE as well as 6 years experience in SAP financial modules, and will grab whatever walks by.
The same real estate is also taken up on the cheap Athlon64 we all use. In time, when theres enough x64-based software out there AMD should release 64-bit-only chips (meaning remote the legacy parts... of course there are still 32-bit instruction in a 64-bit chip (think ARM)). Since theres so much software out there already, all you need is a new bootloader. The extra space could hold more cache, initial 8mb part of the RAM space running at 1x speeds or quite possibly the southbridge chip itself to cut costs much further.
But until Windows x64 is stable, I'll continue to use the 32-bit parts of my Athlon64.
I havent read the article... but I think people will be allowed to put any graphic into the maps on their servers for matches they want. If Valve allows me to mod the game, and I put a custom JPEG image in there, thats legal. What if I put my own picture into the spray marker? Am I trying to run for the mayor's seat? What if I put the peace sign? Will BMW be sued?
Either they do not allow mods at all (another fishy point if you 'own' the game) or they let people do what they want with their purchased goods. The only issue would be if people modified the game and then resold it.
Without reading the article, I think Valve will lose this.
$500 is the price of a basic deskop system. Its your average Dell machine, or the cheapest Lenovo machine.
For this money youre getting a CPU way better than most chips put into the Dells and Lenovos out there, and a graphics card to envy. Consoles have become more and more desktop-like, and the PS3 should be compared to high-end desktops. Give me a decent keyboard, mouse, possibly a PCI slot or ability to connect to most common networks, and an OS to work with and I'll call it a desktop.
The CPU however in itself is worth the pricetag. I'm considering getting the PS3, not for gaming at all, but to use as a linux desktop system running on 8 64-bit PPC cores, each of which runs at more than 2GHz. Go find that at $500.
I generally agree with you, but why did you sneak in HP into that list?
IBM is it. Just for the record they do NOT make the best hardware in the world. That would be Sun. But IBM has great designs, the most breadth in their offering, and their techies always arrive on time.
Granted the techie is just off the boat from China and can barely speak english (I can say that because I'm off the boat and Asian too), and will fiddle with the most obvious things first even though you've told him what the issue is, and will go through his blackberry a few times before simply swapping the drive, or attempting to learn how to swipe the drive/piece/hardware with the one that arrived before him. But the thing is, IBM gets it done. Period. You're services are back up and running and business shall continue. Of course you dont get fired for buying big iron partly for that reason.
I'd put Dell the lowest in that list. They have the best price/performance hardware, stuff that you can just buy and plug and get running. Everything else falls short. Dont get their warranties. If you buy PCs in bulk, its worth buying a few more PCs than buying extra warranty on all of them. Keep that in mind when they try to squeeze $150 extra for each machine for the damned 3-year warranty. If it doesnt break the first year, chances are slim it'll break from the same load the next 2 years. With Dell you can afford to buy extra machines which you can swipe with a bad machine much faster than Dell can.
Sun. Not much experience there but good stories. They make absolutely the best hardware. The drive trays, the cables, the labels, the cases, the connectors, even the screws are well-placed and well-sized. Even better is theyre the biggest UNIX out there and dont support Windows, which means good hardware is always accompanied by good software.
Now please apologize for sneakily placing HP in there.
How about the Bible, Quran and Torah?
...lets stick to software projects.
How about All classical music? (not just western)
How about the SI metric standards?
Or the Human genome?
I just find it strange that the storage of nuclear waste alone is the blocking issue. Cities produce far greater amount of waste and there are giant wasteyards collecting years of waste all over a country. Thats no issue since people will produce waste anyway and it has to go somewhere.
Circumstances will push people towards nuclear power anyway and the volume of that waste, including the much larger containment structures are still way too small compared to other common waste. A whole countrys nuclear waste can be stored in one spot, which wont take too much space. I'd be much more worried about accidents and fallout from a nuclear plant.
Think of a big room with walls 5 meters thick. place it 2km deep in stable rock regions and fill it with 10 years worth of nuclear waste. Seal it, build another on top and start collecting waste into it. Desert and rocky regions are all the better, things change less over thousands of years there... like southern Egypt or Arizona.
I thought this was funny too:
"even though nuclear power releases less radioactive material than burning coal."
Sure. But when it DOES release that radioactive material, I dont want it to be in my country, OR the next one. Heck the atom bomb has probably released less radiactive material in the 20th century than all other industrial processes during that time, therefore it is harmless.
I've the same thinking. I've been using serverpronto for some time. Uptimes are ok, maybe less than average (99.9% or so) and although they advertise 100mbps, you have 580mBps downloads maximum.
They said they do this to 'protect' the customer from ddos and other charges. Probably my 'worst' hosting experience. Still my uptime is upwards of 200 days on my dedicated server (at $29 per month). I still feel I need more control over everything, so I'm going for their colo service.. colopronto.com at 19 per month for 100mbps (really?) 500GB connection. In 18 months the cost of a server becomes breakeven so I'm not losing much, and its 'profit' after that.
I've almost NEVER called or emailed them (twice.. 3 years ago, billing issues), partly because its a dedicated server and I handle everything except the connection. All they have to do is manage the routers and switches and the temperature.
Hosting web + apps in linux/bsd/unix has too many complex issues, and blurry lines along what they provider should provide and what costs extra. Give them too much and the server can be brought down. Give them little and theyre unhappy.
I wonder if in the future we'll have microservers... Via/Transmeta cpus and small flash disks under one's full control for $5 or less per month. I'll take 2.