The software equivalent of a bridge is a slide rule. It's static, single function, well understood and reliable.
Maybe if evey god damn software project weren't the engineering equvalent of a fucking concept car (along with all the robustness that they have) the software would work like a charm every time you hit a key.
Until then, fat chance. It's still better to have a 90% solution today than a perfect one after you're out of business.
This is right wing hogwash. Monopolies run forever because they eliminate competition. If may get lazy, but that just makes them more likely to resort to illegal tactics, not more likely to go under despite massive market advantages.
That's why he can't site a single example to make his case. Monopolies ran forever, hence the anti-trust laws were required to ensure a vibrant economy.
Finding security holes is exactly why open source security works better than security through osbcurity for crying out loud! You should be thanking those guys instead of using your site as a soap box to bully them into thinking like a Taco.
And re-read Steven Levy's book Hackers while you're at it.
If I am reading between the lines correctly, here, and you are suggesting that you save yourself money by not reporting these new boxes as income, isn't this tax evasion ?
I would never suggest anyone evade taxes in a public forum.
If you gain only a few pieces of good information from the book, you'll probably recoup the $20 price of the book in short order.
If you are even thinking about $20 then going the contracting route probably won't work out.
I'm not saying that the key to successful business is throwing money away, but just that if you remain focused on $20 then that's all your likely to see.
Specifically, taxes, incorporating, contract law and such should not be done on the basis of a book, even a good one. Spend a couple thousand a year on a good accountant/lawyer (and if you can find a lawyer who is a CPA like mine, then I highly recommend keeping all your business with him).
The other single salient suggestion I have is do as much as you can on barter. If you need a couple boxen for your new lab and your client is a PC shop that needs some wiring hung and a T1 installed then why bother with the cash and associated accounting.
I guess it goes to show that FUD comes from both directions.
It sure does. Of course, I'm not about to take your opinion seriously since you cannot, apparently, be trusted to not dick with your own salary if given the chance to do so.
Yes, Japan will only truly be an enlightened nation when they can have Accenture (that's what it's called this week I think) to do a $1.5M job and end up, three years later, with a $5M program that does 40% of what the original spec called for.
Nope, my bad tape assumes that sometime a tape and it's redundent copy will go bad. It happens. A lot.
The problem is that tape basically sucks. In the 80's I can't tell you how many hours I spent re-running jobs at NCR because the needed tape and it's backup were trashed. Today I work at a major lab and we're building a PB scale tape farm. Our problem is that we can't find anything sufficiently reliable. Between the falability of the media itself and the firmware in the drives and awful lot can go wrong!
Come on, you know that's a logical fallacy. There's no need or reason to assume that this is the start of anything else without further evidence.
But there is futher evidence, isn't there? I mean isn't every YRO story on slashdot about something being stretched and twisted beyond reasonable comprehension by folks who either don't understand technology or are trying to limit rights in order to suit their misguided needs?
Sounds like they're getting what they want so why would they need anything else?
Sorry. I didn't realize you were joking until I read this line again.
Yes, clearly they won't stop with this any more than they stopped at any of the previous points.
Come on people, this information already exists in server logs across the world! It's not like they are proposing something that is novel
What they are proposing is novel (and significant) in that they are *requiring* that logging be turned on (which on many servers, for many reasons, it is not) *and* that the company spend it's time and money ensuring that the logs persist for seven years. Presumably one gets heavily fined if a backup tape goes bad!
Ok, the backup tape might be a frear mongering, but I can imagine that if a tape goes bad and the gummint finds a memo outlining to backup processes that talks about the cost of media, the half-life of the media selected *and* then chooses to go the cheap route rather than ensure that they comply with the law that a fine for a bad tape is certainly going to happen.
Yeah, it's vapor ware, but the article claims "Nokia will introduce the product in Sweden in late summer and in the UK and Germany later in the year. A US launch is planned for late this year or early 2002."
So it sounds like it's in the late stages of development at least...
generate some electricity, not nearly enough, but enough solar panels around will help the situation a lot.
The one thing Bush got right was that the problem right now is that there is more demand than supply. He says that means we must explore more and relax environmental standards so we can build up our production capabilities. You say conservation is the way to go.
I say, you're both wrong.
We need to do both of what you guys say, but neither will solve the problem.
The problem was demand exceeding supply. That situation did not come about because we didn't have enought conservation, nor becuase of environmental concerns. The problem came about because energy was so cheap in the early 90's that there was no money in building power plants. There are many now under way (see this story on Poliglut for a graph of the last twenty years), but the reason demand exceeded supply was because there was no money in building new plants for a while and that even now that there is, it takes a while to build them.
P.S. None of this should be taken as an argument against conservation, just that it's a fools paradise to believe it would have helped CA this time.
Alaskan summers are nice and warm with mean temp of 75 degrees.
Huh? Anchorage (one of the warmer parts of Alaska), for example, only averages above 65 for nine days in the heat of July, after that it's all downhill.
On the North Slope things are much colder. That same July peak only has them at 46.
Who marked this insightful? Maybe funny, but really!
a. Don't build them in hot climates.
This is the only legit part of the post. Of course, if the cost of energy is less than the cost of labor (remember that a lot of the labor is in hot climates!) then hot climates still make a lost of sense. Labor is your largest cost after all.
b. If you do build them in hot climates you should have to build a large solar panel array on the top of the facility.
That's great as a throw away comment. That solar array isn't going to give you nearly the power you need, nor produce it efficiently. Remember, it's the cost per megawatt that counts and solar isn't cost competative yet even if you could run a data center on only solar.
c. When it's cold outside, open the windows. Nothing is dumber than having the air conditioning on in the winter! If dust bothers you, suck in outside air and filter it.
Think climate control, not air conditioning. The moisture is important too. Opening windows (except in a desert and you already said we can't build there) will corrode all your systems. In the colder days you talk about the air conditioners are very efficient in terms of heat transfer and act mostly as humidity control.
d. In hot climates build them underground. Once you get a few feet down the earth's crust is actually pretty cool. Extend large heat sinks into the surrounding terrain to use the earth's natural cooling.
Once again you have a decent idea for homes, but it doesn't scale to the energy requirements of a data center.
e. the source of the problem is the heat generated by equipment, why not design coller equipment instead? This is possible, there just is a lack of motivation to do it
They have. One P4 throwing off 50 watts, but running 200 web servers is a lot more efficient thatn 200 486's.
Sediment on the moons surface from space dust acum's at a known rate. If the universe was all these billions of years old then the estimates were that we should have landed in FIFTY FOUR FEET of the stuff when Apollo 11 touched down.
"""
There is a recent creationist technical paper on this topic which admits that the depth of dust on the moon is concordant with the mainstream age and history of the solar system (Snelling and Rush 1993). Their abstract concludes with:
"It thus appears that the amount of meteoritic dust and meteorite debris in the lunar regolith and surface dust layer, even taking into account the postulated early intense bombardment, does not contradict the evolutionists' multi-billion year timescale (while not proving it). Unfortunately, attempted counter-responses by creationists have so far failed because of spurious arguments or faulty calculations. Thus, until new evidence is forthcoming, creationists should not continue to use the dust on the moon as evidence against an old age for the moon and the solar system."
Even though the creationists themselves have refuted this argument, (and refutations from the mainstream community have been around for at least a decade longer than that), the "moon dust" argument continues to be propagated in their "popular" literature, and continues to appear in talk.origins on a regular basis:
"""
Slashdot Mirror
We're covering this on Poliglut at this
link. Photos and links being updated every few minutes.
The software equivalent of a bridge is a slide rule. It's static, single function, well understood and reliable.
Maybe if evey god damn software project weren't the engineering equvalent of a fucking concept car (along with all the robustness that they have) the software would work like a charm every time you hit a key.
Until then, fat chance. It's still better to have a 90% solution today than a perfect one after you're out of business.
This is right wing hogwash. Monopolies run forever because they eliminate competition. If may get lazy, but that just makes them more likely to resort to illegal tactics, not more likely to go under despite massive market advantages.
That's why he can't site a single example to make his case. Monopolies ran forever, hence the anti-trust laws were required to ensure a vibrant economy.
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Poliglut
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Poliglut
And re-read Steven Levy's book Hackers while you're at it.
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Poliglut
I put yttrium barium copper oxide and perovskite oxide in a room and let them fight it out.
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Poliglut
Hacker missing
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Poliglut
I can.
Of course I work for a major high energy physicis lab, so YMMV...
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Poliglut
I would never suggest anyone evade taxes in a public forum.
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Poliglut
If you are even thinking about $20 then going the contracting route probably won't work out.
I'm not saying that the key to successful business is throwing money away, but just that if you remain focused on $20 then that's all your likely to see.
Specifically, taxes, incorporating, contract law and such should not be done on the basis of a book, even a good one. Spend a couple thousand a year on a good accountant/lawyer (and if you can find a lawyer who is a CPA like mine, then I highly recommend keeping all your business with him).
The other single salient suggestion I have is do as much as you can on barter. If you need a couple boxen for your new lab and your client is a PC shop that needs some wiring hung and a T1 installed then why bother with the cash and associated accounting.
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Poliglut
It sure does. Of course, I'm not about to take your opinion seriously since you cannot, apparently, be trusted to not dick with your own salary if given the chance to do so.
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Poliglut
I bet they can hardly wait!
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Poliglut
The words of the prophets were written by the slashdot trolls.
Still rythmically ok, but more true to the spirit of the original lyrics I think.
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Poliglut
We're investigating disk farms though! That would be cool!
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Poliglut
Power skip
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Poliglut
Nope, my bad tape assumes that sometime a tape and it's redundent copy will go bad. It happens. A lot.
The problem is that tape basically sucks. In the 80's I can't tell you how many hours I spent re-running jobs at NCR because the needed tape and it's backup were trashed. Today I work at a major lab and we're building a PB scale tape farm. Our problem is that we can't find anything sufficiently reliable. Between the falability of the media itself and the firmware in the drives and awful lot can go wrong!
--
Poliglut
But there is futher evidence, isn't there? I mean isn't every YRO story on slashdot about something being stretched and twisted beyond reasonable comprehension by folks who either don't understand technology or are trying to limit rights in order to suit their misguided needs?
Sounds like they're getting what they want so why would they need anything else?
Sorry. I didn't realize you were joking until I read this line again.
Yes, clearly they won't stop with this any more than they stopped at any of the previous points.
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Poliglut
What they are proposing is novel (and significant) in that they are *requiring* that logging be turned on (which on many servers, for many reasons, it is not) *and* that the company spend it's time and money ensuring that the logs persist for seven years. Presumably one gets heavily fined if a backup tape goes bad!
Ok, the backup tape might be a frear mongering, but I can imagine that if a tape goes bad and the gummint finds a memo outlining to backup processes that talks about the cost of media, the half-life of the media selected *and* then chooses to go the cheap route rather than ensure that they comply with the law that a fine for a bad tape is certainly going to happen.
Slippery slope baby, slippery slope.
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Poliglut
So it sounds like it's in the late stages of development at least...
--
Poliglut
The one thing Bush got right was that the problem right now is that there is more demand than supply. He says that means we must explore more and relax environmental standards so we can build up our production capabilities. You say conservation is the way to go.
I say, you're both wrong.
We need to do both of what you guys say, but neither will solve the problem.
The problem was demand exceeding supply. That situation did not come about because we didn't have enought conservation, nor becuase of environmental concerns. The problem came about because energy was so cheap in the early 90's that there was no money in building power plants. There are many now under way (see this story on Poliglut for a graph of the last twenty years), but the reason demand exceeded supply was because there was no money in building new plants for a while and that even now that there is, it takes a while to build them.
P.S. None of this should be taken as an argument against conservation, just that it's a fools paradise to believe it would have helped CA this time.
--
Poliglut
Huh? Anchorage (one of the warmer parts of Alaska), for example, only averages above 65 for nine days in the heat of July, after that it's all downhill.
On the North Slope things are much colder. That same July peak only has them at 46.
--
Poliglut
a. Don't build them in hot climates.
This is the only legit part of the post. Of course, if the cost of energy is less than the cost of labor (remember that a lot of the labor is in hot climates!) then hot climates still make a lost of sense. Labor is your largest cost after all.
b. If you do build them in hot climates you should have to build a large solar panel array on the top of the facility.
That's great as a throw away comment. That solar array isn't going to give you nearly the power you need, nor produce it efficiently. Remember, it's the cost per megawatt that counts and solar isn't cost competative yet even if you could run a data center on only solar.
c. When it's cold outside, open the windows. Nothing is dumber than having the air conditioning on in the winter! If dust bothers you, suck in outside air and filter it.
Think climate control, not air conditioning. The moisture is important too. Opening windows (except in a desert and you already said we can't build there) will corrode all your systems. In the colder days you talk about the air conditioners are very efficient in terms of heat transfer and act mostly as humidity control.
d. In hot climates build them underground. Once you get a few feet down the earth's crust is actually pretty cool. Extend large heat sinks into the surrounding terrain to use the earth's natural cooling.
Once again you have a decent idea for homes, but it doesn't scale to the energy requirements of a data center.
e. the source of the problem is the heat generated by equipment, why not design coller equipment instead? This is possible, there just is a lack of motivation to do it
They have. One P4 throwing off 50 watts, but running 200 web servers is a lot more efficient thatn 200 486's.
--
Poliglut
I guess the current job, er, climate makes this the best time in the last decade to float such a scheme though.
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Poliglut
From the FAQ
"""
There is a recent creationist technical paper on this topic which admits that the depth of dust on the moon is concordant with the mainstream age and history of the solar system (Snelling and Rush 1993). Their abstract concludes with:
"It thus appears that the amount of meteoritic dust and meteorite debris in the lunar regolith and surface dust layer, even taking into account the postulated early intense bombardment, does not contradict the evolutionists' multi-billion year timescale (while not proving it). Unfortunately, attempted counter-responses by creationists have so far failed because of spurious arguments or faulty calculations. Thus, until new evidence is forthcoming, creationists should not continue to use the dust on the moon as evidence against an old age for the moon and the solar system."
Even though the creationists themselves have refuted this argument, (and refutations from the mainstream community have been around for at least a decade longer than that), the "moon dust" argument continues to be propagated in their "popular" literature, and continues to appear in talk.origins on a regular basis:
"""
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Poliglut