Then providers will have to use some of that dark fiber. Or upgrade their OC units at each end of the fiber. And upgrade routers. Oh, how will they ever cope?
Actually, their numbers are more based in fantasy (marketing) than reality or science.
They claim an MTBF in the ballpark of 50 years, but that's just a number pulled out of their rectal cavity.
If you take a large number of drives and perform scientifically valid MTBF failures, you would certainly come up with a number less than half of that, and perhaps as low as 10% of that.
We used to take the "trust users until they prove otherwise" approach. We found that eventually, most people got heaped into the second category, and most importantly, that they became completely inflamed, obnoxious, pissy, juvenile, and whiny when we would tell them that they were losing their priveliges. They'd go to their supervisor and whine. They'd try and invent reasons why they needed them, and just generally make our lives difficult.
So, we just stopped giving out priveliges from the start, then everyone was fine.
It's not a problem of cables, it's all about pricing.
Go out and find out how much it costs to buy, say, 100 megabits of real, honest, unlimitted, *guaranteed* bandwidth. Divide that by 17, and look at just how much you would have to charge users taking up a full 6 megabits just to break even. Then factor in the cost of your network and maintaining it.
Whether their business practices are honest or not (often, they're not, as they don't tell you what they're going to do) is irrelevant. People who think that it's their right to max out a multi-megabit connection for the cost of a couple of lunches need to wake up and join reality.
If broadband companies don't limit user's use, then there are only three eventualities: Either service will suck for everyone, everyone's prices will rise greatly, or prices will rise for those who use the most. There's no other way for the company to stay in business without something subsidizing them. When you look at countries with ultra-cheap broadband prices, they're subsidized.
as much as I love my firewire - especially firewire 800 - the vast majority of people say "firewha?" All they know is USB. And just like Beta vs. VHS. the technially superior standard is not the winner, but the one that wins widespread adoption.
Of the average folks that I know, the only ones I know who have even heard of firewire are folks that transfer from their camcorder to their PC - and those aren't many.
Cool. Go buy one. Install it. Load up all four cores 100%, and watch/proc/cpuinfo, and watch the speed drop back as it thermal-throttles. Watch/var/log/messages for the overheat errors.
The top-clocked Prescotts would thermal-throttle under full load, too.
Some things can be proven through logic, some are much more difficult. That's why for some things you use proofs, calculus, and the like. For things that can't be made easier that way, you do finite element analysis or other "brute force" methods.
Imagine trying to crack a password by proof. Not showing how to crack passwords, but cracking *one* specific password.:D
I also meant to comment that it's not much to say "He needed four cores and 8 gb!", since you can set up such a workstation for something like $650 these days.
Speaking from experience (I'm on one), the Q6600 does run at 2.4 GHz. And while they are far too much for the stock heat sink if you're going to load up all four cores, if you throw a Zalman on them, you can load them up 100% without any problem at all. Their TDP is 105 watts, the old Prescotts got up to about 120 watts, if I recall.
The stock heat sink isn't good at all. And their thermal compound, even after repeated heat cycling, only covers a small fraction of the CPU-heatsink interface. Just throw it away.
Well... there's personal data, and there's personal data.
At my main job, the worst-case scenario of data theft would be customers' name, address, and credit card number. On the other hand, I do consulting for an insurance agency who recently had a "smash-and-grab" job. The folks ignored all of the nice 23" monitors and new computers I had just installed, went in the back, and took the old, beaten-up server. Why? Name, address, credit card numbres... and birthdate, relatives' names, social security numbers, drivers license numbers, etc..
You can have a whooooole lot more fun (and cause much more damage) with that sort of information than just a credit-card number.
The bank surveillance systems I've seen pictures from universally sucked.
When my office decided to put a camera on every door, I got some $100 cmaeras from Newegg with ethernet ports. Oh, and a $15 POE injector/extractor set for each. The machine doing motion-detection and recording doesn't have to be in the same facility, so there's no way for them to steal the data.
One person came in and stole things, and we turned the pictures to the cops. Both building maintenance and the police said that our pics were better than those from many of the $10,000 systems they see people using.
But, in the end, pictures only get you so far. People can be disguised, or just passing through town. The only way the lady who robbed us got caught (even though her picture was run on the nightly news) was by getting pulled over for speeding a week later, and when the cop looked on her passenger seat, her open purse had almost 50 different checkbooks in it, and he got suspicious. If she weren't so stupid, she would have gotten away just fine. Typically enough, she had only been out of jail for a *month* for doing the same sort of thing.
"Look, son, there's a rare breed of Internet posting: the "cops are criminals" breed. "
I would have agreed with you until two weeks ago. I've never had any interaction with a police officer in the USA where the cop was any worse than rude or anal. But two weeks ago, I got pulled over for speeding when I *knew* that I wasn't. I asked where the policewoman thought she had clocked me, and she told me a location where it was literally impossible for me to speed. I pointed that out, and she said "No, near the top of the hill." I pointed out that she could not see me from where she was parked at the top of the hill. She said "No, it was between that light and the top. Near the middle."
Seeing that I was screwed, I just signed the form and left. Later, I looked at where she had written the location of the violation... it was at the top of the hill, where it would have been impossible for her to even see me. *sigh*.
We'll see how things go disputing the ticket at the courthouse this week. But given how things go in speeding disputes, I very well may just be screwed. All because this lady was too lazy to find *actual* speeders to fill her quota.
Get the GI bill? Hah! Only if you're a chump, as that would involve actually WORK (in the military). If you're a member of an underrepresented race, chances are very good that you can get grants, scholarships, and other assistance to pay for much of your college without you having to do any work at all, other than actually STUDY.
The professionals you work with aren't the problem. The cleaning crew is a problem. And, people who simply work their way into the building to make it down a row of cubicles, take what they can and dash are the problem.
One incident in our office involved a girl who made her way in, and spent less than thirty seconds to make it down a row of cubicles, get a dayplanner out of one, and get out. And that sort of thing is a lot more common than you would think.
Entirely with the ever-changing immigrant cleaning staff. Things were broken, stolen, left out, etc..
I got sick of things happening in my cubicle, so I bought a $10 webcam, plugged it into a machine with motion installed, and stuck it on the wall. The LED was bright enough that it was obvious.
Guess what? Shenanigans *instantly* stopped in my cubicle. I haven't had another incident in the 4 or so years since I did that... but the same cannot be said for the rest of the office.
... is that some of it was anywhere near right. All of these "Life in 40 years..." articles are usually way off, and tiring to read about. This one was actually a little interesting.
There have been verified cases where severe symptoms (right up to seizures) have suddenly came about within a day after receiving a series of injections. Not the normal onset you'd find in a normal case, but a sudden onset.
"he power production for regular light bulbs over the lifespan of a CFL generates 2-3x as much mercury as is in the CFL. "
But that is over several years, and dissipated into the atmosphere. While that is still bad, it's not as bad as getting a big dose of mercury all at once to a single person.
Sheesh, Slashdot is crawling with folks who won't even get their kids immunized because the tiny amount of mercury in thimerosol has been linked to autism or autism-like symptoms... and we're talking about a MUCH larger dose of mercury than that.
Mercury (like lead) isn't going to kill you dead in a heartbeet, or leave you in a debilitated state. They will, however, have subtle effects over your entire lifetime. Remember that *any* measurable blood-level of lead has a correlatable drop in IQ. It also increases problems in memory, cardiovascular conditions, etc. - those are just harder to put a measurement on than IQ.
There are white LEDs which are much better than the ones you're thinking of, but they're much more expensive - and LED lighting is expensive anyway in the lumens-per-dollar category. Plus, there are quite real heatsinking concerns since the power is being used in such a very small area, and the temperature of the die directly affects the longevity. Nobody wants to spend $50 on a light bulb, put it in their energy-efficient air-tight recessed lighting, and have it die early from heat buildup.
I have yet to see a CFL with a kHz electronic ballast. Every one I've seen has that same 60Hz flicker. And yes, my camera with a 1/200th shutter agrees with me.:D
I'm more sensitive to flicker than most people, just walking down the cubicle aisles I can effortlessly point out who still has a 60Hz refresh on their monitor, and I've never been wrong yet. And being under fluorescents with the flicker really kills my mood.
Even when a fluorescent says that it has an electronic ballast, it isn't always purely electronic. The ballasts that do operate in the kHz range are pretty expensive, you don't get them in a $7 CFL.
Not only that, but for "small" cf lighting (under 25 watts, if I recall), there is no requirement for power factor correction. If the cheapo companies leave it out, the inductive ballast will have a power factor of 0.5, and the power company will have to generate twice as much power as the lamp uses. That takes a big bite out of their efficiency.
I find that I need a 23 watt CF to really equal a 60 watt light bulb. With a power factor of 0.5, the power company would need to produce 46 watts (while I'd only be billed for 23), which isn't enough of a savings from a 60-watt halogen for me to put up with the horrible, awful light from CF bulbs.
I've tried quite a few different types of CF, and all of them are ugly. A few aren't *too* ugly, but the flicker still bothers me. I can only really use them in areas of my home where I don't spend much time.
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... is like calling that oversized, rock-hard constipated turd a "work in progress" because you managed to get it half way out.
Then providers will have to use some of that dark fiber. Or upgrade their OC units at each end of the fiber. And upgrade routers. Oh, how will they ever cope?
Was this even a question? I mean, did anybody actually believe the claims from the hard drive manufacturers?
Actually, their numbers are more based in fantasy (marketing) than reality or science.
They claim an MTBF in the ballpark of 50 years, but that's just a number pulled out of their rectal cavity.
If you take a large number of drives and perform scientifically valid MTBF failures, you would certainly come up with a number less than half of that, and perhaps as low as 10% of that.
We used to take the "trust users until they prove otherwise" approach. We found that eventually, most people got heaped into the second category, and most importantly, that they became completely inflamed, obnoxious, pissy, juvenile, and whiny when we would tell them that they were losing their priveliges. They'd go to their supervisor and whine. They'd try and invent reasons why they needed them, and just generally make our lives difficult.
So, we just stopped giving out priveliges from the start, then everyone was fine.
It's not a problem of cables, it's all about pricing.
Go out and find out how much it costs to buy, say, 100 megabits of real, honest, unlimitted, *guaranteed* bandwidth. Divide that by 17, and look at just how much you would have to charge users taking up a full 6 megabits just to break even. Then factor in the cost of your network and maintaining it.
Whether their business practices are honest or not (often, they're not, as they don't tell you what they're going to do) is irrelevant. People who think that it's their right to max out a multi-megabit connection for the cost of a couple of lunches need to wake up and join reality.
If broadband companies don't limit user's use, then there are only three eventualities: Either service will suck for everyone, everyone's prices will rise greatly, or prices will rise for those who use the most. There's no other way for the company to stay in business without something subsidizing them. When you look at countries with ultra-cheap broadband prices, they're subsidized.
It's a *fond* look at the ports. You know, some dude *fondly* looking at Kryten's groin...
as much as I love my firewire - especially firewire 800 - the vast majority of people say "firewha?" All they know is USB. And just like Beta vs. VHS. the technially superior standard is not the winner, but the one that wins widespread adoption.
Of the average folks that I know, the only ones I know who have even heard of firewire are folks that transfer from their camcorder to their PC - and those aren't many.
Cool. Go buy one. Install it. Load up all four cores 100%, and watch /proc/cpuinfo, and watch the speed drop back as it thermal-throttles. Watch /var/log/messages for the overheat errors.
The top-clocked Prescotts would thermal-throttle under full load, too.
Some things can be proven through logic, some are much more difficult. That's why for some things you use proofs, calculus, and the like. For things that can't be made easier that way, you do finite element analysis or other "brute force" methods.
:D
Imagine trying to crack a password by proof. Not showing how to crack passwords, but cracking *one* specific password.
I also meant to comment that it's not much to say "He needed four cores and 8 gb!", since you can set up such a workstation for something like $650 these days.
Speaking from experience (I'm on one), the Q6600 does run at 2.4 GHz. And while they are far too much for the stock heat sink if you're going to load up all four cores, if you throw a Zalman on them, you can load them up 100% without any problem at all. Their TDP is 105 watts, the old Prescotts got up to about 120 watts, if I recall.
The stock heat sink isn't good at all. And their thermal compound, even after repeated heat cycling, only covers a small fraction of the CPU-heatsink interface. Just throw it away.
Well... there's personal data, and there's personal data.
At my main job, the worst-case scenario of data theft would be customers' name, address, and credit card number. On the other hand, I do consulting for an insurance agency who recently had a "smash-and-grab" job. The folks ignored all of the nice 23" monitors and new computers I had just installed, went in the back, and took the old, beaten-up server. Why? Name, address, credit card numbres... and birthdate, relatives' names, social security numbers, drivers license numbers, etc..
You can have a whooooole lot more fun (and cause much more damage) with that sort of information than just a credit-card number.
The bank surveillance systems I've seen pictures from universally sucked.
When my office decided to put a camera on every door, I got some $100 cmaeras from Newegg with ethernet ports. Oh, and a $15 POE injector/extractor set for each. The machine doing motion-detection and recording doesn't have to be in the same facility, so there's no way for them to steal the data.
One person came in and stole things, and we turned the pictures to the cops. Both building maintenance and the police said that our pics were better than those from many of the $10,000 systems they see people using.
But, in the end, pictures only get you so far. People can be disguised, or just passing through town. The only way the lady who robbed us got caught (even though her picture was run on the nightly news) was by getting pulled over for speeding a week later, and when the cop looked on her passenger seat, her open purse had almost 50 different checkbooks in it, and he got suspicious. If she weren't so stupid, she would have gotten away just fine. Typically enough, she had only been out of jail for a *month* for doing the same sort of thing.
"Look, son, there's a rare breed of Internet posting: the "cops are criminals" breed. "
I would have agreed with you until two weeks ago. I've never had any interaction with a police officer in the USA where the cop was any worse than rude or anal. But two weeks ago, I got pulled over for speeding when I *knew* that I wasn't. I asked where the policewoman thought she had clocked me, and she told me a location where it was literally impossible for me to speed. I pointed that out, and she said "No, near the top of the hill." I pointed out that she could not see me from where she was parked at the top of the hill. She said "No, it was between that light and the top. Near the middle."
Seeing that I was screwed, I just signed the form and left. Later, I looked at where she had written the location of the violation... it was at the top of the hill, where it would have been impossible for her to even see me. *sigh*.
We'll see how things go disputing the ticket at the courthouse this week. But given how things go in speeding disputes, I very well may just be screwed. All because this lady was too lazy to find *actual* speeders to fill her quota.
Get the GI bill? Hah! Only if you're a chump, as that would involve actually WORK (in the military). If you're a member of an underrepresented race, chances are very good that you can get grants, scholarships, and other assistance to pay for much of your college without you having to do any work at all, other than actually STUDY.
The professionals you work with aren't the problem. The cleaning crew is a problem. And, people who simply work their way into the building to make it down a row of cubicles, take what they can and dash are the problem.
One incident in our office involved a girl who made her way in, and spent less than thirty seconds to make it down a row of cubicles, get a dayplanner out of one, and get out. And that sort of thing is a lot more common than you would think.
Entirely with the ever-changing immigrant cleaning staff. Things were broken, stolen, left out, etc..
I got sick of things happening in my cubicle, so I bought a $10 webcam, plugged it into a machine with motion installed, and stuck it on the wall. The LED was bright enough that it was obvious.
Guess what? Shenanigans *instantly* stopped in my cubicle. I haven't had another incident in the 4 or so years since I did that... but the same cannot be said for the rest of the office.
There have been verified cases where severe symptoms (right up to seizures) have suddenly came about within a day after receiving a series of injections. Not the normal onset you'd find in a normal case, but a sudden onset.
"he power production for regular light bulbs over the lifespan of a CFL generates 2-3x as much mercury as is in the CFL. "
But that is over several years, and dissipated into the atmosphere. While that is still bad, it's not as bad as getting a big dose of mercury all at once to a single person.
Sheesh, Slashdot is crawling with folks who won't even get their kids immunized because the tiny amount of mercury in thimerosol has been linked to autism or autism-like symptoms... and we're talking about a MUCH larger dose of mercury than that.
Mercury (like lead) isn't going to kill you dead in a heartbeet, or leave you in a debilitated state. They will, however, have subtle effects over your entire lifetime. Remember that *any* measurable blood-level of lead has a correlatable drop in IQ. It also increases problems in memory, cardiovascular conditions, etc. - those are just harder to put a measurement on than IQ.
There are white LEDs which are much better than the ones you're thinking of, but they're much more expensive - and LED lighting is expensive anyway in the lumens-per-dollar category. Plus, there are quite real heatsinking concerns since the power is being used in such a very small area, and the temperature of the die directly affects the longevity. Nobody wants to spend $50 on a light bulb, put it in their energy-efficient air-tight recessed lighting, and have it die early from heat buildup.
I have yet to see a CFL with a kHz electronic ballast. Every one I've seen has that same 60Hz flicker. And yes, my camera with a 1/200th shutter agrees with me. :D
I'm more sensitive to flicker than most people, just walking down the cubicle aisles I can effortlessly point out who still has a 60Hz refresh on their monitor, and I've never been wrong yet. And being under fluorescents with the flicker really kills my mood.
Even when a fluorescent says that it has an electronic ballast, it isn't always purely electronic. The ballasts that do operate in the kHz range are pretty expensive, you don't get them in a $7 CFL.
Not only that, but for "small" cf lighting (under 25 watts, if I recall), there is no requirement for power factor correction. If the cheapo companies leave it out, the inductive ballast will have a power factor of 0.5, and the power company will have to generate twice as much power as the lamp uses. That takes a big bite out of their efficiency.
I find that I need a 23 watt CF to really equal a 60 watt light bulb. With a power factor of 0.5, the power company would need to produce 46 watts (while I'd only be billed for 23), which isn't enough of a savings from a 60-watt halogen for me to put up with the horrible, awful light from CF bulbs.
I've tried quite a few different types of CF, and all of them are ugly. A few aren't *too* ugly, but the flicker still bothers me. I can only really use them in areas of my home where I don't spend much time.
Hillary or Bill? Such a tough decision. Well, maybe not. Hillary.