As for reality checks, we're in the midst of one right now, but sadly there are far too many people who believe it's possible to extinguish a fire by flooding it with gasoline.
Yep... It's pretty hard to reinflate a popped balloon.
This really shows the power of capitalism in this time of government failing. Yes, although the Congress and administration would like you to believe that the current "crisis" is a result of greed, the bottom line is that the money had to come from someplace, and it came from them. Anyway, by looking at Scaled Composites and SpaceX and seeing what they can do when freed from the binders of government "fairness" (corruption, really, since nothing is truely fair) has simply been fascinating. Space flight is finally coming of age.
Look at this project in comparison to "Orion". A small team vs. thousands. A few designers vs. hundreds of engineers using bulky project management. It goes to show that you really only need project management to do something the first time (IE, not knowing where the major failing points will be). After that, you need something lightweight and agile so that you aren't throwing away the experience of your people by second guessing them until they are unable to make quick decisions.
Will the NASA craft be somehow safer as a result of this rigor? I doubt it. Because the project is so tedious it's probably likely some things were just given up on. SpaceX will get it through testing, trial and error, and will find out more in two throw-away tests than NASA will in 10 years of rigorous development. And because they are only supporting one application, a proprietary one, they don't have to be "fair", and spend 10x as much to ensure compatibility with vendor specifications.
Now I'm not saying the government should get out of the space business, but I do think they need to lean it out and put more on the contractors, and open it up to more competition. The fact that this is finally possible is in large part due to the decrease in cost of computers. From project management software to CAD to anything else, it's now possible to wield the same level of computational and data harnessing power on your desktop that was previously limited to only government-sized resources. The gap is closing because there's really not a lot they can do that we can't (with computers). In fact, the increase in the size of government recently seems to be it trying to preserve itself by creating more jobs. "Let's move those computers to something the private industry will never be trusted to do", they think, "such as listening to all the telephone and internet traffic or studying weapons."
All that NASA is good at doing these days is burning money. Obama, if you're listening, clean it out. In fact, delete it entirely and create a new space agency with modern roots! Imagine what we could do with 500 billion over 10 years with a modern and efficient CIVILIAN organization.
I try to follow a lot of Code Complete's guidelines for software construction in general. Use a lot of defines, use good names, be modular, etc. A good web app is actually pretty easy to maintain--the languages are all modern, there are generally no constraints on CPU or memory because they are network-bound, etc. Usually all you are building is a workflow. I mean forms, datagrids, etc. have all been perfected in the past decade. You don't need to write a form handler or a database abstraction layer--use a frickin framework or at least write your own. I can't stand seeing the same damn code rewritten over and over again..
Anyway, this segues nicely into the submitter's question. If you can get a nice template project plan for whatever it is you specialize in, you can easily get jobs and work part-time and make ends. Contracting is feast or famine if you don't know how to manage your money. You need to have a solid budget of your personal weekly, monthly and yearly expenses so you know how much you need to live. Then you can concentrate on getting all of that in the first couple of months in the year and completing projects (and spend the rest of the time giving out business cards). Since you have one area you specialize in, and a solid plan to solve that particular problem, all you have to do is find people with that problem and solve it for them.
Yep, this is a classic example of economies of scale. There are several other versions of the Cell processor out there, many of them designed for high-performance computing (HPC). But they range from 400-3000 bucks a pop. With the PS3, they have basically forced out a much more expensive chip more cheaply because they are delivering so many. And of course they can make up the difference in games.
Yeah, I have Boot Camp and Parallels, etc. But some of my work requires using some Mac software and having to reboot to access a filesystem would be detrimental. Parallels would be cool if it worked, but it has a hard time passing USB hardware through without OSX grabbing it first. There's probably a way to do that, but the implementation would be at least as hard as running MacFUSE;)
External hard drives, for one. I have some external drives I use on Linux boxes for various things. All of these boxes are up in an air conditioned server room. On occasion I need to get one file off onto my workstation, which is a Mac. Currently I have to walk it up to server room, connect it up, go back down, shell into the machine and mount it (if it's not an automounted drive), then somehow get the file out of the linux box to my Mac (scp or something). If I could just mount it on my workstation, it would save a lot of time.
Additionally, there are occasions where a recovery process needs to be run on a bad drive. The same procedure applies. It's mainly a convenience thing, but it would make the Mac into a much more useful tool for admins. I can definitely see the usefulness for FAT/NTFS in a desktop support environment.
Naturally you can always comment "Why use a Mac in the first place when you could have a linux desktop?" but I would reply that I don't have a choice, the CEO only buys Macs for workstations. So I have to use what I've got. This would make my life easier.
Another issue we saw in Linux is that under load, one core would get saturated, doing network soft interrupt handing, throttling network IO. In Linux, a network interrupt is delivered to one of the cores, consequently all receive soft interrupt network processing happens on that one core.
Likewise, I thought irqbalance already handles this? It's fairly commonly installed in 64-bit distros, probably most others by now. Not to mention you could go to TOE for the machines you have the most traffic on, offloading the TCP stack to the network cards, minimizing the amount work the CPU has to do. You can max out a current processor with 10GB ethernet just on overhead..
You're right, the TIV is pretty ugly. I was thinking about starting with an actual armored truck or possibly something military/industrial, like a Unimog or Pinzgauer. I'd definitely probably make it convertible to a regular truck for other weather conditions, so I could attack snow as well;)
This is something I've always wanted to do. Someday when I'm rich I'd like to become a storm chaser; outfit an awesome armored car with minicomputers and a powerful radar and run flat tires. I think the weather is going to be getting more interesting, seeing the recent extreme patterns of the jetstream almost reaching the arctic circle before winter even starts! There's something about a good thunderstorm; the booming thunder, the hint of ozone in the air. Ahh.
That and the Von Neumann architecture. What is the point of a computer really? Add, Multiply, Divide. Talk about the fundamental basic instructions, not x86 but what is a mov (oh it moves something). Translate some C code into ASM to see how that works. I would really dive all the way in immediately. You're not going to get it as a first year, but you learn by repetition, and you need concepts like this drilled into your head. Build a linux box in class compiling all the packages. After about a week of that (and resolving dependencies), you'll understand about the real meat of programming, compiling. Guess what, most languages are pretty similar. It's the delivery that makes it hard. For instance, there are things in PHP you have to know but never have to know in C, because you're dealing with the web paradigm. Sessions? Non-existent in C (well, you know what I mean). But most PHP is never compiled, yet it runs! Why is this? Compare/Contrast. Berkeley is known for two things: LSD and Unix. This is not a coincidence. Etc.
The way to circumvent this is pretty easy. Just have all your terrorist lackeys taking lots of flights all the time. Then, when it's time for the mission or whatever, you send them the secret activation code AFTER THEY ARE ALREADY ON THE PLANE! DUH!
Another Israeli security firm marketing rediculously over-complicated junk, man there sure are a lot of those. I wonder where they get their funding? Pft. I've heard of people emigrating there just to get security dollars. It's a gravy train with biscuit wheels, I tell ya.
I think good sysadmins need to be on helpdesk for at least some of their life. After all, that's what a sysadmin is there for--solving systems problems. Being on the frontline actually talking to the customers really makes a difference because it turns an anti-social nerd into a person who can speak with others on some normal level..or they fail and you don't have to worry about them. The last thing I want in my company is a bunch of straight out of college computer geeks. Maybe as developers, but not as sysadmin. Sysadmin is a people person position!
Now, having some programming experience is good for a Unix admin. Having the basic skills to plan and document are important. These are things college can teach you. But I know of no college course that will teach you what four years of actually admin'ing a system will.
It's a slippery slope, I think, is all. Hardware manufacturers in particular are under increasing pressure to provide drivers for Linux and other free software. For those of them that won't release source code, yes we have to suffer with proprietary drivers. However, there are a number of good reasons users should have to go to the manufacturers' distribution sites to get it.
The proprietary drivers shouldn't be included in the distribution for a lot of reasons: there could be legal consequences to the distribution and use of the binaries that cannot (and should not) be monitored or communicated by the distro distributer. In addition, this setup places more responsibility on the user (they have to go and find the drivers, or choose hardware from a more open manufacturer) AND on the manufacturers (they have to provide a distribution point for the binaries, etc.) which then in turn makes it more likely the manufacturer will release the source eventually. The reasoning is actually pretty good:
Users demand convenient driver installs and in some way the market will provide it. There are two ways this could happen: #1, the vendors pony up source code for Linux/Free Software drivers. In this case the users will continue to pressure the vendors or threaten to move to better, more open vendors. As free software grows, those vendors that don't support it will be left in the dust. #2, free software accepts and packages and distributes proprietary, closed-source blobs with the rest of the distro. This provides no real benefit to Free Software as a whole, except to the few users that happen to be currently using the closed hardware. Nothing is contributed other than a "license" to use the hardware on a Linux machine.
There is no real harm done to free software by staying on the sidelines and waiting for the users to demand open source drivers from their vendors. I don't think they should cave because then the vendors will never change. Vendors will only change in response to market pressure. If they are getting by with binaries distributed in the distro, they will NEVER release source. Those binaries, and the convenience of their packaging means they will NEVER have to answer to the users. The conversation, at that point ends.
On the other hand, if free software starts the war of attrition, the users will evenutally complain a lot or switch to another vendor. I can just imagine a fictional scenario where a sales and marketing-type-guy is called in front of the board to explain why the server-class RAID card the company sells has stopped selling. His reply: "Well, the majority of our cards will find their way into servers running Linux, but company policy prohibits us from releasing the source code to our drivers, which means it isn't included in most major distributions." The CEO asks him "How many more units a year would we sell if we could get into those Linux machine." After doing a few calculations, the sales and marketing guy says "Oh, about 40% more." "Release the source!"
And seriously, if there's that much secret crap in the DRIVER, there is something seriously wrong anyway and you shouldn't use the hardware. Likely it's farming most of the work out to the CPU anyway!
Exactly. I like to use a DEBUG_MODE define or something to turn on various testing features and other such stuff. Generally this is only toggleable at compile and not runtime, but sometimes you need a runtime debug mode. Often it's impossible to remove, especially if you're doing iterative development, so it stays in. Definitely show it to management. Shoot, debug is on through most of the first part of testing, so they can provide me with specific errors, traces, etc. So everyone knows about it. And that's the best way.
Now, if you're going to put a signature or something, that's fine. But know this: other people will look at your code. It gets annoying going through some other developers shit and seeing stuff like "you_will_be_assimilated()" and crap like that, and negative comments. It really is a question of professionalism.
They already exist and they do work. Haven't you ever heard of "SID"s? Special Improvement Districts are special tax districts within a city or township. Generally they encompass one or more subdivisions. Typically a "deal" is made between the developers and the city to set up a SID. Then the city covers building the roads, water, etc out to the development. Then the cost is recouped by an additional monthly property tax. It's like a co-op in the city.
It's not rocket science, the reason it doesn't happen in the city is because the phone company makes too much fucking money! However, in more "modern" cities, with underground conduit often owned by the city, a lot of fiber companies are quietly getting easements through the weirdest shit. I have heard of fiber in everything from electric conduits to sewers to even gas lines! Sewers are favored because they typically are free and clear of any valves or other such shit (no pun intended).
Anyway, it's pretty disingenious for them to misrepresent SIDs in the article by saying that the homeowner "owns" them, as if they can move out of the house and rent out their line. Doesn't work that way. They typically fall in the title along with every other easement. Because it's a group easement, it falls under an HOA or SID. The homeowner has a vote, but does not OWN the connection.
I was thinking though, this is definitely a job for Sun's new ZFS-based SAN. Obviously you'll need more space to index it, also.
LTO-4 tapes to hold 140TB uncompressed is probably about $14K also (about $100/TB)
You're looking at $3-400K for storage, plus some hardware for indexing. You'd probably want something you can add storage to as you index it, which ZFS is perfect for. You could get whatever storage you need for say 3 months worth of importing, then in 3 months buy more storage at future (lower) prices. The 140TB isn't going to get imported overnight.
Using infiniband or FibreChannel at 4 or 8GBps, it would take about 140,000 seconds or about 39 hours at full speed to transfer that data.
When Ford makes a car that stops working immediately after the warranty expires, people just shrug and act like it's expected. But if it's a broken fake bass drum pedal--UPROAR!
Exactly. For a given density of coil to the strength of the permanent magnet, there is a force resisting the torque applied by the turbine. If you could vary the strength of this force (by changing the number of coils) you could ensure that the turbine was always able to spin regardless of how low or high the wind speed. It would also work on the upper end, where strong gusts typically overrun the alternator (the fields create destructive interference) by allowing more force to be applied slowing it down to the optimal rate. FURTHERMORE, it could be done in such a way to perfectly sync the alternator with the grid without requiring any type of inverting, wave sliding, etc, which is a major loss point.
They just can't catch a break since His Emperor Gates III stepped down from the Red, Green, Yellow and Blue throne. Enter the same internal bickering and power struggles that nearly destroyed IBM in the 90's. They'll pull through, we'll probably all be better off because of it, but Gates had a certain perfection in business that I'm going to miss.
Turn off your NT page file Fill up the RAM Malloc more than is free Core dump (or kill a random task, which will cause a core dump later)
By the way, Linux and OS X do not require page files either. Furthermore you can completely tune your page file to do anything you want. You want more system cache, adjust swappiness down. Want to swap everything, make it 100. You can even make your swap file on a RAM disk if you're really brave. You can of course, totally rewrite the VM system if you want, or replace it with one of the other VM's you can get for Linux because you have the source code.
Slashdot Mirror
As for reality checks, we're in the midst of one right now, but sadly there are far too many people who believe it's possible to extinguish a fire by flooding it with gasoline.
Yep... It's pretty hard to reinflate a popped balloon.
The caldera has been rising at an increased rate for several years, as I submitted to Slashdot back in Nov. 2007 (and was rejected ;)
This really shows the power of capitalism in this time of government failing. Yes, although the Congress and administration would like you to believe that the current "crisis" is a result of greed, the bottom line is that the money had to come from someplace, and it came from them. Anyway, by looking at Scaled Composites and SpaceX and seeing what they can do when freed from the binders of government "fairness" (corruption, really, since nothing is truely fair) has simply been fascinating. Space flight is finally coming of age.
Look at this project in comparison to "Orion". A small team vs. thousands. A few designers vs. hundreds of engineers using bulky project management. It goes to show that you really only need project management to do something the first time (IE, not knowing where the major failing points will be). After that, you need something lightweight and agile so that you aren't throwing away the experience of your people by second guessing them until they are unable to make quick decisions.
Will the NASA craft be somehow safer as a result of this rigor? I doubt it. Because the project is so tedious it's probably likely some things were just given up on. SpaceX will get it through testing, trial and error, and will find out more in two throw-away tests than NASA will in 10 years of rigorous development. And because they are only supporting one application, a proprietary one, they don't have to be "fair", and spend 10x as much to ensure compatibility with vendor specifications.
Now I'm not saying the government should get out of the space business, but I do think they need to lean it out and put more on the contractors, and open it up to more competition. The fact that this is finally possible is in large part due to the decrease in cost of computers. From project management software to CAD to anything else, it's now possible to wield the same level of computational and data harnessing power on your desktop that was previously limited to only government-sized resources. The gap is closing because there's really not a lot they can do that we can't (with computers). In fact, the increase in the size of government recently seems to be it trying to preserve itself by creating more jobs. "Let's move those computers to something the private industry will never be trusted to do", they think, "such as listening to all the telephone and internet traffic or studying weapons."
All that NASA is good at doing these days is burning money. Obama, if you're listening, clean it out. In fact, delete it entirely and create a new space agency with modern roots! Imagine what we could do with 500 billion over 10 years with a modern and efficient CIVILIAN organization.
I try to follow a lot of Code Complete's guidelines for software construction in general. Use a lot of defines, use good names, be modular, etc. A good web app is actually pretty easy to maintain--the languages are all modern, there are generally no constraints on CPU or memory because they are network-bound, etc. Usually all you are building is a workflow. I mean forms, datagrids, etc. have all been perfected in the past decade. You don't need to write a form handler or a database abstraction layer--use a frickin framework or at least write your own. I can't stand seeing the same damn code rewritten over and over again..
Anyway, this segues nicely into the submitter's question. If you can get a nice template project plan for whatever it is you specialize in, you can easily get jobs and work part-time and make ends. Contracting is feast or famine if you don't know how to manage your money. You need to have a solid budget of your personal weekly, monthly and yearly expenses so you know how much you need to live. Then you can concentrate on getting all of that in the first couple of months in the year and completing projects (and spend the rest of the time giving out business cards). Since you have one area you specialize in, and a solid plan to solve that particular problem, all you have to do is find people with that problem and solve it for them.
Makes you wonder about those Russian ships down in Cuba..
Yep, this is a classic example of economies of scale. There are several other versions of the Cell processor out there, many of them designed for high-performance computing (HPC). But they range from 400-3000 bucks a pop. With the PS3, they have basically forced out a much more expensive chip more cheaply because they are delivering so many. And of course they can make up the difference in games.
Yeah, I have Boot Camp and Parallels, etc. But some of my work requires using some Mac software and having to reboot to access a filesystem would be detrimental. Parallels would be cool if it worked, but it has a hard time passing USB hardware through without OSX grabbing it first. There's probably a way to do that, but the implementation would be at least as hard as running MacFUSE ;)
External hard drives, for one. I have some external drives I use on Linux boxes for various things. All of these boxes are up in an air conditioned server room. On occasion I need to get one file off onto my workstation, which is a Mac. Currently I have to walk it up to server room, connect it up, go back down, shell into the machine and mount it (if it's not an automounted drive), then somehow get the file out of the linux box to my Mac (scp or something). If I could just mount it on my workstation, it would save a lot of time.
Additionally, there are occasions where a recovery process needs to be run on a bad drive. The same procedure applies. It's mainly a convenience thing, but it would make the Mac into a much more useful tool for admins. I can definitely see the usefulness for FAT/NTFS in a desktop support environment.
Naturally you can always comment "Why use a Mac in the first place when you could have a linux desktop?" but I would reply that I don't have a choice, the CEO only buys Macs for workstations. So I have to use what I've got. This would make my life easier.
Then there was this:
Likewise, I thought irqbalance already handles this? It's fairly commonly installed in 64-bit distros, probably most others by now. Not to mention you could go to TOE for the machines you have the most traffic on, offloading the TCP stack to the network cards, minimizing the amount work the CPU has to do. You can max out a current processor with 10GB ethernet just on overhead..
You're right, the TIV is pretty ugly. I was thinking about starting with an actual armored truck or possibly something military/industrial, like a Unimog or Pinzgauer. I'd definitely probably make it convertible to a regular truck for other weather conditions, so I could attack snow as well ;)
This is something I've always wanted to do. Someday when I'm rich I'd like to become a storm chaser; outfit an awesome armored car with minicomputers and a powerful radar and run flat tires. I think the weather is going to be getting more interesting, seeing the recent extreme patterns of the jetstream almost reaching the arctic circle before winter even starts! There's something about a good thunderstorm; the booming thunder, the hint of ozone in the air. Ahh.
How to fight with other people's nasty code
To wit: Life in the real world.
That and the Von Neumann architecture. What is the point of a computer really? Add, Multiply, Divide. Talk about the fundamental basic instructions, not x86 but what is a mov (oh it moves something). Translate some C code into ASM to see how that works. I would really dive all the way in immediately. You're not going to get it as a first year, but you learn by repetition, and you need concepts like this drilled into your head. Build a linux box in class compiling all the packages. After about a week of that (and resolving dependencies), you'll understand about the real meat of programming, compiling. Guess what, most languages are pretty similar. It's the delivery that makes it hard. For instance, there are things in PHP you have to know but never have to know in C, because you're dealing with the web paradigm. Sessions? Non-existent in C (well, you know what I mean). But most PHP is never compiled, yet it runs! Why is this? Compare/Contrast. Berkeley is known for two things: LSD and Unix. This is not a coincidence. Etc.
The way to circumvent this is pretty easy. Just have all your terrorist lackeys taking lots of flights all the time. Then, when it's time for the mission or whatever, you send them the secret activation code AFTER THEY ARE ALREADY ON THE PLANE! DUH!
Another Israeli security firm marketing rediculously over-complicated junk, man there sure are a lot of those. I wonder where they get their funding? Pft. I've heard of people emigrating there just to get security dollars. It's a gravy train with biscuit wheels, I tell ya.
I think good sysadmins need to be on helpdesk for at least some of their life. After all, that's what a sysadmin is there for--solving systems problems. Being on the frontline actually talking to the customers really makes a difference because it turns an anti-social nerd into a person who can speak with others on some normal level..or they fail and you don't have to worry about them. The last thing I want in my company is a bunch of straight out of college computer geeks. Maybe as developers, but not as sysadmin. Sysadmin is a people person position!
Now, having some programming experience is good for a Unix admin. Having the basic skills to plan and document are important. These are things college can teach you. But I know of no college course that will teach you what four years of actually admin'ing a system will.
It's a slippery slope, I think, is all. Hardware manufacturers in particular are under increasing pressure to provide drivers for Linux and other free software. For those of them that won't release source code, yes we have to suffer with proprietary drivers. However, there are a number of good reasons users should have to go to the manufacturers' distribution sites to get it.
The proprietary drivers shouldn't be included in the distribution for a lot of reasons: there could be legal consequences to the distribution and use of the binaries that cannot (and should not) be monitored or communicated by the distro distributer. In addition, this setup places more responsibility on the user (they have to go and find the drivers, or choose hardware from a more open manufacturer) AND on the manufacturers (they have to provide a distribution point for the binaries, etc.) which then in turn makes it more likely the manufacturer will release the source eventually. The reasoning is actually pretty good:
Users demand convenient driver installs and in some way the market will provide it. There are two ways this could happen: #1, the vendors pony up source code for Linux/Free Software drivers. In this case the users will continue to pressure the vendors or threaten to move to better, more open vendors. As free software grows, those vendors that don't support it will be left in the dust. #2, free software accepts and packages and distributes proprietary, closed-source blobs with the rest of the distro. This provides no real benefit to Free Software as a whole, except to the few users that happen to be currently using the closed hardware. Nothing is contributed other than a "license" to use the hardware on a Linux machine.
There is no real harm done to free software by staying on the sidelines and waiting for the users to demand open source drivers from their vendors. I don't think they should cave because then the vendors will never change. Vendors will only change in response to market pressure. If they are getting by with binaries distributed in the distro, they will NEVER release source. Those binaries, and the convenience of their packaging means they will NEVER have to answer to the users. The conversation, at that point ends.
On the other hand, if free software starts the war of attrition, the users will evenutally complain a lot or switch to another vendor. I can just imagine a fictional scenario where a sales and marketing-type-guy is called in front of the board to explain why the server-class RAID card the company sells has stopped selling. His reply: "Well, the majority of our cards will find their way into servers running Linux, but company policy prohibits us from releasing the source code to our drivers, which means it isn't included in most major distributions." The CEO asks him "How many more units a year would we sell if we could get into those Linux machine." After doing a few calculations, the sales and marketing guy says "Oh, about 40% more." "Release the source!"
And seriously, if there's that much secret crap in the DRIVER, there is something seriously wrong anyway and you shouldn't use the hardware. Likely it's farming most of the work out to the CPU anyway!
Exactly. I like to use a DEBUG_MODE define or something to turn on various testing features and other such stuff. Generally this is only toggleable at compile and not runtime, but sometimes you need a runtime debug mode. Often it's impossible to remove, especially if you're doing iterative development, so it stays in. Definitely show it to management. Shoot, debug is on through most of the first part of testing, so they can provide me with specific errors, traces, etc. So everyone knows about it. And that's the best way.
Now, if you're going to put a signature or something, that's fine. But know this: other people will look at your code. It gets annoying going through some other developers shit and seeing stuff like "you_will_be_assimilated()" and crap like that, and negative comments. It really is a question of professionalism.
They already exist and they do work. Haven't you ever heard of "SID"s? Special Improvement Districts are special tax districts within a city or township. Generally they encompass one or more subdivisions. Typically a "deal" is made between the developers and the city to set up a SID. Then the city covers building the roads, water, etc out to the development. Then the cost is recouped by an additional monthly property tax. It's like a co-op in the city.
It's not rocket science, the reason it doesn't happen in the city is because the phone company makes too much fucking money! However, in more "modern" cities, with underground conduit often owned by the city, a lot of fiber companies are quietly getting easements through the weirdest shit. I have heard of fiber in everything from electric conduits to sewers to even gas lines! Sewers are favored because they typically are free and clear of any valves or other such shit (no pun intended).
Anyway, it's pretty disingenious for them to misrepresent SIDs in the article by saying that the homeowner "owns" them, as if they can move out of the house and rent out their line. Doesn't work that way. They typically fall in the title along with every other easement. Because it's a group easement, it falls under an HOA or SID. The homeowner has a vote, but does not OWN the connection.
The LED Museum seriously will enlighten you. What a classic.
The video was good, also.
I was thinking though, this is definitely a job for Sun's new ZFS-based SAN. Obviously you'll need more space to index it, also.
LTO-4 tapes to hold 140TB uncompressed is probably about $14K also (about $100/TB)
You're looking at $3-400K for storage, plus some hardware for indexing. You'd probably want something you can add storage to as you index it, which ZFS is perfect for. You could get whatever storage you need for say 3 months worth of importing, then in 3 months buy more storage at future (lower) prices. The 140TB isn't going to get imported overnight.
Using infiniband or FibreChannel at 4 or 8GBps, it would take about 140,000 seconds or about 39 hours at full speed to transfer that data.
When Ford makes a car that stops working immediately after the warranty expires, people just shrug and act like it's expected. But if it's a broken fake bass drum pedal--UPROAR!
We insert a few elephant genes and BINGO! Mammoth DNA
Exactly. For a given density of coil to the strength of the permanent magnet, there is a force resisting the torque applied by the turbine. If you could vary the strength of this force (by changing the number of coils) you could ensure that the turbine was always able to spin regardless of how low or high the wind speed. It would also work on the upper end, where strong gusts typically overrun the alternator (the fields create destructive interference) by allowing more force to be applied slowing it down to the optimal rate. FURTHERMORE, it could be done in such a way to perfectly sync the alternator with the grid without requiring any type of inverting, wave sliding, etc, which is a major loss point.
They just can't catch a break since His Emperor Gates III stepped down from the Red, Green, Yellow and Blue throne. Enter the same internal bickering and power struggles that nearly destroyed IBM in the 90's. They'll pull through, we'll probably all be better off because of it, but Gates had a certain perfection in business that I'm going to miss.
Try this:
Turn off your NT page file
Fill up the RAM
Malloc more than is free
Core dump (or kill a random task, which will cause a core dump later)
By the way, Linux and OS X do not require page files either. Furthermore you can completely tune your page file to do anything you want. You want more system cache, adjust swappiness down. Want to swap everything, make it 100. You can even make your swap file on a RAM disk if you're really brave. You can of course, totally rewrite the VM system if you want, or replace it with one of the other VM's you can get for Linux because you have the source code.