OS X is a capable OS, but best used as a workstation at best. Deploying large numbers of OS X servers is greatly complicated by the fact that even Apple acknowledges that there's no market for their server grade systems and they've stopped selling them. Even if I put a Mac Pro into production, they'd be so expensive and occupy so much room that they'd fill the data center. If I stick a Mac Pro sideways in a rack, it takes 4 or 5U at least for 12 cores. I can put 4 dual hex or octo core Xeon rack mount servers in the same space or even some dual 16 core opteron servers. If I choose to use blades, I can put 16 HP 460c blades in 10U.
Don't even mention the Mac Mini as a viable server platform, it's an underpowered joke of a system if you want to do real work on it for sustained periods of time. They're not intended for, nor will they stand up to the kind of loads you see in the enterprise.
I work in the IT industry running computational clusters and lots of other kinds of servers. My rock is pretty large, but I'm on the top of it.
I do have a couple of OS X servers in the enterprise, but they're only there to run Open Directory to manage our Mac workstations.
your assertion that windows 7 or OS X is better than a Linux server shows how out of touch you are with enterprise computing. We have some windows 2003 and 2008 servers in production, but they're there to provide infrastructure for the windows workstations. No one tries to do anything else with them since it's far easier to deploy services on Linux.
As I mentioned, I love apples workstations and laptops but they don't make an appropriate platform for running any meaningful services in the enterprise.
Because as good as OS X is, it's not a particularly good server platform and requires Mac hardware, while Linux has been around for ages, runs on commodity hardware, has a very well supported number of open source packages and is considered mainstream by most Unix admins.
As a server platform, OS X suffers from the same problem as Solaris. You need the vendor supplied hardware to get it to run well. Solaris is a dying OS because Sun and Oracle supplied hardware is too expensive and just isn't worth it when you can get three times the computing power for less money, and X86 Solaris is frankly crap, since it has such a small hardware compatibility list.
I don't mention BSD since it's not really mainstream any longer. It's a good OS, but lacks overall vendor support.
All that being said, I prefer OS X systems for my workstation and CentOS or Scientific Linux for servers. Redhat's nice, but overpriced when you need to deploy a lot of systems.
If a class alpha fire happened to break out somewhere enroute to the upstairs generator, they could likely have thrown the diesel fuel on the fire to put it out
A class-a fire still puts out a lot of heat. Trying to put it out with diesel will give you a class-b fire to boot, I think.
Flash point of diesel fuel's 144F so it's not exactly something I'd throw on a fire (gasoline's flash point is -45F).
It's not something I'd want to handle around an open flame or anything, but it's pretty safe otherwise.
There's a fair amount of stress where the buffer tube screws into the lower. Both from torque forces caused by the user pulling the gun in tight to their body while they shoot and stress caused as the buffer spring compresses when the gun shoots. The stress is nothing like what's seen on the upper, but obviously you don't want the gun breaking just because you've pulled in too hard while shooting.
While the lower receiver doesn't see the kind of stresses that are present in the upper receiver and bolt carrier, the lower receiver failed exactly where it sees the most real stress. As the bolt carrier moves backwards during the ejection phase of the cycle, it compresses the buffer spring and that stress plus the stress caused by the stock attachment was more than the lower could handle.
Personally, whenever I test fire a gun, I put it in an appropriate test jig and make sure I'm clear from any likely failure. I don't think his gun would have blown up, but if the lower failed just as the bolt carrier began moving rearward, it's likely that the carrier and upper would have been damaged and things would have gotten interesting.
I shot an conventionally made AR-15 that suffered a catastrophic failure of the bolt lugs and in spite of the bolt carrier coming back much faster than normal, everything held together just fine. If such an event happened with a printed plastic lower, it's likely that the gun would have been damaged badly.
I've seen prices on 3d printing for metal and the prices to render a standard lower receiver would have greatly exceeded the cost of buying a conventionally manufactured one.
I've been amazed over the years at the very poor quality of in-dash software and functionality. My 2008 Subaru Legacy has a so-so Nav system and horrendously expensive map upgrades while my wife's 2011 Sienna has probably the worst in-entertainment/Nav system I've seen.
While my Legacy's Nav system is somewhat hackable, the Sienna seems resistant to any kind of tweaking to improve any aspect of its operation. Instead, we're forced to accept whatever execrable interface they provide, no matter how irksome it may be.
Both systems could be vastly improved if auto-makers would use a more modularized and upgradable approach to their in-dash systems. Rather than sticking us with a system that's more or less immutable, why not use a general purpose computer underneath whatever buttons and displays they choose to use and allow companies or individuals to provide software to support the various functions we'd like to see. Kind of a chumby approach to things. A user could plug in a NAV module, a way to expand storage, a better quality audio amp or whatever they need to interface to the latest and greatest cell phones.
Speaking from an economic standpoint, a union is a monopoly on the supply of their 'product' (labor) and can dictate the terms the cost of their product to the consumers of that product (industry). That monopoly position has done great harm to many of the industries that are forced to pay higher than market costs for labor than they would in right-to-work states.
Clouds, virtual systems, clusters, stand-alone servers all benefit from being in an environmentally friendly facility where there's lots of networking capacity and sufficient power and cooling. While home users have dedicated desktop or laptop computers, it's far more power efficient to use technologies like blade systems to package computing power. Regardless, everything's still in a data center where the equipment can be protected.
I used to work at a very large ISP where there were a half dozen data centers, each containing racks and racks of servers, storage and backup. The data centers I visit now still resemble the old ones, but they're more power efficient and the equipment has much higher densities and the networks much higher capacity.
Unless someone can make a computer or cloud that doesn't require much in the way of power, cooling or physical security, then the data centers will probably continue their current trend for the foreseeable future.
They need to follow the ancient Chinese and bring back "The Mandate of Heaven"!
Back in the 'good old days', the emperor was blamed for disasters and would be overthrown since heaven has withdrawn its support. The conviction makes about as much sense, but if you want to see this silliness stop, impose more silliness.:)
They should also blame Astronomers if there's a meteor strike and weathermen if someone gets a sunburn.
most people who are likely to use this will be transmitting their call sign every time they broadcast. Letting Joe or Jane Average play with one of these will be like putting a green laser in the hands of every 6th graders hands.
Software radios are becoming more popular in the amateur radio community. There are several manufacturers of very fine radios and quite a few build-it-yourself radios available too. I'll be watching this with great interest since one of the biggest problems with the lower-cost software radios is band coverage.
As Toast said a moment ago, antenna selection would be hard. Most radio amateurs would use an antenna tuner and/or a multiband antenna for the HF frequencies and an antenna switch for other bands of interest. I do just that. I have a 40 meter full wave horizontal loop antenna and use an antenna tuner and a 4:1 balun and can transmit on all bands from 40m through 10m and have very good results. It's also usable on 6m, but have never had a lot of luck with any kind of distant contacts.
After suffering with all of Paypals issues and hearing horror stories from other PayPal customers, this was the final straw.
The best way to make them reform their practices isn't to whine and complain, they figure as long as you put up with it, then no worries. The best way to get them to change their practices is to vote with your feet and let them know why you're leaving.
I closed my PayPal account last week and if it makes getting stuff on EBay harder, so be it. It's on them if they insist on me using it and they'll lose my business as well.
I'd be concerned about "gumming up the works" with the glycol. Try taking a few drops of coolant from your car sometime and rub it between your fingers for a while. They'll eventually be coated with the glycol residue and will be pretty sticky. Water steam under pressure is VERY hot and I'd be concerned that the glycol would gum everything up that same residue.
Bringing a steam turbine online would be a pretty slow process and not well suited for quick trips to the store.
Not to nitpick, but an 80L tank holds 80L of compressed air at its maximum working pressure.
The tank's unpressurised internal volume is much smaller.
The article didn't explicitly state whether it was 14.4 gallons of compressed gas or not, so I have no idea how large it would be.
I just wouldn't want to be anywhere near if it if failed. I saw a photo of a car that had an old steel scuba cylinder fail when it was inside the trunk. It made me take VERY good care of my tank.
Using Visual C++ would require windows. The disadvantage of using windows over *nix are many: Licensing, Manageability, ad infinitum.
Our main cluster is CentOS-based using ROCKS cluster software and is running on 208 blades using several different generations of HP BL46[05] G[1-6] blades that get refreshed periodically. We have a mixture of CPUs in production currently, dual dual-core Xeon, dual quad-core Xeon and Opteron and some dual quad-core Nehalem. We're replacing the dual dual-core blades with dual-hex shortly to gain processing power without a power/cool/weight penalty.
We usually disable hyperthreading since we prefer each processor core be used for one job and only one job. Time-slicing between two jobs means that time's wasted flipping back and forth and resources will be used up needlessly. We also size system RAM so there is at least 3GB/core available for each job submitted. Using those strategies, we avoid swap as much as possible and get the maximum CPU utilization. Typically, each core is running at 100% for days on end.
A PS3 cluster would be similar in use, but limited to jobs that didn't need a lot of RAM or disk I/O. Since a PS3 cluster is pretty much a roll-it-yourself endeavor, I don't expect it to get used nearly as much as the production general purpose cluster. As time passes, it begins to look more and more like a toy compared to the newest advances in HPC.
When the PS3 cluster project started, it was one of the "sexiest" ways to get your hands on a lot of power for not a lot of money. Recent developments in GPU-based computing is beginning to attract attention, but not every system is a viable host for a production grade GPU board. System form factor and power requirements are significant issues to overcome. CUDA/Tesla boards show promise, but are only suited for certain applications, they would never be intended to replace general-purpose cluster computing. Typically, we'd want something that can run 24/7/365 with a very high MTBF.
The initial cluster was only 10 systems and was in the proof of concept phase. To do meaningful work, we'd want many more systems and the project seemed to be at a dead-end when they changed the firmware.
Power/Cooling and physical footprint are also considerations one needs to worry about. Price/CPU is very good on a PS3 too. For certain types of tasks, the CEL processor is ideal. We don't need a lot of RAM or hard drive either. We just need to crunch through a lot of numbers quickly.
Re:Imagine a Beowulf cluster of those..
on
FreeBSD Running On PS3
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· Score: 3, Interesting
We do a lot of High Performance computing where I work. I currently run a 1472 core ROCKS cluster and the price/core of a PS3 cluster is pretty good compared with an HP blade.
Because of management issues, I can't see running a huge cluster of PS3's, but it's an angle we're pursuing to see how well it works. Tesla-based clusters are also something being considered, but they type of work you can do on them is a bit more limited than a general purpose cluster based on conventional blades.
Imagine a Beowulf cluster of those..
on
FreeBSD Running On PS3
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Our company was setting up a small cluster of PS3's but the whole project died when Sony locked down the firmware. This should breath new life into the effort.
I was secretly hoping they'd give the "useless" PS3's to the employees though. Sigh.
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and yeah, I'm well aware of CentOS' lineage. We chose it because it's essentially Red Hat, but doesn't have the hefty price tag.
OS X is a capable OS, but best used as a workstation at best. Deploying large numbers of OS X servers is greatly complicated by the fact that even Apple acknowledges that there's no market for their server grade systems and they've stopped selling them. Even if I put a Mac Pro into production, they'd be so expensive and occupy so much room that they'd fill the data center. If I stick a Mac Pro sideways in a rack, it takes 4 or 5U at least for 12 cores. I can put 4 dual hex or octo core Xeon rack mount servers in the same space or even some dual 16 core opteron servers. If I choose to use blades, I can put 16 HP 460c blades in 10U.
Don't even mention the Mac Mini as a viable server platform, it's an underpowered joke of a system if you want to do real work on it for sustained periods of time. They're not intended for, nor will they stand up to the kind of loads you see in the enterprise.
I work in the IT industry running computational clusters and lots of other kinds of servers. My rock is pretty large, but I'm on the top of it.
I do have a couple of OS X servers in the enterprise, but they're only there to run Open Directory to manage our Mac workstations.
your assertion that windows 7 or OS X is better than a Linux server shows how out of touch you are with enterprise computing. We have some windows 2003 and 2008 servers in production, but they're there to provide infrastructure for the windows workstations. No one tries to do anything else with them since it's far easier to deploy services on Linux.
As I mentioned, I love apples workstations and laptops but they don't make an appropriate platform for running any meaningful services in the enterprise.
Because as good as OS X is, it's not a particularly good server platform and requires Mac hardware, while Linux has been around for ages, runs on commodity hardware, has a very well supported number of open source packages and is considered mainstream by most Unix admins.
As a server platform, OS X suffers from the same problem as Solaris. You need the vendor supplied hardware to get it to run well. Solaris is a dying OS because Sun and Oracle supplied hardware is too expensive and just isn't worth it when you can get three times the computing power for less money, and X86 Solaris is frankly crap, since it has such a small hardware compatibility list.
I don't mention BSD since it's not really mainstream any longer. It's a good OS, but lacks overall vendor support.
All that being said, I prefer OS X systems for my workstation and CentOS or Scientific Linux for servers. Redhat's nice, but overpriced when you need to deploy a lot of systems.
If a class alpha fire happened to break out somewhere enroute to the upstairs generator, they could likely have thrown the diesel fuel on the fire to put it out
A class-a fire still puts out a lot of heat. Trying to put it out with diesel will give you a class-b fire to boot, I think.
Flash point of diesel fuel's 144F so it's not exactly something I'd throw on a fire (gasoline's flash point is -45F).
It's not something I'd want to handle around an open flame or anything, but it's pretty safe otherwise.
There's a fair amount of stress where the buffer tube screws into the lower. Both from torque forces caused by the user pulling the gun in tight to their body while they shoot and stress caused as the buffer spring compresses when the gun shoots. The stress is nothing like what's seen on the upper, but obviously you don't want the gun breaking just because you've pulled in too hard while shooting.
While the lower receiver doesn't see the kind of stresses that are present in the upper receiver and bolt carrier, the lower receiver failed exactly where it sees the most real stress. As the bolt carrier moves backwards during the ejection phase of the cycle, it compresses the buffer spring and that stress plus the stress caused by the stock attachment was more than the lower could handle.
Personally, whenever I test fire a gun, I put it in an appropriate test jig and make sure I'm clear from any likely failure. I don't think his gun would have blown up, but if the lower failed just as the bolt carrier began moving rearward, it's likely that the carrier and upper would have been damaged and things would have gotten interesting.
I shot an conventionally made AR-15 that suffered a catastrophic failure of the bolt lugs and in spite of the bolt carrier coming back much faster than normal, everything held together just fine. If such an event happened with a printed plastic lower, it's likely that the gun would have been damaged badly.
I've seen prices on 3d printing for metal and the prices to render a standard lower receiver would have greatly exceeded the cost of buying a conventionally manufactured one.
I've been amazed over the years at the very poor quality of in-dash software and functionality. My 2008 Subaru Legacy has a so-so Nav system and horrendously expensive map upgrades while my wife's 2011 Sienna has probably the worst in-entertainment/Nav system I've seen.
While my Legacy's Nav system is somewhat hackable, the Sienna seems resistant to any kind of tweaking to improve any aspect of its operation. Instead, we're forced to accept whatever execrable interface they provide, no matter how irksome it may be.
Both systems could be vastly improved if auto-makers would use a more modularized and upgradable approach to their in-dash systems. Rather than sticking us with a system that's more or less immutable, why not use a general purpose computer underneath whatever buttons and displays they choose to use and allow companies or individuals to provide software to support the various functions we'd like to see. Kind of a chumby approach to things. A user could plug in a NAV module, a way to expand storage, a better quality audio amp or whatever they need to interface to the latest and greatest cell phones.
Both side of the aisle are sufficiently full of poo that we'd be in bio-fuel heaven for the foreseeable future.
Cygwin is an improvement, but still uses the braindead windohs pipes. Real *nix is vastly preferable for people who want/need it.
Speaking from an economic standpoint, a union is a monopoly on the supply of their 'product' (labor) and can dictate the terms the cost of their product to the consumers of that product (industry). That monopoly position has done great harm to many of the industries that are forced to pay higher than market costs for labor than they would in right-to-work states.
Clouds, virtual systems, clusters, stand-alone servers all benefit from being in an environmentally friendly facility where there's lots of networking capacity and sufficient power and cooling. While home users have dedicated desktop or laptop computers, it's far more power efficient to use technologies like blade systems to package computing power. Regardless, everything's still in a data center where the equipment can be protected.
I used to work at a very large ISP where there were a half dozen data centers, each containing racks and racks of servers, storage and backup. The data centers I visit now still resemble the old ones, but they're more power efficient and the equipment has much higher densities and the networks much higher capacity.
Unless someone can make a computer or cloud that doesn't require much in the way of power, cooling or physical security, then the data centers will probably continue their current trend for the foreseeable future.
To be fair, I also let others in my immediate family see my whereabouts too.
The "Find your Friends" and the Find my iPhone" apps will give a very good location of your kids whereabouts.
It's also handy because it's simple to track down a misplaced phone (which seems to happen quite a bit more than it should).
Obviously, it's not a good solution for younger kids, but my pre-teen and teenage daughters adore their tracking devi.... er... iPhones.
They need to follow the ancient Chinese and bring back "The Mandate of Heaven"!
Back in the 'good old days', the emperor was blamed for disasters and would be overthrown since heaven has withdrawn its support. The conviction makes about as much sense, but if you want to see this silliness stop, impose more silliness. :)
They should also blame Astronomers if there's a meteor strike and weathermen if someone gets a sunburn.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandate_of_Heaven
most people who are likely to use this will be transmitting their call sign every time they broadcast. Letting Joe or Jane Average play with one of these will be like putting a green laser in the hands of every 6th graders hands.
Software radios are becoming more popular in the amateur radio community. There are several manufacturers of very fine radios and quite a few build-it-yourself radios available too. I'll be watching this with great interest since one of the biggest problems with the lower-cost software radios is band coverage.
As Toast said a moment ago, antenna selection would be hard. Most radio amateurs would use an antenna tuner and/or a multiband antenna for the HF frequencies and an antenna switch for other bands of interest. I do just that. I have a 40 meter full wave horizontal loop antenna and use an antenna tuner and a 4:1 balun and can transmit on all bands from 40m through 10m and have very good results. It's also usable on 6m, but have never had a lot of luck with any kind of distant contacts.
After suffering with all of Paypals issues and hearing horror stories from other PayPal customers, this was the final straw.
The best way to make them reform their practices isn't to whine and complain, they figure as long as you put up with it, then no worries. The best way to get them to change their practices is to vote with your feet and let them know why you're leaving.
I closed my PayPal account last week and if it makes getting stuff on EBay harder, so be it. It's on them if they insist on me using it and they'll lose my business as well.
I'd be concerned about "gumming up the works" with the glycol. Try taking a few drops of coolant from your car sometime and rub it between your fingers for a while. They'll eventually be coated with the glycol residue and will be pretty sticky. Water steam under pressure is VERY hot and I'd be concerned that the glycol would gum everything up that same residue.
Bringing a steam turbine online would be a pretty slow process and not well suited for quick trips to the store.
Not to nitpick, but an 80L tank holds 80L of compressed air at its maximum working pressure.
The tank's unpressurised internal volume is much smaller.
The article didn't explicitly state whether it was 14.4 gallons of compressed gas or not, so I have no idea how large it would be.
I just wouldn't want to be anywhere near if it if failed. I saw a photo of a car that had an old steel scuba cylinder fail when it was inside the trunk. It made me take VERY good care of my tank.
http://www.thescubaguide.com/gear/tanks/safety.aspx
We also don't use GCC. We typically use the Intel or PGI compilers and applications like IDL or Matlab.
Using Visual C++ would require windows. The disadvantage of using windows over *nix are many: Licensing, Manageability, ad infinitum.
Our main cluster is CentOS-based using ROCKS cluster software and is running on 208 blades using several different generations of HP BL46[05] G[1-6] blades that get refreshed periodically. We have a mixture of CPUs in production currently, dual dual-core Xeon, dual quad-core Xeon and Opteron and some dual quad-core Nehalem. We're replacing the dual dual-core blades with dual-hex shortly to gain processing power without a power/cool/weight penalty.
We usually disable hyperthreading since we prefer each processor core be used for one job and only one job. Time-slicing between two jobs means that time's wasted flipping back and forth and resources will be used up needlessly. We also size system RAM so there is at least 3GB/core available for each job submitted. Using those strategies, we avoid swap as much as possible and get the maximum CPU utilization. Typically, each core is running at 100% for days on end.
A PS3 cluster would be similar in use, but limited to jobs that didn't need a lot of RAM or disk I/O. Since a PS3 cluster is pretty much a roll-it-yourself endeavor, I don't expect it to get used nearly as much as the production general purpose cluster. As time passes, it begins to look more and more like a toy compared to the newest advances in HPC.
When the PS3 cluster project started, it was one of the "sexiest" ways to get your hands on a lot of power for not a lot of money. Recent developments in GPU-based computing is beginning to attract attention, but not every system is a viable host for a production grade GPU board. System form factor and power requirements are significant issues to overcome. CUDA/Tesla boards show promise, but are only suited for certain applications, they would never be intended to replace general-purpose cluster computing. Typically, we'd want something that can run 24/7/365 with a very high MTBF.
The initial cluster was only 10 systems and was in the proof of concept phase. To do meaningful work, we'd want many more systems and the project seemed to be at a dead-end when they changed the firmware.
Power/Cooling and physical footprint are also considerations one needs to worry about. Price/CPU is very good on a PS3 too. For certain types of tasks, the CEL processor is ideal. We don't need a lot of RAM or hard drive either. We just need to crunch through a lot of numbers quickly.
We do a lot of High Performance computing where I work. I currently run a 1472 core ROCKS cluster and the price/core of a PS3 cluster is pretty good compared with an HP blade.
Because of management issues, I can't see running a huge cluster of PS3's, but it's an angle we're pursuing to see how well it works. Tesla-based clusters are also something being considered, but they type of work you can do on them is a bit more limited than a general purpose cluster based on conventional blades.
Our company was setting up a small cluster of PS3's but the whole project died when Sony locked down the firmware. This should breath new life into the effort.
I was secretly hoping they'd give the "useless" PS3's to the employees though. Sigh.