I'd say a two foot by three foot fuel tank has a good chance of hitting the ground. I've seen (and touched) a two foot titanium ball from a delta second stage. You can see pictures of things that have survived on my company's website.
Disclamer: I do not speak for The Aerospace Corporation in any capacity.
WINE may never be able to run programs quite as fast as Windows, but supposing that the Linux equivalents of the DLL's used by Windows apps are faster, it actually is theoretically possible that it could run programs FASTER. The steps are translation, not emulation.
It's almost certaintly the case that there will be applications which run faster under WINE then under Windows on the same machine. There probably won't be many, but there should be some. There certaintly are some Linux apps that run faster under FreeBSD's Linux compatability mode (StarOffice was one of them a year ago). Don't think of WINE as Windows Emulation, think of it as a windows compatability mode. Sure, there's some translation going on (some of it quite significant), but the really critical things like basic math and data structure manipulation is going on in native code.
One of their 66MHz/64-bit PCI cards won't work in your average box.
Actually, if it follows the spec it will work fine in any PCI slot. If you plug a 64-bit card into a 32-bit slot the card runs at half the speed. A 32-bit card in a 64-bit slot just works like normal. A 66MHz card in a 33MHz slot runs at 33MHz and a 33MHz card in a 66MHz slot downgrades the bus to 33MHz (ouch!).
I'll tell where the "Evil NSI" really comes from. It comes from the fact that I can't think of a single transaction I've tried to do with them (I'm with Register.com now, thankfully) that didn't leave me wanting to take a baseball bat to their technical staff in a dark alley somewhere. For instance, I've got a NIC handle out there somewhere that is not defunct because the PGP security system ate my key (and I've seen a number of people more cluefull then I state clear that it's always been broken.) I've had the e-mail change system reject the forms their own web pages generated with totally bogus diagnosics for days on end. Then my queries about them were ignored for weeks.
In the end, what bothers me most about NSI is the amazing uselessness of their customer interface (both automated and human (not that's I've ever managed to get a response from a human.)) Their contract terms are less then steller, but the real problem is that the only thing that really works on their system seems to be the DNS servers and the system that charges your credit card. God help you if you want to make a change to your domain.
Mechanical bug #1: They're not burning the satellites for a tax write-off, they're buring them to keep them from becoming space junk, that would present a traffic hazard to future spacecraft. If you leave them up there, they will run into something eventually. Guaranteed. Good citizens deorbit their sats before they run out of fuel.
Actually it's worse then that. These are LEOs. At some point in the future (less then ten years from now) they would fall out of the sky regardless. Deorbiting them over the Pacific Ocean is definaly preferable to having them deorbit themselves over a major population center. People really have been hit by falling space junk. The odds are low, especialy with small comsats, but it can happen.
What to do with old sats.
on
R.I.P. Iridium
·
· Score: 2
Some of the work I do is in the space debris area, specificaly in collision avoidance. I'm not an expert, but I believe that all recent satelites are supposed to file a plan for what to do at their end of life. For LEOs (Low Earth Orbit satelites) that usually involves deorbiting them so they either burn up entierly or what doesn't burn up lands in the ocean where it isn't likely to hit something. The Iridium birds will only last a few more years before they fall out of the sky on their own. Since nobody seems to want them, I suspect they will get dumped in the Pacific.
Well you can see a somewhat old one at the David Sarnoff Research Center and I'm working on putting together a fairly large tightly coupled system with Quad Xeons connected with Myrinet. Hopefully I can get the $250K I'd need for 16 nodes (64 procs) and 100GB of shared disk.
The company is fundamentally a West Coast ISP with delusions of grandeur. Specifically, Concentric doesn't actually have any employees in Boston. Instead, it contracts with a company call ed Covad to do all the grunt work.
It's clear the author has no idea how DSL is sold or how Covad fits into this picture.
The short form of how DSL is sold is that you get service in two pieces. First, you get a physical connection to your phone companies local central office (CO). From there you are connected to your ISP via an Ethernet bridge running over ATM. You ISP then provides you the second half of DSL service, some sort of network connection (I'll refer to it as an internet connection since that's normal, but it could just as well be a private network that only runs IPX.) In general the physical connection is provided by your local phone company. You internet connection could be provided by you phone company or another appropriatly equiped ISP.
Where Covad fits into this picture is that they provide the physical connection. That is, they act as a replacement for the local phone company. They lease copper pairs and rack space from the local phone company and then provide their own signal over those lines. An intresting feature of Covad's service is that they provide dedicated access all the way from your end of the pipe to the ISP of your choice if you're willing to pay for it (most DSL service uses a somewhat oversubscribed link from the CO to the ISP.) They also provice Service Level Agreements just like if you were buying a traditional T1 or leased line. This is an excelent feature if you're job depends on having working internet access as mine does (I telecommute from Seattle to Los Angeles) since it gives them some significant economic incentive to keep your lines up.
Personaly, I think Coved is a great thing for consumers as they provide competition at the phone company. I was impressed by the Covad installer, unlike all the idiots from USWEST I've delt with, he knew what he was doing. He basicaly ripped out and reinstalled all the work the USWEST installer did because he though it was sub-par. (It was, they installed a low-mositure, indoor punchdown block outside my apartment so the cheap steel contacts could corrode and kill my signal.;-[)
The OS doesn't really matter on a GSR
on
Linux Based Router
·
· Score: 1
Actually, the OS on a gigabit switching router (GSR) doesn't really do much. No OS is going to actually keep up with 40Gbit/sec on modern processors, the real work is done by the hardware with the OS providing GUI functions and poking the appropriate hardware bits as needed. I'd guess that using Linux is going to do them more good from a marketing standpoint (riding on the current wave of hype) then from a technical one.
Slashdot Mirror
I'd say a two foot by three foot fuel tank has a good chance of hitting the ground. I've seen (and touched) a two foot titanium ball from a delta second stage. You can see pictures of things that have survived on my company's website.
Disclamer: I do not speak for The Aerospace Corporation in any capacity.
...or better yet:
FTPSearch
WINE may never be able to run programs quite as fast as Windows, but supposing that the Linux equivalents of the DLL's used by Windows apps are faster, it actually is theoretically possible that it could run programs FASTER. The steps are translation, not emulation.
It's almost certaintly the case that there will be applications which run faster under WINE then under Windows on the same machine. There probably won't be many, but there should be some. There certaintly are some Linux apps that run faster under FreeBSD's Linux compatability mode (StarOffice was one of them a year ago). Don't think of WINE as Windows Emulation, think of it as a windows compatability mode. Sure, there's some translation going on (some of it quite significant), but the really critical things like basic math and data structure manipulation is going on in native code.
-- Brooks
One of their 66MHz/64-bit PCI cards won't work in your average box.
Actually, if it follows the spec it will work fine in any PCI slot. If you plug a 64-bit card into a 32-bit slot the card runs at half the speed. A 32-bit card in a 64-bit slot just works like normal. A 66MHz card in a 33MHz slot runs at 33MHz and a 33MHz card in a 66MHz slot downgrades the bus to 33MHz (ouch!).
I'll tell where the "Evil NSI" really comes from. It comes from the fact that I can't think of a single transaction I've tried to do with them (I'm with Register.com now, thankfully) that didn't leave me wanting to take a baseball bat to their technical staff in a dark alley somewhere. For instance, I've got a NIC handle out there somewhere that is not defunct because the PGP security system ate my key (and I've seen a number of people more cluefull then I state clear that it's always been broken.) I've had the e-mail change system reject the forms their own web pages generated with totally bogus diagnosics for days on end. Then my queries about them were ignored for weeks.
In the end, what bothers me most about NSI is the amazing uselessness of their customer interface (both automated and human (not that's I've ever managed to get a response from a human.)) Their contract terms are less then steller, but the real problem is that the only thing that really works on their system seems to be the DNS servers and the system that charges your credit card. God help you if you want to make a change to your domain.
Mechanical bug #1: They're not burning the satellites for a tax write-off, they're buring them to keep them from becoming space junk, that
would present a traffic hazard to future spacecraft. If you leave them up there, they will run into something eventually. Guaranteed. Good citizens deorbit their sats before they run out of fuel.
Actually it's worse then that. These are LEOs. At some point in the future (less then ten years from now) they would fall out of the sky regardless. Deorbiting them over the Pacific Ocean is definaly preferable to having them deorbit themselves over a major population center. People really have been hit by falling space junk. The odds are low, especialy with small comsats, but it can happen.
Some of the work I do is in the space debris area, specificaly in collision avoidance. I'm not an expert, but I believe that all recent satelites are supposed to file a plan for what to do at their end of life. For LEOs (Low Earth Orbit satelites) that usually involves deorbiting them so they either burn up entierly or what doesn't burn up lands in the ocean where it isn't likely to hit something. The Iridium birds will only last a few more years before they fall out of the sky on their own. Since nobody seems to want them, I suspect they will get dumped in the Pacific.
Here's an article with a little more information on the effect this scumbag is having on his intended victem:
Woman given help at last in battle with hate group - The Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Well you can see a somewhat old one at the David Sarnoff Research Center and I'm working on putting together a fairly large tightly coupled system with Quad Xeons connected with Myrinet. Hopefully I can get the $250K I'd need for 16 nodes (64 procs) and 100GB of shared disk.
It's clear the author has no idea how DSL is sold or how Covad fits into this picture.
The short form of how DSL is sold is that you get service in two pieces. First, you get a physical connection to your phone companies local central office (CO). From there you are connected to your ISP via an Ethernet bridge running over ATM. You ISP then provides you the second half of DSL service, some sort of network connection (I'll refer to it as an internet connection since that's normal, but it could just as well be a private network that only runs IPX.) In general the physical connection is provided by your local phone company. You internet connection could be provided by you phone company or another appropriatly equiped ISP.
Where Covad fits into this picture is that they provide the physical connection. That is, they act as a replacement for the local phone company. They lease copper pairs and rack space from the local phone company and then provide their own signal over those lines. An intresting feature of Covad's service is that they provide dedicated access all the way from your end of the pipe to the ISP of your choice if you're willing to pay for it (most DSL service uses a somewhat oversubscribed link from the CO to the ISP.) They also provice Service Level Agreements just like if you were buying a traditional T1 or leased line. This is an excelent feature if you're job depends on having working internet access as mine does (I telecommute from Seattle to Los Angeles) since it gives them some significant economic incentive to keep your lines up.
Personaly, I think Coved is a great thing for consumers as they provide competition at the phone company. I was impressed by the Covad installer, unlike all the idiots from USWEST I've delt with, he knew what he was doing. He basicaly ripped out and reinstalled all the work the USWEST installer did because he though it was sub-par. (It was, they installed a low-mositure, indoor punchdown block outside my apartment so the cheap steel contacts could corrode and kill my signal. ;-[)
Actually, the OS on a gigabit switching router (GSR) doesn't really do much. No OS is going to actually keep up with 40Gbit/sec on modern processors, the real work is done by the hardware with the OS providing GUI functions and poking the appropriate hardware bits as needed. I'd guess that using Linux is going to do them more good from a marketing standpoint (riding on the current wave of hype) then from a technical one.
A similar product, the Juniper Networks M40 , uses a modified version of the FreeBSD kernel.