And they provide a packaged solution, that most network engineers recognize and know how to manage, troubleshoot... meaning it will be easier to find/hire people to help manage it, than some custom home-brewed solution?
Lower long-term operational expenses, hardware is darn proven (fewer operational risks than you have buying commodity desktop parts), and you can get a support contract, usually (or opt to save money upfront by finding equipment and replacement parts in the aftermarket).
Many of the low-end routers 26xx are pure software switching. But they can still perform better than Linux, because the OS is designed solely for that purpose, which means performance optimizations too.
Linux is more of a jack of all trades.
Forwarding performance and operation as a network device isn't a central design goal in the linux Kernel.
Show me the Franken' Catalyst 2950/6500 Sup720 3BXL, Franken Cisco 12006, or Franken Juniper M7i/M320, and then I'll be impressed. Your desktop PC will not contain TCAM
or other components required for a minimal level of forwarding performance needed by an ISP.
After all these years, a desktop PC still cannot perform the task of a simple 8 port switch, at nearly the same packet rates as the switch.
The packet rates that can occur on an Ethernet network easily overwhelm the desktop PC's limited interrupt capacity and memory I/O bus bottlenecks.
For an Enterprise branch office edge a desktop router is fine. Because Enterprises only buy a limited amount of capacity from an ISP.
Also, Enterprise branch offices have only clients, not servers, so they aren't really subject to a DoS (rejecting unwanted packets is half as expensive as fully forwarding normal packets).
Of course, Enterprise server farms never use a firewall at the edge on the path into the servers, unless the periodic unavailability due to DoS attack taking out the firewall is not an issue.
But for an ISP, if you are planning on being a serious ISP, your core business is providing a professional service. Use a well-designed solution, not something you've cobbled together from off-the-shelf parts.
You get real value buying gear that performs forwarding in hardware
In the long run, one 24 hour outage or service degradation, can cost more than engineering the network properly, and using good managed pieces.
The fact of the matter is the FrankenPIX was based on the original PIX platform, and Enterprise firewall, that used to be just a PC with some fancy packaging and a proprietary flash card. That platform has been obsolete for many years, and is not suitable for an ISP, anyways.
In case you didn't know, Firewalls like the original PIX can't handle that much traffic, and they are easily DoSed into oblivion by a simple flood.
Anyways, decent gear for service providers these days offloads work to hardware. And runs on a real-time OS that can provide something closer to a service level guarantee than a commodity OS can.
In case you didn't know... Linux is not a real-time OS, and cannot provide timing guarantees a RTOS can.
Generic Linux running on commodity hardware cannot provide proper separation between control plane and forwarding plane.
For certain very important functions, a commodity PC simply can't match the performance of a dedicated ASIC.
You can talk BGP all you want, but you can't reliably forward 30,000 pps through a commodity PC, or push speeds higher than approximately 200megs, due to interrupt contention.
There is also the matter of reliability of the hardware...
Commodity desktop parts are not designed to run 24x7, and they fail frequently.
Physical failure in routers is rarer, unless there are environmental issues, or the equipment is old.
Blind people can surf the web just fine. Ever heard of a screen reader?
Yes, I have.
It can't "read" the diagram the professor posted to his website for some computer graphics class in the form of a SVG or PNG file.
Screen readers can only make text accessible.
Almost all websites make heavy use of graphics that cannot be consumed by a screen reader in a meaningful way.
Screen readers also suck, when sites use MMN with ample amount of flash-enhanced content.
I fail to see how this is "dumbing down". What can you do with a kindle that you can't with dead tree books, or resources on the net?
Search, for one.
For two, you can easily bookmark, highlight, and annotate bits of text on a kindle, without destroying your physical books.
There are a lot of things you can do with a kindle that you can't do with a printed book.
One of the more important things is you can store a lot of books on one device, without having to carry 50lbs of materials into a classroom.
So you can have lots of 'sources' with you, and look up information in a much less time-consuming way that might be more suitable for a classroom environment, where classes meet for limited amounts of time...
There are KVM over IP remote access units that use a similar keystroke.
In a 3am emergency you won't be able to remote console into the datacenter KVM and switch over to the desired console, because the "Switch key"'s gone on the new Lenovo you got stuck with...
Re:HTML5 for the win? Sorry, that's not a codec.
on
YouTube Revamp Imminent?
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Is Ogg not done?
A format that is in constant flux, is not stable, and not ready yet.
Only a mature version of the spec should be used, one that the software industry already has positive implementation experience with.
Of course HTML5 should mention a specific minimum base version of the Ogg spec.
Renderers may support future versions of Ogg that validated by the W3C, but the renderer implementation must be backwards-compatible (able to read Ogg files made using an encoder that followed the old version).
And changes must be forwards compatible, so that a file encoded in the new format can still be properly played by a browser implementing the minimal version of Ogg, at a similar quality level.
Professors commonly use materials in class that aren't available in braille form.
But this might be because classes are normally small and I never had a blind person in my class in 4 years...
Maybe there aren't that many blind people at public universities, and dumbing down education for everyone just to make things more convenient for a small fraction of the population, is unreasonable?
I can think of a lot of accomadations that are more reasonable than globally restricting the medium that may be used in classrooms.
If the kindle is to be banned on this basis, then this must apply to other eBook readers too, and other electronic media, such as the use of web/internet-based sites as resources.
Sorry folks, all professors with a "class web page" must now turn these off, since blind and quadroplegic folken can't surf the web anyways.
No actual art can be displayed in 'visual arts appreciation class', to ensure blind people have a fair shot at an A.
And... also, no actual music will be allowed in music appreciation class, to ensure equal access by deaf people.
Yeah... it's even more discriminatory that students in a classroom are allowed to use pen and paper to take notes
Blind people don't have access to these convenient aids...
They only have less-convenient methods such as engraving patterns, a task that takes a lot longer... with poorer notes that can be taken in the same time, or no notes at all, how can the blind person be expected to perform comparably to a sighted person?
Going back to the original braille text to study?!
Calculus tests, advanced maths, and similar...
imagine the difficulties, with no easy way of making scratch work.
The idea that Blind persons should have identical access to everything is absurd.
Their handicap makes it impossible for them to have identical access.
Anyways, giving the blind access to materials, never meant reducing the level of access to materials of an ordinary person.
The Kindle does not reduce anyone's access to materials.. a blind person can't read a printed book anymore than they can read a kindle.
So using a kindle instead of a printed book is a NO-OP.
Re:HTML5 for the win? Sorry, that's not a codec.
on
YouTube Revamp Imminent?
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Open Source fans including Mozilla support it, while owners of other video codecs of course think they shouldn't be locked out.
Isn't it ironic that owners of other video codecs who are renowned for locking the public out of their formats,
by keeping them secret, or trying to charge fees for their use, now don't "want" to be locked out?
If they want their codec to be one included by an open standard such as HTML5, then the absolute requirement should be that they open their codec's specifications and make implementation of the codec gratis of any royalties, and just as free and open as the HTML recommendation.
I don't want to exclude any codec who will do that.
But the standards bodies owe it to the internet to exclude any codec who refuses to do that, and to recognize the popular codecs who will do that, by choosing the most suitable ones for inclusion as a critical element for video-enabled HTML5 renderers.
Someone happened to have the same shift 24 hours every other day and got suspicious, when the 48-hour-long video loop showed them the exact same people walking by 3 days in a row, maybe?
Simply put, the U.S. will not ever voluntarily turn off GPS signals within U.S. borders. I highly doubt they would even re-enable SA.
Well, never say never. If the US thinks Korea is launching some missiles at the US, and using GPS for guidance, you bet they will shut down the standard GPS service. It's not as if the nature of GPS permits the satellites to exclude certain regions from accessing it, either.
What I want to know is why the U.S. didn't shut off LORAN-C as soon as cheap GPS receivers were widely available. All military vessels had GPS receivers not long after the constellation was active. GPS is extremely reliable: You need a minimum of 4 satellites in view to get an accurate position
Huh? No it's not. In fact, GPS is notoriously unreliable.
It's more accurate, when you manage to get a reading from 4 satellites, but you are more likely to be unable to get any reading, especially under adverse weather conditions, thunderstorms, periods of high solar activity, etc.
It's so bad, that many GPS receivers include tricks like inertial navigation as an assist or re-using the old altitude, in order to estimate position using 2 or 3 satellites.
And that the functionality to display (less reliable) information is necessary for GPS receivers to be particularly useful in many situations.
This is before we count the possibility of solar storm activity, electromagnetic activity near the satellites, or other acts of god, destroying satellites in orbit.
In case you haven't noticed, getting GPS reception can be quite difficult, especially in urban areas, and forested areas, and locations lacking a direct line of site to satellites..
GPS is also subject to radio frequency interference, and is easily jammed.
LORAN-C is much more resistant to jamming attempts.
LORAN-C is more reliable under a greater variety of conditions. It is more suitable for applications with high-reliability requirements, particularly where human safety, or security may depend on the position locating technology.
I'm saying Google could put primarily just stateless frontend servers in China.
Of course, as always, any traffic to backend servers crossing the public internet, gets tunneled over a dedicated encrypted channel.
By stateless, I mean, the complete state of actual FE servers is read-only in china.
And if the chassis intrusion alarm trips on any server or piece of gear, that piece of gear is rigged to destroy its physical authentication key material.
Does anyone else see the irony? in using LORAN US implements selective availability, when LORAN is only accurate to 200m ?
Selective availability was a (currently disabled) feature of GPS that adds intentional errors up to 100 meters / 328.08 ft to publicly
available GPS signal...
Before SA was turned off in 2000 the typical SA errors were 32ft horizontal, 98ft vertical.
One thing to note about LORAN, vs GPS, however is:
GPS is basically owned by the United States.
The US government has full control over it.
On the other hand, LORAN is an international system, used by many countries... Many countries, the US, Japan, Europe, use LORAN.
I'm sure the US government can't stand being part of an international system...
they've got to turn off their receivers, to tighten their stranglehold on navigation control systems.
There can't be an alternative to GPS available, when the US needs to switch it off or block the signal over/around certain areasw in an emergency or time of war...
Barred from using lead... Chinese manufacturers have been substituting the more dangerous heavy metal cadmium
They're not barred from using Cadmium?
But they're barred from using Lead?
Wouldn't it make more sense to regulate the safety of products using the more harmful material first?
We shouldn't need a 'law' for each material... we should get one law about safety requirements for harmful materials, warning labels, and access by children.
For example, products for use by children must not contain amounts of cadmium or lead that are not protected by a safety measure.
Of course their toy's batteries might contain cadmium or lead, so it shouldn't be banned, but safety requirements at least as strict (such as shielding/containing harmful materials) should be applied to Cadmium as to lead, etc, etc.
That's why we have fiat currency... the economy is not built on precious metals anymore.
Perhaps it would be bad for the economy in the long run, but beneficial for humanity.
We could pursue more interesting, intellectual endeavors with our lives, rather than spending 30-40% of it working for money, for basic essentials, and toys.
Burglars/thieves would be without a job...
because all the stuff can be replicated at the push of a button.. most crime would be over.
People would have to find more altruistic motivation to do everything they do in life..
Or perhaps (given human nature), attention would be turned to fighting over resources that can't be replicated so easily, such as land.
Okay, fine, but we're measuring a round trip between two machines -- a bit doesn't get counted as received, until it's read from the source computer, placed on the transmission medium, received by the destination computer, and copied to the local hard drive of the destination computer.
A bit's round trip doesn't get completed until a 'response bit' is read off the 'response' drive of the destination computer and written to the 'response' drive of the original source computer.
It'll be 800gb of data.
Transmitted over a distance of 2000 feet.
Network cabling technology will be Fiber, 2 pairs of single-mode fibers, 10GBase-LR XFPs on two switches at each end, with both links aggregated for load balancing and redundancy, to give a total of 20 Gigabits.
There will be 5 files to be transferred, each one 133gb in size.
Both the source and destination computer will each be plugged into switches that plug into each end of the 2 pairs of fiber optic cables, computers plugin to the switches each using a pair of 5 foot Cat6a copper Gig-Ethernet patch cables, interfaces teamed active LACP link aggregation.
Source and destination computers each have 2 RAID5 arrays of 4 300gb Intel X25-M 6gb/S SSDs, one pre-populated on the sender machine with "data to be sent", one populated on the destination machine with "response data".
The expected round trip for sending 800gb of data over the network, and getting 800gb of response data is approximately 20 minutes.
Two things: (1) You can't replicate it if you can't scan it.
The scanning chamber size could be standardized such that another scanning chamber could not fit to be scanned.
Scanning technology alone would be a very difficult feat. And there would (invariably) be some limitations, such as materials that don't scan properly.
Manufacturers of consumer products could take advantage of this to produce "scan proof" products.
A huge brand new market would be generated called "scan proofing" / "replicate proofing" your product.
It would be for all consumer goods what DRM is for DVDs. Products (including replicators themselves) would contain proprietary chips with special shielding designed to protect them from scanners, or to cause replicators to error, resulting in a detectable breach.
Replicators would be designed to ensure on booting up that they're not an "illegal clone".
Product activation would be required, and each unit would have unique ID or "MAC address" and "signature" burned into a ROM chip.
Every replicator would stamp a unique molecular signature on every clone it made, and the consumer good DRM would detect the signature and compare it to the manufacturer's signature, to ensure a legal copy.
Problem (2) Energy is required to use the device.
So there is still a market in producing the energy required to operate the device...
For energy production, a replicator cannot simply be used to produce the raw materials (other than say 'solar cells'), at some point, materials required to produce energy still have to be acquired without using the replicator.
Maybe not a fail.. there can't be that many manufacturers of pneumatic tube systems, who are willing and able to take on the added liability and certification requirements to put their equipment in hospitals, and have it serve a critical function.
Pneumatic tube systems are very expensive.
If a hospital is considering having one built, the management will be having a lot of research done, to reach the right decisions.
If other potential buyers of pneumatic tube systems for hospitals read the article and are interested.... they're very likely to make contacts, to get more information about their system, including contact with the vendor.
Otherwise known as: spread information by word of mouth, so it doesn't seem like they are "pushing" a product, or spouting advertising / marketing illusions, but use an article to get people talking about the subject.
Slashdot Mirror
Another is that they fit nicely in a rack.
And they provide a packaged solution, that most network engineers recognize and know how to manage, troubleshoot... meaning it will be easier to find/hire people to help manage it, than some custom home-brewed solution?
Lower long-term operational expenses, hardware is darn proven (fewer operational risks than you have buying commodity desktop parts), and you can get a support contract, usually (or opt to save money upfront by finding equipment and replacement parts in the aftermarket).
Many of the low-end routers 26xx are pure software switching. But they can still perform better than Linux, because the OS is designed solely for that purpose, which means performance optimizations too.
Linux is more of a jack of all trades. Forwarding performance and operation as a network device isn't a central design goal in the linux Kernel.
Show me the Franken' Catalyst 2950/6500 Sup720 3BXL, Franken Cisco 12006, or Franken Juniper M7i/M320, and then I'll be impressed. Your desktop PC will not contain TCAM or other components required for a minimal level of forwarding performance needed by an ISP.
After all these years, a desktop PC still cannot perform the task of a simple 8 port switch, at nearly the same packet rates as the switch. The packet rates that can occur on an Ethernet network easily overwhelm the desktop PC's limited interrupt capacity and memory I/O bus bottlenecks.
For an Enterprise branch office edge a desktop router is fine. Because Enterprises only buy a limited amount of capacity from an ISP. Also, Enterprise branch offices have only clients, not servers, so they aren't really subject to a DoS (rejecting unwanted packets is half as expensive as fully forwarding normal packets).
Of course, Enterprise server farms never use a firewall at the edge on the path into the servers, unless the periodic unavailability due to DoS attack taking out the firewall is not an issue.
But for an ISP, if you are planning on being a serious ISP, your core business is providing a professional service. Use a well-designed solution, not something you've cobbled together from off-the-shelf parts. You get real value buying gear that performs forwarding in hardware
In the long run, one 24 hour outage or service degradation, can cost more than engineering the network properly, and using good managed pieces.
The fact of the matter is the FrankenPIX was based on the original PIX platform, and Enterprise firewall, that used to be just a PC with some fancy packaging and a proprietary flash card. That platform has been obsolete for many years, and is not suitable for an ISP, anyways.
In case you didn't know, Firewalls like the original PIX can't handle that much traffic, and they are easily DoSed into oblivion by a simple flood.
Anyways, decent gear for service providers these days offloads work to hardware. And runs on a real-time OS that can provide something closer to a service level guarantee than a commodity OS can.
In case you didn't know... Linux is not a real-time OS, and cannot provide timing guarantees a RTOS can.
Generic Linux running on commodity hardware cannot provide proper separation between control plane and forwarding plane.
For certain very important functions, a commodity PC simply can't match the performance of a dedicated ASIC.
You can talk BGP all you want, but you can't reliably forward 30,000 pps through a commodity PC, or push speeds higher than approximately 200megs, due to interrupt contention.
There is also the matter of reliability of the hardware...
Commodity desktop parts are not designed to run 24x7, and they fail frequently. Physical failure in routers is rarer, unless there are environmental issues, or the equipment is old.
Blind people can surf the web just fine. Ever heard of a screen reader?
Yes, I have. It can't "read" the diagram the professor posted to his website for some computer graphics class in the form of a SVG or PNG file.
Screen readers can only make text accessible. Almost all websites make heavy use of graphics that cannot be consumed by a screen reader in a meaningful way.
Screen readers also suck, when sites use MMN with ample amount of flash-enhanced content.
I fail to see how this is "dumbing down". What can you do with a kindle that you can't with dead tree books, or resources on the net?
Search, for one. For two, you can easily bookmark, highlight, and annotate bits of text on a kindle, without destroying your physical books.
There are a lot of things you can do with a kindle that you can't do with a printed book.
One of the more important things is you can store a lot of books on one device, without having to carry 50lbs of materials into a classroom.
So you can have lots of 'sources' with you, and look up information in a much less time-consuming way that might be more suitable for a classroom environment, where classes meet for limited amounts of time...
And when it's non-configurable?
These KVMs are commonly hard-wired and cannot be changed to use a different key.
There are KVM over IP remote access units that use a similar keystroke.
In a 3am emergency you won't be able to remote console into the datacenter KVM and switch over to the desired console, because the "Switch key"'s gone on the new Lenovo you got stuck with...
Is Ogg not done?
A format that is in constant flux, is not stable, and not ready yet.
Only a mature version of the spec should be used, one that the software industry already has positive implementation experience with.
Of course HTML5 should mention a specific minimum base version of the Ogg spec.
Renderers may support future versions of Ogg that validated by the W3C, but the renderer implementation must be backwards-compatible (able to read Ogg files made using an encoder that followed the old version).
And changes must be forwards compatible, so that a file encoded in the new format can still be properly played by a browser implementing the minimal version of Ogg, at a similar quality level.
You're supposed to put it back in the case you got for it, first...
Professors commonly use materials in class that aren't available in braille form.
But this might be because classes are normally small and I never had a blind person in my class in 4 years...
Maybe there aren't that many blind people at public universities, and dumbing down education for everyone just to make things more convenient for a small fraction of the population, is unreasonable?
I can think of a lot of accomadations that are more reasonable than globally restricting the medium that may be used in classrooms.
If the kindle is to be banned on this basis, then this must apply to other eBook readers too, and other electronic media, such as the use of web/internet-based sites as resources.
Sorry folks, all professors with a "class web page" must now turn these off, since blind and quadroplegic folken can't surf the web anyways.
No actual art can be displayed in 'visual arts appreciation class', to ensure blind people have a fair shot at an A.
And... also, no actual music will be allowed in music appreciation class, to ensure equal access by deaf people.
Perhaps... however none of the university printed books have text-to-speech (or braille) enabled on them either :)
Yeah... it's even more discriminatory that students in a classroom are allowed to use pen and paper to take notes
Blind people don't have access to these convenient aids...
They only have less-convenient methods such as engraving patterns, a task that takes a lot longer... with poorer notes that can be taken in the same time, or no notes at all, how can the blind person be expected to perform comparably to a sighted person?
Going back to the original braille text to study?!
Calculus tests, advanced maths, and similar... imagine the difficulties, with no easy way of making scratch work.
The idea that Blind persons should have identical access to everything is absurd. Their handicap makes it impossible for them to have identical access.
Anyways, giving the blind access to materials, never meant reducing the level of access to materials of an ordinary person.
The Kindle does not reduce anyone's access to materials.. a blind person can't read a printed book anymore than they can read a kindle.
So using a kindle instead of a printed book is a NO-OP.
Open Source fans including Mozilla support it, while owners of other video codecs of course think they shouldn't be locked out.
Isn't it ironic that owners of other video codecs who are renowned for locking the public out of their formats, by keeping them secret, or trying to charge fees for their use, now don't "want" to be locked out?
If they want their codec to be one included by an open standard such as HTML5, then the absolute requirement should be that they open their codec's specifications and make implementation of the codec gratis of any royalties, and just as free and open as the HTML recommendation.
I don't want to exclude any codec who will do that.
But the standards bodies owe it to the internet to exclude any codec who refuses to do that, and to recognize the popular codecs who will do that, by choosing the most suitable ones for inclusion as a critical element for video-enabled HTML5 renderers.
Someone happened to have the same shift 24 hours every other day and got suspicious, when the 48-hour-long video loop showed them the exact same people walking by 3 days in a row, maybe?
Simply put, the U.S. will not ever voluntarily turn off GPS signals within U.S. borders. I highly doubt they would even re-enable SA.
Well, never say never. If the US thinks Korea is launching some missiles at the US, and using GPS for guidance, you bet they will shut down the standard GPS service. It's not as if the nature of GPS permits the satellites to exclude certain regions from accessing it, either.
What I want to know is why the U.S. didn't shut off LORAN-C as soon as cheap GPS receivers were widely available. All military vessels had GPS receivers not long after the constellation was active. GPS is extremely reliable: You need a minimum of 4 satellites in view to get an accurate position
Huh? No it's not. In fact, GPS is notoriously unreliable. It's more accurate, when you manage to get a reading from 4 satellites, but you are more likely to be unable to get any reading, especially under adverse weather conditions, thunderstorms, periods of high solar activity, etc.
It's so bad, that many GPS receivers include tricks like inertial navigation as an assist or re-using the old altitude, in order to estimate position using 2 or 3 satellites. And that the functionality to display (less reliable) information is necessary for GPS receivers to be particularly useful in many situations.
This is before we count the possibility of solar storm activity, electromagnetic activity near the satellites, or other acts of god, destroying satellites in orbit.
In case you haven't noticed, getting GPS reception can be quite difficult, especially in urban areas, and forested areas, and locations lacking a direct line of site to satellites.. GPS is also subject to radio frequency interference, and is easily jammed.
LORAN-C is much more resistant to jamming attempts.
LORAN-C is more reliable under a greater variety of conditions. It is more suitable for applications with high-reliability requirements, particularly where human safety, or security may depend on the position locating technology.
How would it not?
I'm saying Google could put primarily just stateless frontend servers in China.
Of course, as always, any traffic to backend servers crossing the public internet, gets tunneled over a dedicated encrypted channel.
By stateless, I mean, the complete state of actual FE servers is read-only in china.
And if the chassis intrusion alarm trips on any server or piece of gear, that piece of gear is rigged to destroy its physical authentication key material.
Does anyone else see the irony? in using LORAN US implements selective availability, when LORAN is only accurate to 200m ?
Selective availability was a (currently disabled) feature of GPS that adds intentional errors up to 100 meters / 328.08 ft to publicly available GPS signal...
Before SA was turned off in 2000 the typical SA errors were 32ft horizontal, 98ft vertical.
SA is easily defeated using Differential GPS.
One thing to note about LORAN, vs GPS, however is: GPS is basically owned by the United States. The US government has full control over it.
On the other hand, LORAN is an international system, used by many countries... Many countries, the US, Japan, Europe, use LORAN.
I'm sure the US government can't stand being part of an international system... they've got to turn off their receivers, to tighten their stranglehold on navigation control systems.
There can't be an alternative to GPS available, when the US needs to switch it off or block the signal over/around certain areasw in an emergency or time of war...
They should make their infrastructure in China a "front", run the servers and all the behinds stuff in another country, lock it down tight [EG]
Don't worry... Robots will be soon relegated to the role they belong in.
Barred from using lead ... Chinese manufacturers have been substituting the more dangerous heavy metal cadmium
They're not barred from using Cadmium? But they're barred from using Lead?
Wouldn't it make more sense to regulate the safety of products using the more harmful material first?
We shouldn't need a 'law' for each material... we should get one law about safety requirements for harmful materials, warning labels, and access by children.
For example, products for use by children must not contain amounts of cadmium or lead that are not protected by a safety measure.
Of course their toy's batteries might contain cadmium or lead, so it shouldn't be banned, but safety requirements at least as strict (such as shielding/containing harmful materials) should be applied to Cadmium as to lead, etc, etc.
That's why we have fiat currency... the economy is not built on precious metals anymore.
Perhaps it would be bad for the economy in the long run, but beneficial for humanity.
We could pursue more interesting, intellectual endeavors with our lives, rather than spending 30-40% of it working for money, for basic essentials, and toys.
Burglars/thieves would be without a job... because all the stuff can be replicated at the push of a button.. most crime would be over.
People would have to find more altruistic motivation to do everything they do in life..
Or perhaps (given human nature), attention would be turned to fighting over resources that can't be replicated so easily, such as land.
Okay, fine, but we're measuring a round trip between two machines -- a bit doesn't get counted as received, until it's read from the source computer, placed on the transmission medium, received by the destination computer, and copied to the local hard drive of the destination computer.
A bit's round trip doesn't get completed until a 'response bit' is read off the 'response' drive of the destination computer and written to the 'response' drive of the original source computer.
It'll be 800gb of data. Transmitted over a distance of 2000 feet.
Network cabling technology will be Fiber, 2 pairs of single-mode fibers, 10GBase-LR XFPs on two switches at each end, with both links aggregated for load balancing and redundancy, to give a total of 20 Gigabits.
There will be 5 files to be transferred, each one 133gb in size.
Both the source and destination computer will each be plugged into switches that plug into each end of the 2 pairs of fiber optic cables, computers plugin to the switches each using a pair of 5 foot Cat6a copper Gig-Ethernet patch cables, interfaces teamed active LACP link aggregation.
Source and destination computers each have 2 RAID5 arrays of 4 300gb Intel X25-M 6gb/S SSDs, one pre-populated on the sender machine with "data to be sent", one populated on the destination machine with "response data".
The expected round trip for sending 800gb of data over the network, and getting 800gb of response data is approximately 20 minutes.
Don't use USB... use Firewire 800, or Esata :)
The bandwidth is great. You can send a 1TB hard drive down the tube.
It's the latency that sucks.
Don't try to play a first person shooter, or stream a video through the tube.
Two things: (1) You can't replicate it if you can't scan it.
The scanning chamber size could be standardized such that another scanning chamber could not fit to be scanned.
Scanning technology alone would be a very difficult feat. And there would (invariably) be some limitations, such as materials that don't scan properly.
Manufacturers of consumer products could take advantage of this to produce "scan proof" products. A huge brand new market would be generated called "scan proofing" / "replicate proofing" your product. It would be for all consumer goods what DRM is for DVDs. Products (including replicators themselves) would contain proprietary chips with special shielding designed to protect them from scanners, or to cause replicators to error, resulting in a detectable breach.
Replicators would be designed to ensure on booting up that they're not an "illegal clone". Product activation would be required, and each unit would have unique ID or "MAC address" and "signature" burned into a ROM chip.
Every replicator would stamp a unique molecular signature on every clone it made, and the consumer good DRM would detect the signature and compare it to the manufacturer's signature, to ensure a legal copy.
Problem (2) Energy is required to use the device. So there is still a market in producing the energy required to operate the device...
For energy production, a replicator cannot simply be used to produce the raw materials (other than say 'solar cells'), at some point, materials required to produce energy still have to be acquired without using the replicator.
Maybe not a fail.. there can't be that many manufacturers of pneumatic tube systems, who are willing and able to take on the added liability and certification requirements to put their equipment in hospitals, and have it serve a critical function.
Pneumatic tube systems are very expensive. If a hospital is considering having one built, the management will be having a lot of research done, to reach the right decisions.
If other potential buyers of pneumatic tube systems for hospitals read the article and are interested.... they're very likely to make contacts, to get more information about their system, including contact with the vendor.
Otherwise known as: spread information by word of mouth, so it doesn't seem like they are "pushing" a product, or spouting advertising / marketing illusions, but use an article to get people talking about the subject.
Record chart compilation