Why does more servers mean more pipes? You can easily add additional network interfaces to any system with spare PCIe or PCIx slots. And 4U systems typically have more spare slots than 1U systems.
OK, that's an argument for having a lot of (relatively) sparse storage servers instead of a few dense storage servers. But why have 8 2P1U DBMS servers instead of just 2 8P4U DBMS servers? You're getting less processing power for more money.
I did read the specs. I even quoted them. We're talking a bunch of 2-processor systems. In the server world, a 2P system is definitely low end.
The Sun X4600 is an 8P, 4U system. So 2 X4600s have the same number of processors and the same amount of rack space. Having all 8 processors in one system makes the whole a tad more efficient and cheaper.
I'm not suggesting that HP doesn't have something equivalent to the X4600 — I'm sure they do. I just happen to be more familiar with Sun x64 systems because that's where I work. My point is simply that if you're going to put that much processing power into one rack, a few high end systems make more sense than a lot of low-end systems.
I could make a similar argument about using 14 Exadata storage servers (each with 12 disks in a 2U space) versus 3 or 4 X4500 or X4540 storage servers (each with 48 disks in a 4U space). Or versus the HP equivalent of the X45x0. But you get my drift.
It would be nice if submitters took a moment to find some actual information, instead of just submitting the first (usually content free) blurb that they see. A tiny amount of Googling would have turned up this Oracle product page with full technical specs.
It's worth mentioning that this product is not a computer. It's a 42U rack stuffed 8 dbms servers, 14 storage servers, and 4 switches. Which means a lot of low-end 1U servers. Not exactly a lot of computer power. One or two 4U dbms servers and 3 or 4 4U storage servers (like Sun's X4600 and X4500 boxes) would seem more to the point.
I've seen some problems interpreting CSS correctly, both on internal company sites I've worked and on public sites like Netflix. The public site glitches might be from bad standards compliance, but I know mine weren't.
I've also had issues with text input boxes, where Chrome seems to have trouble keeping up with my typing.
Chrome has a bug reporting feature that includes the ability to send the developers a screen shot. Obviously they anticipated exactly this kind of problem.
Actually, the purpose of news (at least TV news) seems to be exactly the opposite of what you claim. Look at Fox News, with their constant assertions that anybody to the left of Genghis Khan is an atheist traitor of dubious intelligence. Does that mean that Rupert Murdoch is out to change America into a right-wing theocracy? Not at all. The dude is actually pretty moderate in his opinions, and is good friends with Hilary Clinton. All he cares about is eyeballs. And the way he attracts eyeballs in the U.S. is by telling right-wing dittoheads what they already know. In the U.K., it's by adding soft core porn to a regular newspaper. On The Simpsons, it's by making fun of the very institutions that made him rich, and even of himself.
The "eco" stuff on CNN is more of the same for a different audience. Nobody is going to jump on the "save the planet" bandwagon because somebody on TV told them to. What those pieces do is make pro-ecology middle class Americans feel less guilty about their huge carbon footprints.
Not at all. If you RTFCB you'll know that a major goal of Chrome is to get its technologies and ideas incorporated into other Open Source projects. Actually, that seems to be pretty much the idea, at least at this stage in the product's lifecycle. The product itself is too limited and glitchy for any other purpose. It's not like a lot of people are going to adopt it as their day-to-day browser, not with its minimal feature set and rendering issues.
I suspect the Chrome team is actually quite pleased to see their software adopted by a "competing" project.
I'm no Google fanboy (though I guess I used to be). I'm often quite impatient with their endless betas, their crappy documentation, their buggy products, and their total indifference to the actual software marketplace. But for once I have to admit that they've created something really useful. It's just that the usefulness is not to the end user, it's to the OS developer community.
I can't be bothered to RTFA, but I know it's not flat-out wrong about it's main point: most features go unused. That's manifestly true. How many people do you know who use most of the features of their phones? Do you? I know I don't.
One factor nobody seems to have thought about: most users just don't want all those features. Like custom ringtones. I use them myself (though paying for them seems silly) but it's obvious from listening to other phones ring that very few people bother even to switch from the default ringtone, never mind downloading new ones.
And phone cameras. OK, some people use them. I use mine on occasion, when my regular camera isn't at hand. But I'd never choose a phone based on the inclusion of a 2MP camera with fixed focus.
Most people would buy simple phones if providers offered them. But they don't. Except for Jitterbug, which specializes in cell phone service for seniors who get confused by complicated gadgetry. Maybe they should broaden their market.
Integrated devices are nice. But unless you're an Apple fanboy, having an extra device in your pocket is a small price to pay for not having to deal with all the issues around an iPhone.
I normally use an iAudio MP3 player, mostly to listen to spoken word stuff. Having an extra gadget is a pain, but there aren't any phone-based MP3 players that have exactly the feature set I want. Like if I'm listening to something while driving, and miss a crucial factoid, I can reach down, push a button, and back up 30 seconds without taking my eyes off the road.
Right now, I can't seem to find that player (somewhere in the mess at home) so I'm using pTunes running on a Palm Centro. Not a bad piece of software, but there's no back-up-thirty-seconds button, so if I miss something, it's gone. Plus, it's a GSM phone, so if I don't put it into airplane mode, I'm going to be blasted at least once by the famous DUH DUH DUH DUH DUH when the phone polls the network. Sometimes I forget to put it into airplane mode. And sometimes I forget to put it back into phone mode!
The 3.5" plug is standard for the kind of headphones you use with with an MP3 player (good reproduction of music, no microphone). Except for those with proprietary connectors, most (all?) headsets designed to be plugged into a phone (good voice reproduction, microphone) use the 2.5" plug. Go to any electronics store and you'll see.
Putting down a few unarmed dissident students is not demonstration of military might.
And even if China had a strong military, they still wouldn't make them a military dictatorship. That's a dictatorship of the military. Chile under Pinochet, for example. In China, all power flows from the Communist Party. Which, despite having made itself into one of the world's leading capitalist powers (poor Karl would be so confused!) is still officially driven by the dream of world revolution and the conversion of the planet to "the worker's paradise." That makes it an ideological dictatorship.
You have a legitimate complaint. But note that there are only two official connectors for either end of a USB cable. So at least three of the cables you use have prorprietary connectors. Obviously the computer end has to use an A connector, or else you couldn't plug it into any computer. But too many manufacturers feel free to use proprietary connectors at the device end. As you say, PITA.
Another PITA is that even devices with standard connectors don't always work with all standard cables. I bought a couple of those retractable USB cables, only to discover that they don't work with most of my devices. (I now only use them for recharging off the wall or in my car.) Some devices seem to require the cables that came with them, or that are constructed similarly. These constructions may or may not include permanent magnets near one or both ends of the cable. Devices that come with fancy cables sometimes work with cheap cables. And since I have no notion of which cables came with which devices...
But wait, there's more! The USB standard is supposed to work so that hubs are invisible to the device. Alas, many devices just don't work with hubs. It's not uncommon for USB disk makers to specify that using hubs may cause data loss. My HP printer doesn't document a "no hub" requirement, but if I plug it into a hub, it will just stop working about 500 characters into any print job.
And then there are devices with non-standard USB power requirements...
"Spoiler" doesn't really apply to this kind of novel. If you have the slightest doubt about how it's going to turn out, you probably don't want to read it.
You're right about Smith still being alive when the novel ends. But it's clear that he's going to be tried and executed in the near future. In his zombie-like "rehabilitated" state, he's even looking forward to it. I just compressed this sequence of events a little for simplicity.
I kind of imagine some guy with all these different sized/shaped wires coming over the top of his nightstand cussing and trying to jam each one into his phone.
You're assuming that if two power supplies have the same output connector, they have the same output. Not true, as I learned the hard way.
* Neither Google nor HTC nor T-Mobile will ship any sort of desktop-synchronization software with the phone, so your only way to get your address book and calendars onto the G1 will be to upload them to Gmail and Google Calendar. I can't believe that these companies are leaving a function this basic as a "third party opportunity."
Considering the synchronization support in most phones, that's actually a step up. Unless you really like MS Outlook. Having to use it for desktop syncing is what drove me away from using a PPC phone.
Except for Outlook geeks and people who don't mind the uberlegacy status of PalmOS, phone synchronization support is pretty much nonexistent, at least for consumers. If you have a corporate phone and a good IT department, you can use a SyncML server. But individuals are out of luck.
The G1, like the iPhone and T-Mobile's Sidekick, will have its SIM card slot locked to prevent the use of other carriers' subscriber-identity module cards.
OK, now that's a deal breaker. The way U.S. providers try to "lock in" their customers ought to be illegal.
The G1 will offer limited compatibility with some of the files you use most often. It will only be able to read Microsoft Office files, not edit them.
Do people really use their phones to edit Office files? Seems a good way to destroy your eyesight.
And while its music player will be able to use MP3, Windows Media and AAC files, you'll need to wait for a third-party to provide some sort of add-on to sync your iTunes library to the phone. And iTunes Store downloads restricted with Apple's "digital rights management" locks won't play on the G1 (though the G1 is no different from other non-Apple devices in this respect; that's why you shouldn't buy Apple's DRM-ed downloads at all when you get the same music as an unlocked, open MP3 from Amazon's MP3 store).
You seem to be arguing with yourself here. Personally, I consider MP3 support to be all I need on any digital audio player. Some Slashdotters would probably prefer Ogg Vorbis support. But if you absolutely have to be able to play iTunes downloads, well, iPod shuffles are really cheap.
As you've noticed, hardly any phones come with a normal jack, so it's hardly a reason for not using this one.
Lots of phones come with 2.5 mm jacks, including other phones from HTC. It's a pretty standard kind of connector. Actually, I think there are fewer phones now with this jack than there used to be. I think the change happened because simple cell phones have mostly been displaced by fancy PDAish things that need a data connector. Having two connectors costs, so they combine data and voice in a proprietary connector.
There's a small inconvenience factor in having a proprietary headphone connector(you can usually find an adapter, and most of us use Bluetooth anyway). But I find the way manufacturers resist standardization (even within their own product lines) to be irksome. It would be lot easier for consumers if everybody used a USB-compatible connector for data and recharging, and a 2.5 mm jack for voice. It would raise costs slightly, but given the $400 typically charged for a smart phone (either directly or through a provider's loyalty plan), that's not really too much to ask. I believe it's actually required for phones sold in some countries.
OK, lack of standardization is par for gadget manufacturers. (How many different wall warts do you own? And how many gadgets have you fried by connecting the wrong one?) But one would hope that Do-No-Wrong Google would persuade its hardware partners to do better.
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Your user page says you've made 7500 posts.
He's a movie critic? I thought he was just some kind of fanboy.
You should know by now that there are no coincidence.....
Why does more servers mean more pipes? You can easily add additional network interfaces to any system with spare PCIe or PCIx slots. And 4U systems typically have more spare slots than 1U systems.
Joke:
http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2008/09/this_is_the_dawning_of_the_age.html
Not to defend Thompson, consider the following charges:
Doesn't this list make him sound like a pretty typical Slashdotter?
If you're not a hardware obsessive, why are you even bothering to follow this story?
OK, that's an argument for having a lot of (relatively) sparse storage servers instead of a few dense storage servers. But why have 8 2P1U DBMS servers instead of just 2 8P4U DBMS servers? You're getting less processing power for more money.
Actually, you can borrow stuff from my datacenter. You just have to promise to consider buying it!
http://www.sun.com/tryandbuy/
I did read the specs. I even quoted them. We're talking a bunch of 2-processor systems. In the server world, a 2P system is definitely low end.
The Sun X4600 is an 8P, 4U system. So 2 X4600s have the same number of processors and the same amount of rack space. Having all 8 processors in one system makes the whole a tad more efficient and cheaper.
I'm not suggesting that HP doesn't have something equivalent to the X4600 — I'm sure they do. I just happen to be more familiar with Sun x64 systems because that's where I work. My point is simply that if you're going to put that much processing power into one rack, a few high end systems make more sense than a lot of low-end systems.
I could make a similar argument about using 14 Exadata storage servers (each with 12 disks in a 2U space) versus 3 or 4 X4500 or X4540 storage servers (each with 48 disks in a 4U space). Or versus the HP equivalent of the X45x0. But you get my drift.
RTFA. There's no "Oracle machine." This is a cobranded HP/Oracle product.
It would be nice if submitters took a moment to find some actual information, instead of just submitting the first (usually content free) blurb that they see. A tiny amount of Googling would have turned up this Oracle product page with full technical specs.
It's worth mentioning that this product is not a computer. It's a 42U rack stuffed 8 dbms servers, 14 storage servers, and 4 switches. Which means a lot of low-end 1U servers. Not exactly a lot of computer power. One or two 4U dbms servers and 3 or 4 4U storage servers (like Sun's X4600 and X4500 boxes) would seem more to the point.
I've seen some problems interpreting CSS correctly, both on internal company sites I've worked and on public sites like Netflix. The public site glitches might be from bad standards compliance, but I know mine weren't.
I've also had issues with text input boxes, where Chrome seems to have trouble keeping up with my typing.
Chrome has a bug reporting feature that includes the ability to send the developers a screen shot. Obviously they anticipated exactly this kind of problem.
Actually, the purpose of news (at least TV news) seems to be exactly the opposite of what you claim. Look at Fox News, with their constant assertions that anybody to the left of Genghis Khan is an atheist traitor of dubious intelligence. Does that mean that Rupert Murdoch is out to change America into a right-wing theocracy? Not at all. The dude is actually pretty moderate in his opinions, and is good friends with Hilary Clinton. All he cares about is eyeballs. And the way he attracts eyeballs in the U.S. is by telling right-wing dittoheads what they already know. In the U.K., it's by adding soft core porn to a regular newspaper. On The Simpsons, it's by making fun of the very institutions that made him rich, and even of himself.
The "eco" stuff on CNN is more of the same for a different audience. Nobody is going to jump on the "save the planet" bandwagon because somebody on TV told them to. What those pieces do is make pro-ecology middle class Americans feel less guilty about their huge carbon footprints.
Not at all. If you RTFCB you'll know that a major goal of Chrome is to get its technologies and ideas incorporated into other Open Source projects. Actually, that seems to be pretty much the idea, at least at this stage in the product's lifecycle. The product itself is too limited and glitchy for any other purpose. It's not like a lot of people are going to adopt it as their day-to-day browser, not with its minimal feature set and rendering issues.
I suspect the Chrome team is actually quite pleased to see their software adopted by a "competing" project.
I'm no Google fanboy (though I guess I used to be). I'm often quite impatient with their endless betas, their crappy documentation, their buggy products, and their total indifference to the actual software marketplace. But for once I have to admit that they've created something really useful. It's just that the usefulness is not to the end user, it's to the OS developer community.
I can't be bothered to RTFA, but I know it's not flat-out wrong about it's main point: most features go unused. That's manifestly true. How many people do you know who use most of the features of their phones? Do you? I know I don't.
One factor nobody seems to have thought about: most users just don't want all those features. Like custom ringtones. I use them myself (though paying for them seems silly) but it's obvious from listening to other phones ring that very few people bother even to switch from the default ringtone, never mind downloading new ones.
And phone cameras. OK, some people use them. I use mine on occasion, when my regular camera isn't at hand. But I'd never choose a phone based on the inclusion of a 2MP camera with fixed focus.
Most people would buy simple phones if providers offered them. But they don't. Except for Jitterbug, which specializes in cell phone service for seniors who get confused by complicated gadgetry. Maybe they should broaden their market.
Integrated devices are nice. But unless you're an Apple fanboy, having an extra device in your pocket is a small price to pay for not having to deal with all the issues around an iPhone.
I normally use an iAudio MP3 player, mostly to listen to spoken word stuff. Having an extra gadget is a pain, but there aren't any phone-based MP3 players that have exactly the feature set I want. Like if I'm listening to something while driving, and miss a crucial factoid, I can reach down, push a button, and back up 30 seconds without taking my eyes off the road.
Right now, I can't seem to find that player (somewhere in the mess at home) so I'm using pTunes running on a Palm Centro. Not a bad piece of software, but there's no back-up-thirty-seconds button, so if I miss something, it's gone. Plus, it's a GSM phone, so if I don't put it into airplane mode, I'm going to be blasted at least once by the famous DUH DUH DUH DUH DUH when the phone polls the network. Sometimes I forget to put it into airplane mode. And sometimes I forget to put it back into phone mode!
The iPhone is GSM, right?
The 3.5" plug is standard for the kind of headphones you use with with an MP3 player (good reproduction of music, no microphone). Except for those with proprietary connectors, most (all?) headsets designed to be plugged into a phone (good voice reproduction, microphone) use the 2.5" plug. Go to any electronics store and you'll see.
Putting down a few unarmed dissident students is not demonstration of military might.
And even if China had a strong military, they still wouldn't make them a military dictatorship. That's a dictatorship of the military. Chile under Pinochet, for example. In China, all power flows from the Communist Party. Which, despite having made itself into one of the world's leading capitalist powers (poor Karl would be so confused!) is still officially driven by the dream of world revolution and the conversion of the planet to "the worker's paradise." That makes it an ideological dictatorship.
You have a legitimate complaint. But note that there are only two official connectors for either end of a USB cable. So at least three of the cables you use have prorprietary connectors. Obviously the computer end has to use an A connector, or else you couldn't plug it into any computer. But too many manufacturers feel free to use proprietary connectors at the device end. As you say, PITA.
Another PITA is that even devices with standard connectors don't always work with all standard cables. I bought a couple of those retractable USB cables, only to discover that they don't work with most of my devices. (I now only use them for recharging off the wall or in my car.) Some devices seem to require the cables that came with them, or that are constructed similarly. These constructions may or may not include permanent magnets near one or both ends of the cable. Devices that come with fancy cables sometimes work with cheap cables. And since I have no notion of which cables came with which devices...
But wait, there's more! The USB standard is supposed to work so that hubs are invisible to the device. Alas, many devices just don't work with hubs. It's not uncommon for USB disk makers to specify that using hubs may cause data loss. My HP printer doesn't document a "no hub" requirement, but if I plug it into a hub, it will just stop working about 500 characters into any print job.
And then there are devices with non-standard USB power requirements...
When you need to cram something down people's throats, a ruthless military dictatorship can be handy.
I beg your pardon! China actually has a fairly weak military. They're an ideological dictatorship, thank you very much!
"Spoiler" doesn't really apply to this kind of novel. If you have the slightest doubt about how it's going to turn out, you probably don't want to read it.
You're right about Smith still being alive when the novel ends. But it's clear that he's going to be tried and executed in the near future. In his zombie-like "rehabilitated" state, he's even looking forward to it. I just compressed this sequence of events a little for simplicity.
I kind of imagine some guy with all these different sized/shaped wires coming over the top of his nightstand cussing and trying to jam each one into his phone.
You're assuming that if two power supplies have the same output connector, they have the same output. Not true, as I learned the hard way.
No, I only did it once. But it was a $400 PDA...
* Neither Google nor HTC nor T-Mobile will ship any sort of desktop-synchronization software with the phone, so your only way to get your address book and calendars onto the G1 will be to upload them to Gmail and Google Calendar. I can't believe that these companies are leaving a function this basic as a "third party opportunity."
Considering the synchronization support in most phones, that's actually a step up. Unless you really like MS Outlook. Having to use it for desktop syncing is what drove me away from using a PPC phone.
Except for Outlook geeks and people who don't mind the uberlegacy status of PalmOS, phone synchronization support is pretty much nonexistent, at least for consumers. If you have a corporate phone and a good IT department, you can use a SyncML server. But individuals are out of luck.
The G1, like the iPhone and T-Mobile's Sidekick, will have its SIM card slot locked to prevent the use of other carriers' subscriber-identity module cards.
OK, now that's a deal breaker. The way U.S. providers try to "lock in" their customers ought to be illegal.
The G1 will offer limited compatibility with some of the files you use most often. It will only be able to read Microsoft Office files, not edit them.
Do people really use their phones to edit Office files? Seems a good way to destroy your eyesight.
And while its music player will be able to use MP3, Windows Media and AAC files, you'll need to wait for a third-party to provide some sort of add-on to sync your iTunes library to the phone. And iTunes Store downloads restricted with Apple's "digital rights management" locks won't play on the G1 (though the G1 is no different from other non-Apple devices in this respect; that's why you shouldn't buy Apple's DRM-ed downloads at all when you get the same music as an unlocked, open MP3 from Amazon's MP3 store).
You seem to be arguing with yourself here. Personally, I consider MP3 support to be all I need on any digital audio player. Some Slashdotters would probably prefer Ogg Vorbis support. But if you absolutely have to be able to play iTunes downloads, well, iPod shuffles are really cheap.
As you've noticed, hardly any phones come with a normal jack, so it's hardly a reason for not using this one.
Lots of phones come with 2.5 mm jacks, including other phones from HTC. It's a pretty standard kind of connector. Actually, I think there are fewer phones now with this jack than there used to be. I think the change happened because simple cell phones have mostly been displaced by fancy PDAish things that need a data connector. Having two connectors costs, so they combine data and voice in a proprietary connector.
There's a small inconvenience factor in having a proprietary headphone connector(you can usually find an adapter, and most of us use Bluetooth anyway). But I find the way manufacturers resist standardization (even within their own product lines) to be irksome. It would be lot easier for consumers if everybody used a USB-compatible connector for data and recharging, and a 2.5 mm jack for voice. It would raise costs slightly, but given the $400 typically charged for a smart phone (either directly or through a provider's loyalty plan), that's not really too much to ask. I believe it's actually required for phones sold in some countries.
OK, lack of standardization is par for gadget manufacturers. (How many different wall warts do you own? And how many gadgets have you fried by connecting the wrong one?) But one would hope that Do-No-Wrong Google would persuade its hardware partners to do better.