Again, there's no existing equipment that you need from a telco that you need in a data center.
There's quite a few "data center" products on the market that are designed to run off 48 VDC, including computer power supplies, servers, Ethernet switches, management equipment, etc. And then there's the power equipment itself -- rectifiers, batteries, wiring, etc.
Now, as I said, maybe the advantages of better designs would make it worth getting rid of that stuff, but maybe not. I'm not assuming just because the telcos invented it that it has no application to the datacenter.
I might remind you, the transistor was invented by AT&T to switch phone calls. Unix? Came out of AT&T. Information theory? AT&T. If we get rid of everything the telcos invented, there's not going to be much usable stuff left.
Since you seem to have some trouble with logic, I'll be explict: This doesn't automatically mean everything the telcos do is a good idea, either.
... 100-year-old standards...
You keep saying that telco standards are old, like that automatically makes them inferior. "New" is not automatically better. When I hear about a standard that's been around for 100 years, that makes me think there may well be a good reasons it has survived so long. There is certainly going to be a large body of knowledge, experience, and products catering to it.
For this discussion in particular, the telcos do reliability better than just about anyone, so yes, I think it makes sense to at least look at what they're doing to see if one can learn from it.
Telcos use -48V because... they had giant banks of batteries powering everything in case the power went out. Datacenters don't do that now (they might have some kind of backup generator, maybe), and they're not going to switch to that.
Um. I'm not sure what data centers you've been in, but I can't imagine a real data center without backup generators. Many of them also provide short-term supplies to carry the load until the generators start.[1] Sometimes it's capacitor banks or flywheels, but sometimes it's old-fashioned lead acid batteries. So, yes, giant banks of batteries very much are a part of some data centers.
The whole discussion is about DC in the data center. The telcos do what they do because it *makes sense*. You run all your equipment off of on-site batteries. You convert from city power to site DC once, when it comes into the building, and use that to keep the batteries charged. If city power fails, the batteries just start discharging for a bit. There's no switching delay, no inverter loss, no transition artifacts. If power's out for longer, you start your generators up.
It makes a heck of a lot more sense than converting AC to DC, then back to AC, then back to DC again, which is what many other UPS systems do.
[1] Some leave that to the customer, so you get lots of smaller UPSes in the individual racks instead. Inefficient.
If you think exposed terminals are so great...
I don't. In fact, I stated rather close to the exact opposite. I'd appreciate it if you didn't build straw-man arguments.
"Television [network] companies are not in the business of delivering television programmes to their audience; they're in the business of delivering audiences to their advertisers." -- Douglas Adams
(From "What Have We Got To Lose?"; first appearance in Wired UK #1, 1995; reprinted in The Salmon of Doubt)
Datacenters aren't run by telcos, and have absolutely nothing to do with telcos.
A "central office" and a "data center" are basically the same thing. And indeed, there's quite a bit of overlap between the two worlds. So "absolutely nothing" is a bit strong. And if you do throw away everything and start from scratch, you loose compatibility with all the existing equipment. You also potentially discard lots of proven equipment, standards, and technologies. Maybe that's worth it, maybe it isn't. There are often good reasons to change things up. At the same time, though, gratuitous incompatibility doesn't do anyone any favors.
I'm not shure 10mA is enough to kill an average person.
That was the figure quoted during the safety course I had to take when I took the job at Cabletron. I have no idea where they got it from. They could have made it up, for all I know.
But assuming that 30 mA figure has anything to do with what's actually safe is just that -- an assumption. It might have been driven by something else entirely. For example, in the US, under NFPA NEC rules, anything below 50 volts is considered to be harmless and outside of their jurisdiction. This figure was arrived at not because of some careful medical study or safety data, but because the US phone system runs at 48 volts DC, and NFPA didn't have the political clout to take over that.
Standards are written by the people who pay for them, don't forget.:)
Yes, and that's because telco equipment makers keep trying to conform to the way things were done 100 years ago. There's no reason for a computer datacenter to use 100-year-old standards and methods.
Not saying it's not a good idea. For that matter, I bet you could come up with a backwards and forwards compatible solution if you tried hard enough, although it would be big and bulky and thus suboptimal on that front. But AT&T stopped doing that kind of development work after the divestiture. One of the few drawbacks to that decision.
Has anyone considered all the arcing and sparking that simple on / off / circuit breakers will have to deal with? At least with AC you have a chance that the switch will be opened or closed at the zero crossing period and that AC makes it harder to draw arcs when breaking a circuit.
I've seen enough videos of AC arcs from switching failures that I suspect AC isn't that much better in practice. All the 440+ volt switchgear at work has big "ARC FLASH HAZARD -- PERSONAL PROTECTIVE EQUIPMENT REQUIRED" signs on it, too, come to think of it.
I'm no electrician, I'd guess the low voltage DC is safe because you can grab uninsulated leads in your hands and nothing will happen.
You're right, that is relatively safe.
As the parent post says, the danger comes when you put something *else* that's *highly conductive* across the bus bars. The arc flash can be deadly, if you're right next to it.
Better lightning protection. I'm sure its happened, but I've never heard of losing a telco DC bus. Big conductors, giant batteries across them, lightning is just not an issue anymore at the power level (still need to ground feedlines / waveguide / whatever you've got at home like that)
I'm not sure what the power supply type has to do with lightning protection?
Telco DC power supply systems are very robust, but that's because they're highly redundant and the telcos put lightning arrestors on just about everything that enters a CO.
dump most of the power conversion heat in the battery room where its all built to handle high temp and no one visits (other than occasional battery maint). Cheaper cooling in the data center, data center is somewhat more habitable, etc.
While it is certainly true that moving those heat sources out of the computer rooms is a big win, keep in mind that practically all the power that goes into a computer is dissipated as heat. So while you do get some cooling savings -- as you note, it's cheaper to cool power equipment than delicate electronics -- it's not as much as you might expect.
If I touch a 1000 volt wire that is carrying 100 amps and resistance of the return path (including my body) is 1 megaohm then exactly 1 milliamp will flow through my body.
Riiight. I=V/R, not just a good idea, it's the law.
Remember where I talked about shorting a wire with a tool? That's the danger in telco power system. Not you touching the wire -- your body is a lousy conductor, compared to copper. But if you short a bus bar with a screw driver, or something like that, the resulting arc flash will really ruin your day. The arc converts the electrical energy to thermal and kinetic energy, which is perfectly capable of burning your face off.
Any old technician with a brain in their head can run DC power feeds to equipment relatively safely due to the low voltages involved.
Voltage only determines if it can overcome the resistance of your skin (and maybe clothing). Beyond that, it doesn't matter. Amperage, on the other hand, determines the power -- the amount of damage the current will cause.
10 milliamps can kill you. But without at least several dozen volts behind it, it won't make it through your body.
But. Put something nice and conductive (like a tool) across a low-voltage circuit and you'll get an arc from the short. You don't need high voltage with that conductive material. And the arc itself can be dangerous. Temperature of the sun, chunks of hot metal flying around, etc.
Now consider that the battery plant in a typical telco CO is the size of a small one-bedroom apartment. The amount of power in that battery string is truly frightening. The main bus bars are often *several inches thick*.
As one guy put it, "Drop a wrench, learn braille."
There's something missing - a downmod of "you are factually incorrect". Not "I disagree", but you make a statement that is provably (in a binary fashion) wrong.
The problem with that is that it's very hard to find objective truth. I won't go so far as to say it's impossible (although there are those who believe that, too), but it's very hard. Sources are found to be faulty all the time. Things we "know" to be "true" we later change our thinking on. Things supposed to be "facts" are later learned to be wrong. This occurs even in things like physical science. (The world was seen quite differently before quantum mechanics was accepted.) For something like a "soft" science, or art, or politics, or religion -- finding objective truth is damn near impossible.
So how do you, as a moderator, know your truth is better than the commentator's truth?
Indeed, this is the very sort of situation moderation where should not be used. If you know something is wrong -- reply and give your take! If your sources are so obviously better, other moderators will mod you up and the other guy down. If people are split, you'll both be mod'ed up, and other readers can see both posts and make up their own mind.
To paraphrase a famous quote: You can't fight incorrect information by hiding it. The only way to fight misinformation is to present better information.
FWIW, Xerox consistently refers to toner as "dry ink", at least for our printers and copiers.
But dick-waving about the semantics of "ink" is missing the point. A fuser doesn't *dry* the ink/toner. It heats it up until it fuses to the paper. Hence the name.
The essence of it is that such "games" don't have any real or significant skill component- they're essentially designed to tickle people's response/reward circuits in such a way that they will be willing to perform a certain behaviour.
I'm just curious, where does that leave games like, say, Minesweeper?
Probably not currently. But then, last year, we couldn't put pixels on your eye lens. I don't know of any absolute reason why applied technology couldn't solve this problem (i.e., no law of nature prevents it). So I would guess we'd get exactly that.
Combined with a good model of your environment, and the VR system can put the text on any surface. Now all T-shirts can have amusing slogans on them!
It really depends on the terms of the contract. That's what controls. You can theorize and speculate and pontificate all you want, that contract is what they agreed to, and what the government agreed to pay for.
Now, the phrases "sent to an appropriately recognized facility" and "data remanence" make me suspect this is classified information, which would mean the contract is under NISP (National Industrial Security Program) jurisdiction. There are four possible CSAs (Cognizant Security Authorities) -- DoD, DoE, CIA, and NRC. I'm really only familiar with DoD, but I believe the rest follow suit on this. To wit:
Since Oct 2007, when ISL 2007-01 (Industrial Security Letter) was issued, overwrite methods are not acceptable for fixed disks. Degaussing or physical destruction are the only acceptable methods.
Degaussing has to be done using a deguasser which is on the NSA EPL (Evaluated Products List). This generally renders the hard disk inoperable. (Modern hard disks have their servo tracks encoded at the factory, and generally don't have field low-level format capability.)
Physical destruction has to cover the entire recording media. (e.g., "target practice" isn't acceptable.) They generally want the entire recording surface ground off, melted down, shredded to dust, and/or raised above the curie point. You can't just toss it in any old shredder.
You have to provide a certificate of destruction, saying you've done this. Failure to do so results in loss of Security Clearance, loss of contract, loss of future contract opportunities, fines, and/or jail. I wouldn't recommend it.
Now, submitter mentions they're going on to a new contract. If this is DoD, they should check the DD254 to see if it's the same classification derivation. If it is, they should be able to get approval to continue using the old systems. They should have a formal ATO (Approval To Operate) that identifies who to contact.
Now, if I'm way off base, and this isn't classified, then it's still up to what the contract says. There are various government standards that might be called out. NIST 800-88 is one; it allows for sanitization by overwrite, IIRC.
The problem is that those printers are expensive, but then again, so were the "Good ol' days" printers they replaced.
For more than a decade, I bought nothing but HP printers. That changed a few years ago, when they started to suck hard (huge bloated software, poor quality control, non-existent tech support; refusal to honor warranties).
A few months ago, we needed a new plotter/wide format printer. HP was pretty much the only option for what we needed. So:
We buy a brand new DesignJet T790. $4500 wide-format printer.
The control panel UI is slow and often doesn't respond to finger presses. It does, however, have lots of high color graphics and animations. I'm pretty sure it's WebOS. Certainly feels like a smart phone.
Web UI has two different credential schemes depending on what page you're on. Some pages want you to leave the username field blank; other pages want you to use "admin" for the username.
Out-of-the-box, the unit won't load paper. Seems like it's not actually trying to feed. After trying to a bit, it says "Edge of roll not found". Prompts me to lift the lever and unload paper. I lift the lever. New message: "Lever unexpectedly lifted". Lather, rinse, repeat.
Support guidance says load the latest firmware.
Look for firmware. It's not under "Download drivers and software". Eventually find it under a howto section.
309 MB file! Get download started.
Since I'm downloading, decide to grab drivers. Check under "Download drivers and software". Don't see drivers. Mainly just this "HP ePrint and Share: Easy printing" thing. That claims to be a radical new technology that lets me print without drivers or software. To use it, all I have to do is download and install this software. Umm...
Eventually find drivers under some other howto page.
Firmware download finished. It's just a binary blob, no checksum info, no wrapper like ZIP or anything. I just have to hope for the best. Takes several minutes to load. The machine hung during loading; I had to power-cycle it. Fortunately it came back up. Loads paper now, even.
The old HP is dead. The current management is just feeding off the corpse.
It sounds like it would be fairly trivial to get someone inside to take a look, tunnel under the building and up through the floor...
Someone's been watching too much TV. Digging a tunnel is *hard work*. It takes months to do it with expensive machinery, or years to do it by hand, and it leaves obvious evidence while you're doing it (large piles of dirt). So you'll spend more resources than you'll gain, and you'll get caught doing so.
The exception would be if there's already some kind of tunnel under the secure area. There was one documented case I recall where a bank vault had been built right over a sewer tunnel, or something like that. But most of the time, they don't build buildings over tunnels or pipes -- not because of security, but because it makes engineering the foundation supports harder.
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Again, there's no existing equipment that you need from a telco that you need in a data center.
There's quite a few "data center" products on the market that are designed to run off 48 VDC, including computer power supplies, servers, Ethernet switches, management equipment, etc. And then there's the power equipment itself -- rectifiers, batteries, wiring, etc.
Now, as I said, maybe the advantages of better designs would make it worth getting rid of that stuff, but maybe not. I'm not assuming just because the telcos invented it that it has no application to the datacenter.
I might remind you, the transistor was invented by AT&T to switch phone calls. Unix? Came out of AT&T. Information theory? AT&T. If we get rid of everything the telcos invented, there's not going to be much usable stuff left.
Since you seem to have some trouble with logic, I'll be explict: This doesn't automatically mean everything the telcos do is a good idea, either.
... 100-year-old standards ...
You keep saying that telco standards are old, like that automatically makes them inferior. "New" is not automatically better. When I hear about a standard that's been around for 100 years, that makes me think there may well be a good reasons it has survived so long. There is certainly going to be a large body of knowledge, experience, and products catering to it.
For this discussion in particular, the telcos do reliability better than just about anyone, so yes, I think it makes sense to at least look at what they're doing to see if one can learn from it.
Telcos use -48V because ... they had giant banks of batteries powering everything in case the power went out. Datacenters don't do that now (they might have some kind of backup generator, maybe), and they're not going to switch to that.
Um. I'm not sure what data centers you've been in, but I can't imagine a real data center without backup generators. Many of them also provide short-term supplies to carry the load until the generators start.[1] Sometimes it's capacitor banks or flywheels, but sometimes it's old-fashioned lead acid batteries. So, yes, giant banks of batteries very much are a part of some data centers.
The whole discussion is about DC in the data center. The telcos do what they do because it *makes sense*. You run all your equipment off of on-site batteries. You convert from city power to site DC once, when it comes into the building, and use that to keep the batteries charged. If city power fails, the batteries just start discharging for a bit. There's no switching delay, no inverter loss, no transition artifacts. If power's out for longer, you start your generators up.
It makes a heck of a lot more sense than converting AC to DC, then back to AC, then back to DC again, which is what many other UPS systems do.
[1] Some leave that to the customer, so you get lots of smaller UPSes in the individual racks instead. Inefficient.
If you think exposed terminals are so great...
I don't. In fact, I stated rather close to the exact opposite. I'd appreciate it if you didn't build straw-man arguments.
"Television [network] companies are not in the business of delivering television programmes to their audience; they're in the business of delivering audiences to their advertisers." -- Douglas Adams
(From "What Have We Got To Lose?"; first appearance in Wired UK #1, 1995; reprinted in The Salmon of Doubt)
Datacenters aren't run by telcos, and have absolutely nothing to do with telcos.
A "central office" and a "data center" are basically the same thing. And indeed, there's quite a bit of overlap between the two worlds. So "absolutely nothing" is a bit strong. And if you do throw away everything and start from scratch, you loose compatibility with all the existing equipment. You also potentially discard lots of proven equipment, standards, and technologies. Maybe that's worth it, maybe it isn't. There are often good reasons to change things up. At the same time, though, gratuitous incompatibility doesn't do anyone any favors.
I'm not shure 10mA is enough to kill an average person.
That was the figure quoted during the safety course I had to take when I took the job at Cabletron. I have no idea where they got it from. They could have made it up, for all I know.
But assuming that 30 mA figure has anything to do with what's actually safe is just that -- an assumption. It might have been driven by something else entirely. For example, in the US, under NFPA NEC rules, anything below 50 volts is considered to be harmless and outside of their jurisdiction. This figure was arrived at not because of some careful medical study or safety data, but because the US phone system runs at 48 volts DC, and NFPA didn't have the political clout to take over that.
Standards are written by the people who pay for them, don't forget. :)
Yes, and that's because telco equipment makers keep trying to conform to the way things were done 100 years ago. There's no reason for a computer datacenter to use 100-year-old standards and methods.
Not saying it's not a good idea. For that matter, I bet you could come up with a backwards and forwards compatible solution if you tried hard enough, although it would be big and bulky and thus suboptimal on that front. But AT&T stopped doing that kind of development work after the divestiture. One of the few drawbacks to that decision.
Has anyone considered all the arcing and sparking that simple on / off / circuit breakers will have to deal with? At least with AC you have a chance that the switch will be opened or closed at the zero crossing period and that AC makes it harder to draw arcs when breaking a circuit.
I've seen enough videos of AC arcs from switching failures that I suspect AC isn't that much better in practice. All the 440+ volt switchgear at work has big "ARC FLASH HAZARD -- PERSONAL PROTECTIVE EQUIPMENT REQUIRED" signs on it, too, come to think of it.
By time we were done, the cost of all that DC gear was 1.5x the cost of the COTS AC gear ...
So, the standard technology adoption catch-22. Almost nobody uses it because it's expensive, and it's expensive because almost nobody uses it.
Foo.
I'm no electrician, I'd guess the low voltage DC is safe because you can grab uninsulated leads in your hands and nothing will happen.
You're right, that is relatively safe.
As the parent post says, the danger comes when you put something *else* that's *highly conductive* across the bus bars. The arc flash can be deadly, if you're right next to it.
Better lightning protection. I'm sure its happened, but I've never heard of losing a telco DC bus. Big conductors, giant batteries across them, lightning is just not an issue anymore at the power level (still need to ground feedlines / waveguide / whatever you've got at home like that)
I'm not sure what the power supply type has to do with lightning protection?
Telco DC power supply systems are very robust, but that's because they're highly redundant and the telcos put lightning arrestors on just about everything that enters a CO.
dump most of the power conversion heat in the battery room where its all built to handle high temp and no one visits (other than occasional battery maint). Cheaper cooling in the data center, data center is somewhat more habitable, etc.
While it is certainly true that moving those heat sources out of the computer rooms is a big win, keep in mind that practically all the power that goes into a computer is dissipated as heat. So while you do get some cooling savings -- as you note, it's cheaper to cool power equipment than delicate electronics -- it's not as much as you might expect.
I'd guess 12V / 24V is probably the best, as it's low enough not to be a safety risk (think car battery)
Put the metal shank of a screw driver across a car battery's terminals sometime and let me know if your opinion is the same.
(More here: #38222188)
If I touch a 1000 volt wire that is carrying 100 amps and resistance of the return path (including my body) is 1 megaohm then exactly 1 milliamp will flow through my body.
Riiight. I=V/R, not just a good idea, it's the law.
Remember where I talked about shorting a wire with a tool? That's the danger in telco power system. Not you touching the wire -- your body is a lousy conductor, compared to copper. But if you short a bus bar with a screw driver, or something like that, the resulting arc flash will really ruin your day. The arc converts the electrical energy to thermal and kinetic energy, which is perfectly capable of burning your face off.
Only very stupid engineers design power connectors that can fit both ways.
The DC power supply connections in telco equipment is generally screw terminals and spade connectors.
Any old technician with a brain in their head can run DC power feeds to equipment relatively safely due to the low voltages involved.
Voltage only determines if it can overcome the resistance of your skin (and maybe clothing). Beyond that, it doesn't matter. Amperage, on the other hand, determines the power -- the amount of damage the current will cause.
10 milliamps can kill you. But without at least several dozen volts behind it, it won't make it through your body.
But. Put something nice and conductive (like a tool) across a low-voltage circuit and you'll get an arc from the short. You don't need high voltage with that conductive material. And the arc itself can be dangerous. Temperature of the sun, chunks of hot metal flying around, etc.
Now consider that the battery plant in a typical telco CO is the size of a small one-bedroom apartment. The amount of power in that battery string is truly frightening. The main bus bars are often *several inches thick*.
As one guy put it, "Drop a wrench, learn braille."
There's something missing - a downmod of "you are factually incorrect". Not "I disagree", but you make a statement that is provably (in a binary fashion) wrong.
The problem with that is that it's very hard to find objective truth. I won't go so far as to say it's impossible (although there are those who believe that, too), but it's very hard. Sources are found to be faulty all the time. Things we "know" to be "true" we later change our thinking on. Things supposed to be "facts" are later learned to be wrong. This occurs even in things like physical science. (The world was seen quite differently before quantum mechanics was accepted.) For something like a "soft" science, or art, or politics, or religion -- finding objective truth is damn near impossible.
So how do you, as a moderator, know your truth is better than the commentator's truth?
Indeed, this is the very sort of situation moderation where should not be used. If you know something is wrong -- reply and give your take! If your sources are so obviously better, other moderators will mod you up and the other guy down. If people are split, you'll both be mod'ed up, and other readers can see both posts and make up their own mind.
To paraphrase a famous quote: You can't fight incorrect information by hiding it. The only way to fight misinformation is to present better information.
I hate "Funny" comments as well. That's why I set "Funny" mods to have a negative impact on the overall score in my preferences.
Half the reason I still come to Slashdot is for the "Funny" comments. I've got Funny set +3 in my options.
Just goes to show you, different strokes for different folks.
"When a thing is funny, search it carefully for a hidden truth." (George Bernard Shaw)
We don't really discuss here on Slashdot, we debate. The big difference is that nobody asks questions, they just make statements.
You really think so? What makes you say that?
;-)
Any power adapter should be able to survive a complete short on the output if it is designed properly.
And as we all know, the consumer electronics market is known for its high quality and attention to detail in their designs and build quality. ;-)
FWIW, Xerox consistently refers to toner as "dry ink", at least for our printers and copiers.
But dick-waving about the semantics of "ink" is missing the point. A fuser doesn't *dry* the ink/toner. It heats it up until it fuses to the paper. Hence the name.
Fair 'nuff. Thanks for the reply.
The essence of it is that such "games" don't have any real or significant skill component- they're essentially designed to tickle people's response/reward circuits in such a way that they will be willing to perform a certain behaviour.
I'm just curious, where does that leave games like, say, Minesweeper?
From TFS:
"... poorly documented maintenance can lead to conflicts with automated systems ..."
That doesn't mean maintenance makes datacenters less reliable. It means cluelessness makes datacenters less reliable.
Sheesh.
Is it possible to track an eye that fast?
Probably not currently. But then, last year, we couldn't put pixels on your eye lens. I don't know of any absolute reason why applied technology couldn't solve this problem (i.e., no law of nature prevents it). So I would guess we'd get exactly that.
Combined with a good model of your environment, and the VR system can put the text on any surface. Now all T-shirts can have amusing slogans on them!
It really depends on the terms of the contract. That's what controls. You can theorize and speculate and pontificate all you want, that contract is what they agreed to, and what the government agreed to pay for.
Now, the phrases "sent to an appropriately recognized facility" and "data remanence" make me suspect this is classified information, which would mean the contract is under NISP (National Industrial Security Program) jurisdiction. There are four possible CSAs (Cognizant Security Authorities) -- DoD, DoE, CIA, and NRC. I'm really only familiar with DoD, but I believe the rest follow suit on this. To wit:
Since Oct 2007, when ISL 2007-01 (Industrial Security Letter) was issued, overwrite methods are not acceptable for fixed disks. Degaussing or physical destruction are the only acceptable methods.
Degaussing has to be done using a deguasser which is on the NSA EPL (Evaluated Products List). This generally renders the hard disk inoperable. (Modern hard disks have their servo tracks encoded at the factory, and generally don't have field low-level format capability.)
Physical destruction has to cover the entire recording media. (e.g., "target practice" isn't acceptable.) They generally want the entire recording surface ground off, melted down, shredded to dust, and/or raised above the curie point. You can't just toss it in any old shredder.
You have to provide a certificate of destruction, saying you've done this. Failure to do so results in loss of Security Clearance, loss of contract, loss of future contract opportunities, fines, and/or jail. I wouldn't recommend it.
Now, submitter mentions they're going on to a new contract. If this is DoD, they should check the DD254 to see if it's the same classification derivation. If it is, they should be able to get approval to continue using the old systems. They should have a formal ATO (Approval To Operate) that identifies who to contact.
Now, if I'm way off base, and this isn't classified, then it's still up to what the contract says. There are various government standards that might be called out. NIST 800-88 is one; it allows for sanitization by overwrite, IIRC.
The problem is that those printers are expensive, but then again, so were the "Good ol' days" printers they replaced.
For more than a decade, I bought nothing but HP printers. That changed a few years ago, when they started to suck hard (huge bloated software, poor quality control, non-existent tech support; refusal to honor warranties).
A few months ago, we needed a new plotter/wide format printer. HP was pretty much the only option for what we needed. So:
We buy a brand new DesignJet T790. $4500 wide-format printer.
The control panel UI is slow and often doesn't respond to finger presses. It does, however, have lots of high color graphics and animations. I'm pretty sure it's WebOS. Certainly feels like a smart phone.
Web UI has two different credential schemes depending on what page you're on. Some pages want you to leave the username field blank; other pages want you to use "admin" for the username.
Out-of-the-box, the unit won't load paper. Seems like it's not actually trying to feed. After trying to a bit, it says "Edge of roll not found". Prompts me to lift the lever and unload paper. I lift the lever. New message: "Lever unexpectedly lifted". Lather, rinse, repeat.
Support guidance says load the latest firmware.
Look for firmware. It's not under "Download drivers and software". Eventually find it under a howto section.
309 MB file! Get download started.
Since I'm downloading, decide to grab drivers. Check under "Download drivers and software". Don't see drivers. Mainly just this "HP ePrint and Share: Easy printing" thing. That claims to be a radical new technology that lets me print without drivers or software. To use it, all I have to do is download and install this software. Umm...
Eventually find drivers under some other howto page.
Firmware download finished. It's just a binary blob, no checksum info, no wrapper like ZIP or anything. I just have to hope for the best. Takes several minutes to load. The machine hung during loading; I had to power-cycle it. Fortunately it came back up. Loads paper now, even.
The old HP is dead. The current management is just feeding off the corpse.
It sounds like it would be fairly trivial to get someone inside to take a look, tunnel under the building and up through the floor...
Someone's been watching too much TV. Digging a tunnel is *hard work*. It takes months to do it with expensive machinery, or years to do it by hand, and it leaves obvious evidence while you're doing it (large piles of dirt). So you'll spend more resources than you'll gain, and you'll get caught doing so.
The exception would be if there's already some kind of tunnel under the secure area. There was one documented case I recall where a bank vault had been built right over a sewer tunnel, or something like that. But most of the time, they don't build buildings over tunnels or pipes -- not because of security, but because it makes engineering the foundation supports harder.