In bad form, I'll reply to my own post to add a bit more info:
The difference between the geothermal heat source, and a geothermal heat pump is this: the underground temperatures are not high enough to provide your heating (they're typically 65'F or so, I believe). Pumping 65'F water through your house (after losses along the way) isn't going to do much for you.
But because it is a constant temperature, you can use a heat pump, with refrigerant, a compressor, evaporator, etc., to extract the heat from it. What you get is heat in your house, and a by-product of chilled water, which you pump back into the ground (and is easily dissipated underground). (It's the opposite of your fridge and your air conditioner, which pump the heat in the other direction; the back of your fridge and the outside of your conditioner end up blowing the extracted heat outside.) That compressing and evaporating takes energy itself (air conditioners and fridges aren't cheap to run), so it's not completely free. Places with underground steam (again, such as in Iceland) can use that steam more directly, without requiring the expensive heat pump stage.
(Feel free to correct anything I got wrong, but I think I got gist of things correct...)
This can be done on larger scales, using old coal mines that have been flooded with water. At depth, the water is fairly constant, and the volume of water is large enough, that it can be used as a sink for heat pumps. Here in Nova Scotia, Springhill uses old coal mines to help with heating. From wiki:
The abrupt end of the coal mining industry presented incredible economic challenges to the town. An unexpected legacy and benefit from the closed mines is being realized in geothermal energy. The mines in Springhill were among the deepest in the world at over 14,000 feet below the surface. Since their closure, the mines have filled with ground water which is heated to an average temperature of 18 C (65F) by the surrounding earth. Beginning in the late 1980s, this heat source has been exploited by companies located in Springhill's industrial park, situated on the land where the surface facilities of the coal mines were located, reducing winter heating bills substantially.
Note that this isn't using hot steam deposits as a free geothermal heat source, like much of Iceland. It's simply using the water in the mines as part of a huge geothermal heat pump. A subtle, but important difference. (The former is a greater source of "free heat", whereas the latter still requires heat exchange like a residential heat pump.)
I guess I didn't RTFS summary:) His needs were a bit above the level I talked about, but hopefully the info would be useful for someone who wants the basics.
Yes, the wired-in higher capacity units with appropriate switch can take you off the grid when you need to.
In any case, and especially with the smaller, movable units, I can't emphasize enough that these are carbon-monoxide generating units! Do not keep them inside, or near doors/windows that are open. People have died from using generators; be careful, people... (For installed units, the installer should ensure proper ventilation...)
Depends upon what you want to do... Keep you fridge and toaster and hairdryer going, best get a 5000W beast for several thousand.
But the 1500W Chinese ones you can get for $100 at Wal-Mart work surprisingly well for the basics. (1500W approximately equals a single typical home outlet. So no plugging in the microwave and hairdryer at the same time, but for several lights, a PC, a TV, etc., no problem at all.)
I opted for a bit smoother 1500 unit, from Honda, which adapts its motor speed to the power need, and has amazing soundproofing qualities. You can stand next to it and have a conversation (well, make sure you're in a ventilated area, if you're by the generator). It comes with a price, though, about $1000 (Cdn). Well worth it for the size, smoothness, and quiet.
Previously, had a $100-$200 unit, that was noisy as hell, but got me through Hurricane Juan just fine. (Living in a Cottage with Satellite Internet and Propane heated water, people were coming to visit *me* for Internet, TV, showers, when the power was out for a week.)
Anyhow, I'd at least recommend getting a very basic $100 beast from Wal-Mart. Get a better one if you can afford it, or have higher current demands (keeping your deep freeze or well pump going). You might want to run your PC through a surge suppressor when using the generator, as the power can be "dirtier." (Although PC's use switching power supplies which really should handle most crud quite nicely.)
A generator is great peace of mind. The same thing happened last Christmas when my mom came to visit; power went out. So we switched the roast to the BBQ, fire up the generator, and continued our festivities as if nothing happened...
It's not just an expression, but a truly valuable thing...
The first (interesting) company I worked for, did some boring contracting work for an oil company on DOS (years ago). They hated the DOS environment, so wrote some tools to make it more powerful; this became their bread and butter. They made their own dogfood; ate it, and lived it. All the developers used the product(s) day in, and day out. And the company did well.
It was a powerful lesson, and I saw it as a good measure of how successful a product would be. In other companies I worked for, and companies I started myself, the degree to which management and employees lived and used their own product, was very much tied to the success of the product.
If people in your own company prefer to use technology from elsewhere, so will your customers. Fix the problem, or face up to your shortcomings, which will likely be your downfall.
I'm a big fan of VMWware, VirtualBox, Xen, Parallels, and others...
However, VMWare always seems to be the old standby that just "always works" when the others have one quirk or other than rules them out.
Recently, I had to move a laptop's disk image to a virtual image. I tried dozens of different things to get it working (Norton Ghost, Acronis [great product!]) and so on, but the only thing that finally worked without faulting in one way or another, was using VMWare's took to migrate to a VMWare virtual machine. It's not the first time that the only solution that worked was VMWare's.
Not to say that the others won't patch these few edge cases, and eat VMWare's lunch. It could very well happen. But today, in business, when I want something that works, I'll pay the premium for VMWare, rather than deal with the problems of the less costly (or free) alternatives. Someday that will change. Today, VMWare often is the best solution...
While underground bunkers always fascinate the "urban explorer" side of me, this project seems a bit off target.
First of all, one needs to analyze the risk of damage from attack or other distaster, to that of a competent data center in the U.S..
I was would say the risk of damage to a typical U.S. data center is pretty darn low. Duplicate your stuff between two different highly secure, highly networked data centers in two different cities. If the status of the U.S. infrastructure happens to be that both cities are attacked or disabled to the point that both data centers are down, I would say we're all quite screwed, and have more important things to worry about, such as fallout and nuclear winter.
An obsolete military facility outside of Truro isn't likely to help you that much. I grew up in Truro; nice town, but fairly small, and not likely to have the multiple redundant high speed backbones that you'd get from a Fastservers.net or such.
Also, I think the protection the U.S. military would provide for its cities would far outweigh the capabilities of protecting Truro. (On the other hand, there's the "why would anyone bother bombing Truro" factor; but the same applies to any data center in a remote area of the U.S.)
(On the other hand, if the U.S.'s Internet infrastructure were brought completely down, Nova Scotia does have some direct links to Europe, I believe, which might be spared.)
If integrity of your data is the key factor of importance, that can be solved with redundancy (2x, 3x, or more replication between disparate sites; rsync or database replication to the rescue). If uptime during disaster is your key factor, connectivity to Truro is likely not going to shine as compared to that of towns near major Internet hubs in the U.S..
And if I had to decide between my data being housed in a 45 year old obsolete bunker, or a modern built-from-scratch-for-the-purpose data center, I'd lean towards the latter. Risk from dampness, flooding, and such are all real concerns. (Truro is basically a big basin, which is very prone to flooding; these guys are on the outskirts, so maybe that's not a direct threat.)
A more mundane problem I think they'll have, is that U.S. institutions are highly unlikely to store their critical business data, especially financial data, in another country (they may not even be permitted to do so by law, in some circumstances). Canada's laws, and it's relationship to the U.S. and laws between the countries, hardly parallels Switzerland's banking policies; I think is a false comparison.
The web site of the company seems to indicate it's more of a corporate-oriented startup with a whack of directors and advisors, a few management, a marketing pitch based upon these bunkers, and very few (if any) people with their feet on the ground doing real work.
I wish them well, but beyond the "cool!" factor of old military bunkers, I don't see much of substance. I could be wrong.
I never understood the appeal of password managers. And they tend to be obnoxious, getting in your face until you disable them.
If I have a high security password, I'm not going to want to store it in a browser for two reasons: 1) Someone else with physical accesse to my machine, has access to my stuff; 2) If I don't ever have to type my password, I'll often forget it.
For lower-security passwords, I, like many, simply use the same one that's easy to remember, and used for all those stupid forums and other lightweight places that make you register.
I've just never seen the need... It's definitely one of the most hyped up features that seems to have zero utility to me.
I have mixed feelings on the Everest thing. I guess I can understand people wanting to test their limits, and push themselves. And the isolation and harsh environment can be intruiging.
However, the stories of loved ones, wifes and children, left behind when someone screws up and dies, really make these acts seem selfish at times. (Stories such as the adventurer calling the loved ones on the satellite phone before their inevitable deaths make for good drama, but don't change the fact that it's horribly unnecessary risk for someone with a family...)
If I'm were well enough off to have $65,000 to plunk into a hobby, I think one of my main goals in life would be to stay *alive* and enjoy it:) ("Okay, I made it, I'm succesful; now let's not screw it up and die!")
I have somewhat more sympathy for folks like Steve Fosset who took fairly calculated risks with a lot of safety measures included (and ironically didn't die doing anything particularly dangerous), and potentially pushed some technological research in his quests.
To wax philisophical for a moment, perhaps it's because there aren't a lot of life-risking activities that can greatly advanced mankind these days, as in the days of the explorers. Maybe the same mentality of Columbus (or insert-your-favorite-explorer-here), just doesn't have a satisfying role in today's society, where all the exploring is pretty much done, so these people find these substitue quests to pacify them. ("Deep space astronaut" might be a good calling for these folks, but there's not exactly a lot of openings.)
Or perhaps I just personally don't see the lure of mountain climbing; it's likely other folks I admire, such as more modern transatlantic sailing adventurers (e.g. Joshua Solcum) could be considered to be in the same class, achieving things that tested their limits, but in the end didn't really advance mankind, other than providng some great tales. (See "Sailing around the world alone.")
(Even more off-topic, for a bizarre story about business/financial/PR pressures for a sailing circumnavigation, and the ensuing cheating and resulting insanity, check out Deep Water. A fascinating story, and good documentary on it.)
To each his own, I guess. Intentionally risking hypoxia doesn't sound like that much of a kick to me (although I hear hypoxia is fun, for the few minutes before you die).
Thank you Google, for the 1.4x speed increase. Now it might finally be usable.
Seriously, the beta kicked-ass for performance; there were pages I thought were not functioning (or were loading from cache) because they were so incredibly fast. 40% more performance could be scary:)
If only they'd put some higher priority on OS X. I'm dying for it on OS X. Firefox seems to become a dog and chew up 30% of my CPU most of the time, and lately Opera seems to be doing the same. At least with Chrome if one of the pages causes something similar, I can isolate it and kill the process; with Firefox/Opera I have no idea which page is bogging me down. (Oddly enough, with both, when I close all tabs, the CPU usage stays high; some background JavaScript??? Who knows...)
Browsers have become so bloated, Chrome is a breath of fresh air. And they seem to be addressing the plugins, for those who want to bloat it up themselves:) (Although Firebig on Chrome would be a dream.)
Great, twenty more hours of shakey cam to get dizzy to.
It's too bad they didn't apply this film-school-grade technique in post-production digitally, so they could later re-release a collectors edition, minus the crappy shakey cam. I was so excited about BSC, but can't watch the show, the shakey cam is too distracting. Let your actors and your plot wow your viewers and set the atmosphere, not your wobbly camera. Sigh...
First: Lawyers are expensive. Very expensive. Most working people can't afford them very well, much less research assistants or students.
Second: The average city isn't exactly crawling with competent Intellectual Property lawyers. I would say the typical lawyer would say "huh" and maybe get you some boilerplate legal templates to use, and not really help you much beyond that.
I say stand your ground if you have agreed to nothing so far. Losing you completely gains nothing for them, they will cave in. I've never found it hard to allow organizations or institutions to allow me to keep rights to my software, as long as they get to use it.
So none of the problems that TCP solves affect bittorrent and all the overhead that TCP causes, however small, serves no purpose in this case.
I'm surprised no one has mentioned this, but the overhead of TCP isn't that insignificant, in that hundreds of different and varying TCP connections often overloads and craps out the NAT tables (and general functioning) of many cheap routers. Going to UDP should lighten the stressing of NAT on these routers, and result in a happier network, at least on the user's side of things.
Actually, one other point worth making. SageTV really has the "remote client" thing down. You can buy SageTV Client copies that work on a specific PC/Mac/Linux box. Or, you can buy a "placeshifter" license that keeps track on the central server, how many units are connecting to it. The placeshifter (again) "just works." It finds the media server, it plays the media, handling all the licensing automatically. (If you go beyond the license count, you get a "TRIAL" work printed here and there on your screen.) Placeshift also auto-adapts to the bandwidth available, so you can even use it over the 'net.
Yes, if you never want to pay a dime, Myth is a good option. But the amount of time I put into configuring myth, and the lackluster ability to have multiple network viewing clients, make Sage a good alternative.
Again, sorry if this looks like spam or astroturfing; it's not, I'm just a very happy customer who's been through the SageTV thing.
Disclaimer: I have no affiliate with SageTV (sagetv.com), but am a very satisfied customer.
I've used MythTV for years, doing all the tweaks, upgrades, fixes, as required. I never did get the remotes working as well as they should have, but that's minor.
Then I tried SageTV. It has a lot of the same "spirit" of SageTV, probably because it's largely developed by one person (if I'm not mistaken). It has a lot of Java,.property files, and hooks for plugins, extensions, video subsystems, etc..
It just works, and it works well; better than Sage, I'm sorry to say, but would be lying to say otherwise. Purchasing the server (OS X, Linux, or Windows) gives you official listings (without all the grief of Myth listings).
If you're a Myth fan, I think it's worth checking out. It's not open source, but there comes a time when one has to figure out what's more important; ideology or watching TV:)
I was skeptical of Macs for ages. The switch to OS X intruiged me. The switch to Intel won me over (heck, if it doesn't work, it'll make a good Linux or windows box). But I never boot it into Windows or Linux, it just works so well.
I do most of my development these days in Python (or Perl or Ruby or Java). It all works as expected on OS X.
And Virtualization? Man, does it support virtualization.
Right now, I am running simultaneously (among other things):
- A virtual copy of CentOS, which is serving up SunRay sessions to two SunRay terminals (a test for some thin client pitch I'll be doing) - A virtual of Windows XP, so I can do some verification/validation on a windows.NET app I've been contracted to port to a Web application - Several development apps (Komodo, iTerm's) - Messenger, Word, Excel, Acrobat - Azureus (to ummm, errr., download some Linux distributions) - A bootcamp virtual session with Parallels
And I'm doing this with my MacBook dual display (hooked to a 24" 1680x1050 screen); actually triple-screened, since I'm running a SunRay session next to it (from that virtual CentOS session), linking my mouse/keyboard with Synergy.
It all just works too well... You'll want lots of memory, but that's cheap. I just bumped up to 4g for $100 last week.
I've become a Mac Fanboi, yes. But when I pitch it to someone, it's not out of ego. I don't think it's out of pure fanboi-ism. I honestly want people to know that they can be more productive, they can achieve more with their time, than fighting with the limitations of windows. It sometimes come across as Mac elitism, and I try to fight that.
I did a Mac vs. PC talk last year, well after having been won over. Prior to the talk, the PC guys were fussing with the projector, making sure it would work with their laptops. They politely asked if I would like to try out my Mac before the presentation. I honestly (without trying to be smug) told them it wouldn't be necessary. I've never once experienced a situation where plugging in a projector external monitor hasn't immediately worked, and as expected. It just wasn't necessary to test. And that's a bit symbolic of how things (generally) work on OS X.
There are some drawbacks. Some stuff just won't compile/work under OS X. X window support feels (and is) tacked on. Python/Tkinter is a bit painful natively. Leopard had some growing pains, and some apps (mostly old games) won't work. I find the odd bit of grief like that here and there; but people are working on those things. And if something really sucks, I just fire up a virtual box with Linux, and do my thing from there. (It's quite rare I have to do that, but I have, on occasion.)
At the end of the day, I don't *care* what people use from an idological standpoint. Hell, Apple's been pulling some MS-like anticompetitive boners lately (shutting down iPhone apps, among others). But the fact is, I work *better* in this environment, and I kind of like to share with my fellow men (and women) developers, how much better they too could be working. If they think I'm just a fanboi freak, fine; their loss, really.
But I think most serious developers would benefit from checking it out.
Migrations to Linux from Windows 3.1? If you had an existing app out there, already developed, already deployed, would you convert it to run on Linux, or simply pick the next-supported Windows OS (98 if it's available, XP if necessary). That's a better way to ensure compatibility, stability (well, at least as much as 3.1 was providing).
A conversion to another OS is likely to create more bugs/instability, even if the OS is more stable itself. I doubt we'll see a noticable bump in Linux embedded adoption because of this.
(That being said, freeing themselves of licensing costs, and the possibility of using Wine for backwards compatibility are certainly worth exploring for any such companies.)
If I were a conspiracy theorist, who believed that the results of the elections were rigged or riggable through electronic voting machines, I might believe that the delay in replacing them is to get one last election through before scrapping them, since they know the jig is up on that scam.
It's not as though coming up with, and deploying a paper-based system is anything new, or requires any special rocket science...
Unless you're a shop developing XBOX games, don't do it. Period.
I've had bad experiences, all around, with allowing gaming in the office.
We used to have Friday afternoon pizza parties and gaming sessions at work. The gaming-at-work habit grew (whenever my back was turned), and it seriously hurt productivity. Gaming can be addictive, time-consuming, and distracting. Endorsing it in any form, opens the door for rationalizing gameplay when people should be working.
We stopped doing that, and actually had to let a couple of people go (turns out their PC's were loaded with 95% games, 5% work). Things were much better after we broke that habit.
Also, spoiling people too much gives them a sense of entitlement which can be hard to deal with later.
Have a Christmas Party or summer gettogether with a bunch of network games set up; that's a lot of fun, and keeps it separate from work. That always worked well for us.
I remember the first computer I ever saw, on display in a mall, circa 1975-76. Some homebrew thing, probably about as beefy as a VIC-20. It was playing the old "guess the card" game: think of a card? Is it red? Is it a spade? Is it higher than 8? And so forth, guessing your card fairly quickly (basic binary search).
At 9 years old, I thought that was pretty cool. My dad bought me a few computer mags of the day (Creative Computing and the like), and I got the gist of basic. I remember writing out my first "program" in a Hilroy scribbler, trying to clone what that computer did. Basically 52 or so IF/ELSE statements for every case. Brute force, but hey, I was 9. When I learned that I could use variables to reduce it to a few lines of code, I was hooked; there was no going back.
Got my first computer, an Exidy Sorcerer (Z-80, 1Mhz or so), and had a great time learning the ins and out, writing and selling a few games, pimping it out, and pushing it to the limits. Even got a job (at 11) working on an APL Interpreter for the Z-80. (I was basically paid in hardware:).
On through the PC generation, university, 286, 386, a career in programming, emergence of the Internet, founding a.COM (worth $100M on paper at one time, whoo hoo, damn paper:), and two more subsequent companies.
But it all really started seeing that 8080 play a simple game of "guess the card." If it weren't for seeing that, and getting inspired, who knows where the career might have led.
I'm not sure if today's games could inspire kids in the simple way that old game did for me. The skills and techniques involved in a modern rendered game are so far beyond the grasp of the average kid, the inspiration might be lost, requiring too great a leap to "get it."
Come on,/. editors, I'm pretty sure the proper English word is "ginormous" (as in gigantic), not "gynormous" (as in a big thing that spins really fast). Look it up.
I might be wrong but isn't the temperature of space absolut zero. How can you get colder than absolut zero? Can someone with knowledge of the subject matter be so kind to explain?
So a lot of people are saying ZFS is a great solution for a number of the issues brought up in the article.
ZFS isn't available on Linux due to incompatibilities of the CDDL, and Linux's GPL license.
CDDL is (in my opinion) more "free" than GPL (which forces redistribution of code; but let's avoid that debate right now.)
Okay, so if ZFS can't be bundled in a Linux distribution and redistributed while maintaining a GPL license, fair enough. But what is stopping anyone from doing the port, and providing ZFS as a freely distributed, do-what-you-want-with package, that installs and runs fine on Linux. If a user chooses to take this freely licensed ZFS and compile/link/install it on their Linux system, that is none of Linux/GPL's business.
Yes, redistribution is thwarted by the GPL, but why would install-it-yourself be problematic? I'd settle for that. Why isn't this available? Why hasn't anyone finished a port that can be used in this manner?
It's interesting how people generally see space as an unforgiving, hostile, and hard place to perform travel, far more so than the oceans. I guess it's further away, most of us will never experience it, so it holds more mystery.
But it's really mind-numbing how much harder it is to handle the pressure of the ocean depths. The difference between our normal atmospheric pressure (1 atmosphere) and space (0 atmospheres) is tiny as compared to the Marianas Trench at 1000 atmospheres. A depth of only 10M in water results in the same atmospheric differential as space vs. earth.
It's sad that Fossett didn't get the chance to further explore these depths; hopefully someone will pick up where he left off.
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In bad form, I'll reply to my own post to add a bit more info:
The difference between the geothermal heat source, and a geothermal heat pump is this: the underground temperatures are not high enough to provide your heating (they're typically 65'F or so, I believe). Pumping 65'F water through your house (after losses along the way) isn't going to do much for you.
But because it is a constant temperature, you can use a heat pump, with refrigerant, a compressor, evaporator, etc., to extract the heat from it. What you get is heat in your house, and a by-product of chilled water, which you pump back into the ground (and is easily dissipated underground). (It's the opposite of your fridge and your air conditioner, which pump the heat in the other direction; the back of your fridge and the outside of your conditioner end up blowing the extracted heat outside.) That compressing and evaporating takes energy itself (air conditioners and fridges aren't cheap to run), so it's not completely free. Places with underground steam (again, such as in Iceland) can use that steam more directly, without requiring the expensive heat pump stage.
(Feel free to correct anything I got wrong, but I think I got gist of things correct...)
This can be done on larger scales, using old coal mines that have been flooded with water. At depth, the water is fairly constant, and the volume of water is large enough, that it can be used as a sink for heat pumps. Here in Nova Scotia, Springhill uses old coal mines to help with heating. From wiki:
Note that this isn't using hot steam deposits as a free geothermal heat source, like much of Iceland. It's simply using the water in the mines as part of a huge geothermal heat pump. A subtle, but important difference. (The former is a greater source of "free heat", whereas the latter still requires heat exchange like a residential heat pump.)
I guess I didn't RTFS summary :) His needs were a bit above the level I talked about, but hopefully the info would be useful for someone who wants the basics.
Yes, the wired-in higher capacity units with appropriate switch can take you off the grid when you need to.
In any case, and especially with the smaller, movable units, I can't emphasize enough that these are carbon-monoxide generating units! Do not keep them inside, or near doors/windows that are open. People have died from using generators; be careful, people... (For installed units, the installer should ensure proper ventilation...)
Depends upon what you want to do... Keep you fridge and toaster and hairdryer going, best get a 5000W beast for several thousand.
But the 1500W Chinese ones you can get for $100 at Wal-Mart work surprisingly well for the basics. (1500W approximately equals a single typical home outlet. So no plugging in the microwave and hairdryer at the same time, but for several lights, a PC, a TV, etc., no problem at all.)
I opted for a bit smoother 1500 unit, from Honda, which adapts its motor speed to the power need, and has amazing soundproofing qualities. You can stand next to it and have a conversation (well, make sure you're in a ventilated area, if you're by the generator). It comes with a price, though, about $1000 (Cdn). Well worth it for the size, smoothness, and quiet.
Previously, had a $100-$200 unit, that was noisy as hell, but got me through Hurricane Juan just fine. (Living in a Cottage with Satellite Internet and Propane heated water, people were coming to visit *me* for Internet, TV, showers, when the power was out for a week.)
Anyhow, I'd at least recommend getting a very basic $100 beast from Wal-Mart. Get a better one if you can afford it, or have higher current demands (keeping your deep freeze or well pump going). You might want to run your PC through a surge suppressor when using the generator, as the power can be "dirtier." (Although PC's use switching power supplies which really should handle most crud quite nicely.)
A generator is great peace of mind. The same thing happened last Christmas when my mom came to visit; power went out. So we switched the roast to the BBQ, fire up the generator, and continued our festivities as if nothing happened...
It's not just an expression, but a truly valuable thing...
The first (interesting) company I worked for, did some boring contracting work for an oil company on DOS (years ago). They hated the DOS environment, so wrote some tools to make it more powerful; this became their bread and butter. They made their own dogfood; ate it, and lived it. All the developers used the product(s) day in, and day out. And the company did well.
It was a powerful lesson, and I saw it as a good measure of how successful a product would be. In other companies I worked for, and companies I started myself, the degree to which management and employees lived and used their own product, was very much tied to the success of the product.
If people in your own company prefer to use technology from elsewhere, so will your customers. Fix the problem, or face up to your shortcomings, which will likely be your downfall.
I'm a big fan of VMWware, VirtualBox, Xen, Parallels, and others...
However, VMWare always seems to be the old standby that just "always works" when the others have one quirk or other than rules them out.
Recently, I had to move a laptop's disk image to a virtual image. I tried dozens of different things to get it working (Norton Ghost, Acronis [great product!]) and so on, but the only thing that finally worked without faulting in one way or another, was using VMWare's took to migrate to a VMWare virtual machine. It's not the first time that the only solution that worked was VMWare's.
Not to say that the others won't patch these few edge cases, and eat VMWare's lunch. It could very well happen. But today, in business, when I want something that works, I'll pay the premium for VMWare, rather than deal with the problems of the less costly (or free) alternatives. Someday that will change. Today, VMWare often is the best solution...
While underground bunkers always fascinate the "urban explorer" side of me, this project seems a bit off target.
First of all, one needs to analyze the risk of damage from attack or other distaster, to that of a competent data center in the U.S..
I was would say the risk of damage to a typical U.S. data center is pretty darn low. Duplicate your stuff between two different highly secure, highly networked data centers in two different cities. If the status of the U.S. infrastructure happens to be that both cities are attacked or disabled to the point that both data centers are down, I would say we're all quite screwed, and have more important things to worry about, such as fallout and nuclear winter.
An obsolete military facility outside of Truro isn't likely to help you that much. I grew up in Truro; nice town, but fairly small, and not likely to have the multiple redundant high speed backbones that you'd get from a Fastservers.net or such.
Also, I think the protection the U.S. military would provide for its cities would far outweigh the capabilities of protecting Truro. (On the other hand, there's the "why would anyone bother bombing Truro" factor; but the same applies to any data center in a remote area of the U.S.)
(On the other hand, if the U.S.'s Internet infrastructure were brought completely down, Nova Scotia does have some direct links to Europe, I believe, which might be spared.)
If integrity of your data is the key factor of importance, that can be solved with redundancy (2x, 3x, or more replication between disparate sites; rsync or database replication to the rescue). If uptime during disaster is your key factor, connectivity to Truro is likely not going to shine as compared to that of towns near major Internet hubs in the U.S..
And if I had to decide between my data being housed in a 45 year old obsolete bunker, or a modern built-from-scratch-for-the-purpose data center, I'd lean towards the latter. Risk from dampness, flooding, and such are all real concerns. (Truro is basically a big basin, which is very prone to flooding; these guys are on the outskirts, so maybe that's not a direct threat.)
A more mundane problem I think they'll have, is that U.S. institutions are highly unlikely to store their critical business data, especially financial data, in another country (they may not even be permitted to do so by law, in some circumstances). Canada's laws, and it's relationship to the U.S. and laws between the countries, hardly parallels Switzerland's banking policies; I think is a false comparison.
The web site of the company seems to indicate it's more of a corporate-oriented startup with a whack of directors and advisors, a few management, a marketing pitch based upon these bunkers, and very few (if any) people with their feet on the ground doing real work.
I wish them well, but beyond the "cool!" factor of old military bunkers, I don't see much of substance. I could be wrong.
I never understood the appeal of password managers. And they tend to be obnoxious, getting in your face until you disable them.
If I have a high security password, I'm not going to want to store it in a browser for two reasons: 1) Someone else with physical accesse to my machine, has access to my stuff; 2) If I don't ever have to type my password, I'll often forget it.
For lower-security passwords, I, like many, simply use the same one that's easy to remember, and used for all those stupid forums and other lightweight places that make you register.
I've just never seen the need... It's definitely one of the most hyped up features that seems to have zero utility to me.
I have mixed feelings on the Everest thing. I guess I can understand people wanting to test their limits, and push themselves. And the isolation and harsh environment can be intruiging.
However, the stories of loved ones, wifes and children, left behind when someone screws up and dies, really make these acts seem selfish at times. (Stories such as the adventurer calling the loved ones on the satellite phone before their inevitable deaths make for good drama, but don't change the fact that it's horribly unnecessary risk for someone with a family...)
If I'm were well enough off to have $65,000 to plunk into a hobby, I think one of my main goals in life would be to stay *alive* and enjoy it :) ("Okay, I made it, I'm succesful; now let's not screw it up and die!")
I have somewhat more sympathy for folks like Steve Fosset who took fairly calculated risks with a lot of safety measures included (and ironically didn't die doing anything particularly dangerous), and potentially pushed some technological research in his quests.
To wax philisophical for a moment, perhaps it's because there aren't a lot of life-risking activities that can greatly advanced mankind these days, as in the days of the explorers. Maybe the same mentality of Columbus (or insert-your-favorite-explorer-here), just doesn't have a satisfying role in today's society, where all the exploring is pretty much done, so these people find these substitue quests to pacify them. ("Deep space astronaut" might be a good calling for these folks, but there's not exactly a lot of openings.)
Or perhaps I just personally don't see the lure of mountain climbing; it's likely other folks I admire, such as more modern transatlantic sailing adventurers (e.g. Joshua Solcum) could be considered to be in the same class, achieving things that tested their limits, but in the end didn't really advance mankind, other than providng some great tales. (See "Sailing around the world alone.")
(Even more off-topic, for a bizarre story about business/financial/PR pressures for a sailing circumnavigation, and the ensuing cheating and resulting insanity, check out Deep Water. A fascinating story, and good documentary on it.)
To each his own, I guess. Intentionally risking hypoxia doesn't sound like that much of a kick to me (although I hear hypoxia is fun, for the few minutes before you die).
Oh come on people, mod parent up, that was funny. Whooosh! I have mod points, but posted in this thread, so can't. Wah.
Thank you Google, for the 1.4x speed increase. Now it might finally be usable.
Seriously, the beta kicked-ass for performance; there were pages I thought were not functioning (or were loading from cache) because they were so incredibly fast. 40% more performance could be scary :)
If only they'd put some higher priority on OS X. I'm dying for it on OS X. Firefox seems to become a dog and chew up 30% of my CPU most of the time, and lately Opera seems to be doing the same. At least with Chrome if one of the pages causes something similar, I can isolate it and kill the process; with Firefox/Opera I have no idea which page is bogging me down. (Oddly enough, with both, when I close all tabs, the CPU usage stays high; some background JavaScript??? Who knows...)
Browsers have become so bloated, Chrome is a breath of fresh air. And they seem to be addressing the plugins, for those who want to bloat it up themselves :) (Although Firebig on Chrome would be a dream.)
Still praying daily for Chrome on OS X...
Great, twenty more hours of shakey cam to get dizzy to.
It's too bad they didn't apply this film-school-grade technique in post-production digitally, so they could later re-release a collectors edition, minus the crappy shakey cam. I was so excited about BSC, but can't watch the show, the shakey cam is too distracting. Let your actors and your plot wow your viewers and set the atmosphere, not your wobbly camera. Sigh...
Two things:
First: Lawyers are expensive. Very expensive. Most working people can't afford them very well, much less research assistants or students.
Second: The average city isn't exactly crawling with competent Intellectual Property lawyers. I would say the typical lawyer would say "huh" and maybe get you some boilerplate legal templates to use, and not really help you much beyond that.
I say stand your ground if you have agreed to nothing so far. Losing you completely gains nothing for them, they will cave in. I've never found it hard to allow organizations or institutions to allow me to keep rights to my software, as long as they get to use it.
I'm surprised no one has mentioned this, but the overhead of TCP isn't that insignificant, in that hundreds of different and varying TCP connections often overloads and craps out the NAT tables (and general functioning) of many cheap routers. Going to UDP should lighten the stressing of NAT on these routers, and result in a happier network, at least on the user's side of things.
Actually, one other point worth making. SageTV really has the "remote client" thing down. You can buy SageTV Client copies that work on a specific PC/Mac/Linux box. Or, you can buy a "placeshifter" license that keeps track on the central server, how many units are connecting to it. The placeshifter (again) "just works." It finds the media server, it plays the media, handling all the licensing automatically. (If you go beyond the license count, you get a "TRIAL" work printed here and there on your screen.) Placeshift also auto-adapts to the bandwidth available, so you can even use it over the 'net.
Yes, if you never want to pay a dime, Myth is a good option. But the amount of time I put into configuring myth, and the lackluster ability to have multiple network viewing clients, make Sage a good alternative.
Again, sorry if this looks like spam or astroturfing; it's not, I'm just a very happy customer who's been through the SageTV thing.
Disclaimer: I have no affiliate with SageTV (sagetv.com), but am a very satisfied customer.
I've used MythTV for years, doing all the tweaks, upgrades, fixes, as required. I never did get the remotes working as well as they should have, but that's minor.
Then I tried SageTV. It has a lot of the same "spirit" of SageTV, probably because it's largely developed by one person (if I'm not mistaken). It has a lot of Java, .property files, and hooks for plugins, extensions, video subsystems, etc..
It just works, and it works well; better than Sage, I'm sorry to say, but would be lying to say otherwise. Purchasing the server (OS X, Linux, or Windows) gives you official listings (without all the grief of Myth listings).
If you're a Myth fan, I think it's worth checking out. It's not open source, but there comes a time when one has to figure out what's more important; ideology or watching TV :)
I was skeptical of Macs for ages. The switch to OS X intruiged me. The switch to Intel won me over (heck, if it doesn't work, it'll make a good Linux or windows box). But I never boot it into Windows or Linux, it just works so well.
I do most of my development these days in Python (or Perl or Ruby or Java). It all works as expected on OS X.
And Virtualization? Man, does it support virtualization.
Right now, I am running simultaneously (among other things):
- A virtual copy of CentOS, which is serving up SunRay sessions to two SunRay terminals (a test for some thin client pitch I'll be doing) .NET app I've been contracted to port to a Web application
- A virtual of Windows XP, so I can do some verification/validation on a windows
- Several development apps (Komodo, iTerm's)
- Messenger, Word, Excel, Acrobat
- Azureus (to ummm, errr., download some Linux distributions)
- A bootcamp virtual session with Parallels
And I'm doing this with my MacBook dual display (hooked to a 24" 1680x1050 screen); actually triple-screened, since I'm running a SunRay session next to it (from that virtual CentOS session), linking my mouse/keyboard with Synergy.
It all just works too well... You'll want lots of memory, but that's cheap. I just bumped up to 4g for $100 last week.
I've become a Mac Fanboi, yes. But when I pitch it to someone, it's not out of ego. I don't think it's out of pure fanboi-ism. I honestly want people to know that they can be more productive, they can achieve more with their time, than fighting with the limitations of windows. It sometimes come across as Mac elitism, and I try to fight that.
I did a Mac vs. PC talk last year, well after having been won over. Prior to the talk, the PC guys were fussing with the projector, making sure it would work with their laptops. They politely asked if I would like to try out my Mac before the presentation. I honestly (without trying to be smug) told them it wouldn't be necessary. I've never once experienced a situation where plugging in a projector external monitor hasn't immediately worked, and as expected. It just wasn't necessary to test. And that's a bit symbolic of how things (generally) work on OS X.
There are some drawbacks. Some stuff just won't compile/work under OS X. X window support feels (and is) tacked on. Python/Tkinter is a bit painful natively. Leopard had some growing pains, and some apps (mostly old games) won't work. I find the odd bit of grief like that here and there; but people are working on those things. And if something really sucks, I just fire up a virtual box with Linux, and do my thing from there. (It's quite rare I have to do that, but I have, on occasion.)
At the end of the day, I don't *care* what people use from an idological standpoint. Hell, Apple's been pulling some MS-like anticompetitive boners lately (shutting down iPhone apps, among others). But the fact is, I work *better* in this environment, and I kind of like to share with my fellow men (and women) developers, how much better they too could be working. If they think I'm just a fanboi freak, fine; their loss, really.
But I think most serious developers would benefit from checking it out.
Migrations to Linux from Windows 3.1? If you had an existing app out there, already developed, already deployed, would you convert it to run on Linux, or simply pick the next-supported Windows OS (98 if it's available, XP if necessary). That's a better way to ensure compatibility, stability (well, at least as much as 3.1 was providing).
A conversion to another OS is likely to create more bugs/instability, even if the OS is more stable itself. I doubt we'll see a noticable bump in Linux embedded adoption because of this.
(That being said, freeing themselves of licensing costs, and the possibility of using Wine for backwards compatibility are certainly worth exploring for any such companies.)
Why scrap them *after* the Presidendial election?
If I were a conspiracy theorist, who believed that the results of the elections were rigged or riggable through electronic voting machines, I might believe that the delay in replacing them is to get one last election through before scrapping them, since they know the jig is up on that scam.
It's not as though coming up with, and deploying a paper-based system is anything new, or requires any special rocket science...
Unless you're a shop developing XBOX games, don't do it. Period.
I've had bad experiences, all around, with allowing gaming in the office.
We used to have Friday afternoon pizza parties and gaming sessions at work. The gaming-at-work habit grew (whenever my back was turned), and it seriously hurt productivity. Gaming can be addictive, time-consuming, and distracting. Endorsing it in any form, opens the door for rationalizing gameplay when people should be working.
We stopped doing that, and actually had to let a couple of people go (turns out their PC's were loaded with 95% games, 5% work). Things were much better after we broke that habit.
Also, spoiling people too much gives them a sense of entitlement which can be hard to deal with later.
Have a Christmas Party or summer gettogether with a bunch of network games set up; that's a lot of fun, and keeps it separate from work. That always worked well for us.
I remember the first computer I ever saw, on display in a mall, circa 1975-76. Some homebrew thing, probably about as beefy as a VIC-20. It was playing the old "guess the card" game: think of a card? Is it red? Is it a spade? Is it higher than 8? And so forth, guessing your card fairly quickly (basic binary search).
At 9 years old, I thought that was pretty cool. My dad bought me a few computer mags of the day (Creative Computing and the like), and I got the gist of basic. I remember writing out my first "program" in a Hilroy scribbler, trying to clone what that computer did. Basically 52 or so IF/ELSE statements for every case. Brute force, but hey, I was 9. When I learned that I could use variables to reduce it to a few lines of code, I was hooked; there was no going back.
Got my first computer, an Exidy Sorcerer (Z-80, 1Mhz or so), and had a great time learning the ins and out, writing and selling a few games, pimping it out, and pushing it to the limits. Even got a job (at 11) working on an APL Interpreter for the Z-80. (I was basically paid in hardware :).
On through the PC generation, university, 286, 386, a career in programming, emergence of the Internet, founding a .COM (worth $100M on paper at one time, whoo hoo, damn paper :), and two more subsequent companies.
But it all really started seeing that 8080 play a simple game of "guess the card." If it weren't for seeing that, and getting inspired, who knows where the career might have led.
I'm not sure if today's games could inspire kids in the simple way that old game did for me. The skills and techniques involved in a modern rendered game are so far beyond the grasp of the average kid, the inspiration might be lost, requiring too great a leap to "get it."
Come on, /. editors, I'm pretty sure the proper English word is "ginormous" (as in gigantic), not "gynormous" (as in a big thing that spins really fast). Look it up.
Absolut Zero you say? Mmmmmm, Absolut Zero...
So a lot of people are saying ZFS is a great solution for a number of the issues brought up in the article.
ZFS isn't available on Linux due to incompatibilities of the CDDL, and Linux's GPL license.
CDDL is (in my opinion) more "free" than GPL (which forces redistribution of code; but let's avoid that debate right now.)
Okay, so if ZFS can't be bundled in a Linux distribution and redistributed while maintaining a GPL license, fair enough. But what is stopping anyone from doing the port, and providing ZFS as a freely distributed, do-what-you-want-with package, that installs and runs fine on Linux. If a user chooses to take this freely licensed ZFS and compile/link/install it on their Linux system, that is none of Linux/GPL's business.
Yes, redistribution is thwarted by the GPL, but why would install-it-yourself be problematic? I'd settle for that. Why isn't this available? Why hasn't anyone finished a port that can be used in this manner?
Not trolling, honestly curious about it...
It's interesting how people generally see space as an unforgiving, hostile, and hard place to perform travel, far more so than the oceans. I guess it's further away, most of us will never experience it, so it holds more mystery.
But it's really mind-numbing how much harder it is to handle the pressure of the ocean depths. The difference between our normal atmospheric pressure (1 atmosphere) and space (0 atmospheres) is tiny as compared to the Marianas Trench at 1000 atmospheres. A depth of only 10M in water results in the same atmospheric differential as space vs. earth.
It's sad that Fossett didn't get the chance to further explore these depths; hopefully someone will pick up where he left off.