I don't deal particularly with the theory of the systems, just the practice of measuring the characteristics of the ones we receive into our labs. Our testing is thorough--much more than running IOzone or the like. We usually hit these systems from 10-20 simultaneous blades, all running multiple instances of a sustained bench.
As an aside, a NetApp 6000-series filer is no more capable of higher throughput than their 3000-series filers are. This, I have directly from NetApp. As a procurer of many, many petabytes of their gear, not only do we tend to know at least as much as their own test teams about the performance of their systems, we also get direct access to about any internal NetApp resource we care to have direct access to.
I stand by my remark. Open Storage platforms toast NetApp platforms, at least on throughput measurements. Never have tested IOPS, however, so I won't comment there.
Open Storage is, of course, new. And lacks on horizontal integration features. Slow, it is not. Anyone who thinks otherwise hasn't tested it. Period.
Corporate testing as part of a 6 month study involving a large intelligence customer. But if you find Sun's blogs showing > 1GB/s sustained r/w, these blogs don't lie. Performance is confirmed. My guess is the difference lies in NetApp's use of a RAID-4 variant in order to record parity.
While people are buying $250,000 NetApp installations, the exact same hardware, performance and connectivity will go for $5000 of high-end hardware and a couple of hours work with ZFS
This claim, sadly modded as "Insightful" (um), is even more sadly lacking in evidence.
The mechanism the Chinese use now to control the exchange rate is by trading yuan for dollars, and then buying US bonds on the open market. This does indeed control the exchange rate. But what else does it tell you?
While this is merely a rhetorical question, do you want them to stop buying our bonds?
The Federal Reserve Ratio, expressed as 1:N, is the number of dollars held in reserve by the bank per dollar loaned.
Back in the conservative days it was 1:5. As you've noticed it's moving past 1:20 now.
A large ratio is fine if inflation is low, except when people run the banks. That's not so good. The FDIC kicks in then, but God Help Us if there is a US-wide run.
Expanding the ratio has two consequences: 1) it is inflationary by expanding the money supply, and 2) it exposes depositors to increase risk.
Permitting the Federal Reserve to deliberately cause inflation isn't nearly as bad as it sounds. #2, however, does raise eyebrows.
If the Fed "lowers" the ratio, as you say, there will be deflationary pressure. I doubt they will do that. As per the 1H2010, there has been no inflation at all, and deflation is actually a possibility. No one really wants that, especially because if we enter a sustained deflationary period during an economic downturn, that is the textbook economics definition of a "Depression".
Sorry. Not quite accurate. There are legal limits (established by the Federal Reserve) that prevent a bank from loaning out each dollar it gets on deposit more than a certain number of times. I think the number was 17X the last time I looked. Almost certainly happens in China, also, and most banks around the world.
The Chinese "manipulate" their currency by buying trading currency on the open currency market. Mostly dollars. Which they then use to buy US bonds. Which is to say, every time the US wants to increase its debt, the Chinese are there to help us. Their currency is basically floated, otherwise, mon. I think they ceased legal-fiat control of their currency in 2005. You can read about this on Wikipedia if you wish.
Well. One problem. Have you reviewed the actual Wicked laser in question? It's pretty clear to me that the design is completely intended to look like a Light Saber.
Governments are better at investing in things in general when the thing invested in has a marginal production cost of zero after developed, or in general the thing is a "public good," for which private industry cannot be properly incentivized to produce. Obviously patents exist to generate private goods out of things which would otherwise be public goods if it weren't for the legal manipulation.
What you're proposing is an act of desperation based around trying to cope with a failing system. Stop attempting the insanity of taxing this thing called "income". Instead, tax the goods directly. Or the land they use. Or anything else.
Has it not yet become obvious to you that the muddily defined notion of income, with the muddily defined (and fictional!) notion of it being earned in some place where an HQ is, is all just so much slight of hand?
Ruminate on it. "Income," and taxes on it are the problem. The income tax is the disease. Anything else would be better.
Want to think about how unfair it all is? How is it a company can deduct the cost of its domiciling, but an individual can't? It's just evil. Individuals incur cost of living (rents) in high cost areas SO THAT THEY CAN BE WHERE THE JOBS ARE.
Anyway:
Proposing systems that amount to, in short, "let's take all their stuff". Well. It's desperate, just plain wrong, and nothing more than evidence of a deeper sickness. These reactionary proposals will NOT solve the deeper problem. Mark my words.
I made no argument about their tax burden. Merely one that said that confiscating everything if they wanted to leave was "unconscionable" and likened it to an "Iron Curtain". I stand by this remark.
I also stand by the remark that income taxes are not the right vehicle, and the remark that people are thinking of it is evidence of this. Tax their gross if you prefer. Or their sales.
While I do generally think we have too high a tax burden, I am personally of the opinion that our current means of collection is highly flawed regardless of the burden. Note the difference between the definition of "income" for individuals and businesses: a business deducts all of its costs, including domiciling; an individual cannot deduct domiciling costs, or travel costs in pursuit of one's wages.
The lack of the ability to deduct rent is just evil. It's completely a lie that people have to incur rent anyway: their is huge amounts of evidence that say people live in cities because that's where the jobs are.
Income tax is just evil. Businesses are the ones most able to manipulate it. Kill the income tax. Anything else would be better.
Yes. But the Landholders do indeed pay. And OF COURSEE, the renters get it on indirect, as the Landholders will do some degree of burden transfer. This method is better, as it reduces the number of collection points.
After years and years of looking at the situation, I've decided that the income tax will never really "work".
Consider. What's the biggest expense of a corporation, typically? Staff. Yes, your income is their expense. Think about it, young Padiwan.
Whether you like big government or small, governments need revenues. We can both accept that. I keep hoping that I can get enough people to realize that this thing called the "Income Tax" is the absolute worst of all the options. It needs to go. Completely. While nothing is perfect, the one thing that has any kind of political support at all with any hope of going anywhere is the Fair Tax. So look there.
I'm intensely interested in your comment. As a first step to digging deeper, I typed "how does china peg its currency" into Google. For whatever reason, the first article was a wikipedia article on fixed exchange rates, here:
The article says that until 2005 China made it illegal to trade currency at any other rate than the one fixed by the government. The article says that the typical means, if the fiat law fixed rate method isn't used, is "by either buying or selling its own currency on the open market".
This is all a bit murky.
Do you have a link to something that explains it all clearly?
So ironic that we're considering implementing the financial equivalent of the Iron Curtain. This has come up for individuals, also. It's just unconscionable. Just exactly what sort of country do you want to live in? Next you'll be proposing we snipe the richies as they attempt to flee the border. That people are considering such extremes just tells me that the current system is broken. Income taxes just aren't the right vehicle for gathering revenue.
This rhetorical question amuses, as different law enforcement agencies in the US cannot even decide where they want it to be earned. You know, pretending they had a say in the matter and by fiat of law could make it so, the various agencies can't agree where it ought to be!
Frankly, I'm with Von Mises. Institute a tax on the unimproved value of land, and call it a wrap. No more income tax at all. Income taxes aren't just a logistics problem (and invasive! get rid of the state's interest in knowing what people do for a living, and how much money they make for gawdsake), the system is just too gameable. Land, now that's viewable from space.
There's the sort of hazing that occurs when you enter a frat, which is a kind of formal thing, and the more friendly sort of activity when a group of men get together and pick on each other. In such an environment, men don't even bother picking on someone they don't like. I'm not sure which word you want to use for this, and don't particularly care. "Male bonding rituals". These are things that don't click with girls. It's not illegal at all. Men do it instinctively, and one is at one's peril with the group to attempt to buck it. As I said, the HR department can't make them (or even try, really) like someone.
One form of hazing might involve giving someone a nick that's funny and unflattering given some funny and unflattering error they've seen the person make. At my work, we refer to such individual as "Ooh, Shiny!" for his tendency to get so distracted by things new. Such a thing would not be illegal, even though obviously it's a form of humiliation... kinda. Complain to HR (which would be idiotically stupid), and yes, the behavior will stop. DEAD COLD. And *poof*. One is on the outside looking in at that point, no longer included in any sort of workplace comraderie.
I'm curious, however. If a man were going to work in a prominently female work environment, where the female fashion of communicating were dominant, would you be calling the environment sexist and asking all the women to change?
Anyway; obviously I do agree with you to some degree or another, with the observation on learning the various communication styles. But do keep in mind that learning said various different styles is at least as much about learning to tolerate how the other communicates as it is about changing how one communicates.
If an environment is predominately male, it's clear to me that it's going to be the girls adapting. The sociobiological basis of communication styles can be nudged, at best.
I find it ironic that one would decry the "lack of social skills" in a paragraph deliberately designed to be insulting. Surely you were not hoping I would not see through that? LOL.
p.s., will stick with the notion, and agree with the gallery (to wit: +5, Funny) that the remark "rapid ambulation" was indeed humor in context. Fight it if you want, but... the audience does not agree.
I'm not quite sure what you think I mean by "hazing," but it is surely not illegal. Part of "hazing" is good natured "picking on" someone you actually like. This is amongst men. Perhaps one might not like that behavior, but a great way to find oneself on the outside looking in, without a leg to stand on (even with one's HR department), is to cry foul in a situation like this. The HR department has no desire nor any authority to make one's peers actually like you.
Most hip men don't haze women because they know they don't get it. Be that as it may.
A workplace is not magically become "hostile" because it has characteristics that are stereotypically male. You won't find a single fortune 500 training tape even vaguely hinting at it. God knows, I've seen enough of them!
I might suggest a read of "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus" as a start for you in comprehending, accepting, and coping with gender communications differences. There are also other great books emphasizing non-gender based communications between individuals that are also worthwhile.
(And if you were astute enough to notice that maybe most men in IT could use a good read of the same, you would of course be right).
Slashdot Mirror
I don't deal particularly with the theory of the systems, just the practice of measuring the characteristics of the ones we receive into our labs. Our testing is thorough--much more than running IOzone or the like. We usually hit these systems from 10-20 simultaneous blades, all running multiple instances of a sustained bench.
As an aside, a NetApp 6000-series filer is no more capable of higher throughput than their 3000-series filers are. This, I have directly from NetApp. As a procurer of many, many petabytes of their gear, not only do we tend to know at least as much as their own test teams about the performance of their systems, we also get direct access to about any internal NetApp resource we care to have direct access to.
I stand by my remark. Open Storage platforms toast NetApp platforms, at least on throughput measurements. Never have tested IOPS, however, so I won't comment there.
Open Storage is, of course, new. And lacks on horizontal integration features. Slow, it is not. Anyone who thinks otherwise hasn't tested it. Period.
C//
Corporate testing as part of a 6 month study involving a large intelligence customer. But if you find Sun's blogs showing > 1GB/s sustained r/w, these blogs don't lie. Performance is confirmed. My guess is the difference lies in NetApp's use of a RAID-4 variant in order to record parity.
C//
Why? Just because a block of data is duplicated all over your filesystem that doesn't mean it's accessed all that frequently
If it were, it would likely be in a the server's RAM.
Anyway, there is a use case where duplicative tends to also be frequently used: duplicate virtual machine disk segments.
So it's a fine idea, in theory.
I'm with you, however, in favoring frequency of use over the mere fact of it's duplicativeness.
C//
While people are buying $250,000 NetApp installations, the exact same hardware, performance and connectivity will go for $5000 of high-end hardware and a couple of hours work with ZFS
This claim, sadly modded as "Insightful" (um), is even more sadly lacking in evidence.
C//
ZFS has a lot of promise, but does not have nearly the performance that WAFL does
WTF? A 7310, the low end Open Storage appliance, will TOAST a 3170. A 3170 can't even touch it.
C//
. Screw NetApp and their overpriced, underfeatured, patented crap. Really. I mean that.
Really? You mean that.
*thinks about it*
Yeah, I guess there are some NetApp sales reps worth screwing.
Although have you seen my VMware rep?
C//
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed_exchange_rate
The mechanism the Chinese use now to control the exchange rate is by trading yuan for dollars, and then buying US bonds on the open market. This does indeed control the exchange rate. But what else does it tell you?
While this is merely a rhetorical question, do you want them to stop buying our bonds?
C//
The Federal Reserve Ratio, expressed as 1:N, is the number of dollars held in reserve by the bank per dollar loaned.
Back in the conservative days it was 1:5. As you've noticed it's moving past 1:20 now.
A large ratio is fine if inflation is low, except when people run the banks. That's not so good. The FDIC kicks in then, but God Help Us if there is a US-wide run.
C//
Expanding the ratio has two consequences: 1) it is inflationary by expanding the money supply, and 2) it exposes depositors to increase risk.
Permitting the Federal Reserve to deliberately cause inflation isn't nearly as bad as it sounds. #2, however, does raise eyebrows.
If the Fed "lowers" the ratio, as you say, there will be deflationary pressure. I doubt they will do that. As per the 1H2010, there has been no inflation at all, and deflation is actually a possibility. No one really wants that, especially because if we enter a sustained deflationary period during an economic downturn, that is the textbook economics definition of a "Depression".
The Fed wouldn't want their fingers on that.
C//
unfortunately IQ test results doesn't measure intelligence
Surely I'm not the only one to notice the irony of this remark.
C//
Sorry. Not quite accurate. There are legal limits (established by the Federal Reserve) that prevent a bank from loaning out each dollar it gets on deposit more than a certain number of times. I think the number was 17X the last time I looked. Almost certainly happens in China, also, and most banks around the world.
C//
The Chinese "manipulate" their currency by buying trading currency on the open currency market. Mostly dollars. Which they then use to buy US bonds. Which is to say, every time the US wants to increase its debt, the Chinese are there to help us. Their currency is basically floated, otherwise, mon. I think they ceased legal-fiat control of their currency in 2005. You can read about this on Wikipedia if you wish.
C//
Well. One problem. Have you reviewed the actual Wicked laser in question? It's pretty clear to me that the design is completely intended to look like a Light Saber.
C//
Governments are better at investing in things in general when the thing invested in has a marginal production cost of zero after developed, or in general the thing is a "public good," for which private industry cannot be properly incentivized to produce. Obviously patents exist to generate private goods out of things which would otherwise be public goods if it weren't for the legal manipulation.
What you're proposing is an act of desperation based around trying to cope with a failing system. Stop attempting the insanity of taxing this thing called "income". Instead, tax the goods directly. Or the land they use. Or anything else.
Has it not yet become obvious to you that the muddily defined notion of income, with the muddily defined (and fictional!) notion of it being earned in some place where an HQ is, is all just so much slight of hand?
Ruminate on it. "Income," and taxes on it are the problem. The income tax is the disease. Anything else would be better.
Want to think about how unfair it all is? How is it a company can deduct the cost of its domiciling, but an individual can't? It's just evil. Individuals incur cost of living (rents) in high cost areas SO THAT THEY CAN BE WHERE THE JOBS ARE.
Anyway:
Proposing systems that amount to, in short, "let's take all their stuff". Well. It's desperate, just plain wrong, and nothing more than evidence of a deeper sickness. These reactionary proposals will NOT solve the deeper problem. Mark my words.
The. Income. Tax. Must. Not. Go. On.
C//
I made no argument about their tax burden. Merely one that said that confiscating everything if they wanted to leave was "unconscionable" and likened it to an "Iron Curtain". I stand by this remark.
I also stand by the remark that income taxes are not the right vehicle, and the remark that people are thinking of it is evidence of this. Tax their gross if you prefer. Or their sales.
While I do generally think we have too high a tax burden, I am personally of the opinion that our current means of collection is highly flawed regardless of the burden. Note the difference between the definition of "income" for individuals and businesses: a business deducts all of its costs, including domiciling; an individual cannot deduct domiciling costs, or travel costs in pursuit of one's wages.
The lack of the ability to deduct rent is just evil. It's completely a lie that people have to incur rent anyway: their is huge amounts of evidence that say people live in cities because that's where the jobs are.
Income tax is just evil. Businesses are the ones most able to manipulate it. Kill the income tax. Anything else would be better.
C//
Yes. But the Landholders do indeed pay. And OF COURSEE, the renters get it on indirect, as the Landholders will do some degree of burden transfer. This method is better, as it reduces the number of collection points.
C//
This is clear.
I agree that step #3 would logically follow once #1 and #2 are agreed to occur.
Thank you.
C//
*shrug*
After years and years of looking at the situation, I've decided that the income tax will never really "work".
Consider. What's the biggest expense of a corporation, typically? Staff. Yes, your income is their expense. Think about it, young Padiwan.
Whether you like big government or small, governments need revenues. We can both accept that. I keep hoping that I can get enough people to realize that this thing called the "Income Tax" is the absolute worst of all the options. It needs to go. Completely. While nothing is perfect, the one thing that has any kind of political support at all with any hope of going anywhere is the Fair Tax. So look there.
C//
I'm intensely interested in your comment. As a first step to digging deeper, I typed "how does china peg its currency" into Google. For whatever reason, the first article was a wikipedia article on fixed exchange rates, here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed_exchange_rate
The article says that until 2005 China made it illegal to trade currency at any other rate than the one fixed by the government. The article says that the typical means, if the fiat law fixed rate method isn't used, is "by either buying or selling its own currency on the open market".
This is all a bit murky.
Do you have a link to something that explains it all clearly?
C//
So ironic that we're considering implementing the financial equivalent of the Iron Curtain. This has come up for individuals, also. It's just unconscionable. Just exactly what sort of country do you want to live in? Next you'll be proposing we snipe the richies as they attempt to flee the border. That people are considering such extremes just tells me that the current system is broken. Income taxes just aren't the right vehicle for gathering revenue.
This rhetorical question amuses, as different law enforcement agencies in the US cannot even decide where they want it to be earned. You know, pretending they had a say in the matter and by fiat of law could make it so, the various agencies can't agree where it ought to be!
Frankly, I'm with Von Mises. Institute a tax on the unimproved value of land, and call it a wrap. No more income tax at all. Income taxes aren't just a logistics problem (and invasive! get rid of the state's interest in knowing what people do for a living, and how much money they make for gawdsake), the system is just too gameable. Land, now that's viewable from space.
C//
There's the sort of hazing that occurs when you enter a frat, which is a kind of formal thing, and the more friendly sort of activity when a group of men get together and pick on each other. In such an environment, men don't even bother picking on someone they don't like. I'm not sure which word you want to use for this, and don't particularly care. "Male bonding rituals". These are things that don't click with girls. It's not illegal at all. Men do it instinctively, and one is at one's peril with the group to attempt to buck it. As I said, the HR department can't make them (or even try, really) like someone.
One form of hazing might involve giving someone a nick that's funny and unflattering given some funny and unflattering error they've seen the person make. At my work, we refer to such individual as "Ooh, Shiny!" for his tendency to get so distracted by things new. Such a thing would not be illegal, even though obviously it's a form of humiliation... kinda. Complain to HR (which would be idiotically stupid), and yes, the behavior will stop. DEAD COLD. And *poof*. One is on the outside looking in at that point, no longer included in any sort of workplace comraderie.
I'm curious, however. If a man were going to work in a prominently female work environment, where the female fashion of communicating were dominant, would you be calling the environment sexist and asking all the women to change?
Anyway; obviously I do agree with you to some degree or another, with the observation on learning the various communication styles. But do keep in mind that learning said various different styles is at least as much about learning to tolerate how the other communicates as it is about changing how one communicates.
If an environment is predominately male, it's clear to me that it's going to be the girls adapting. The sociobiological basis of communication styles can be nudged, at best.
Joe.
I find it ironic that one would decry the "lack of social skills" in a paragraph deliberately designed to be insulting. Surely you were not hoping I would not see through that? LOL.
p.s., will stick with the notion, and agree with the gallery (to wit: +5, Funny) that the remark "rapid ambulation" was indeed humor in context. Fight it if you want, but... the audience does not agree.
C//
I'm not quite sure what you think I mean by "hazing," but it is surely not illegal. Part of "hazing" is good natured "picking on" someone you actually like. This is amongst men. Perhaps one might not like that behavior, but a great way to find oneself on the outside looking in, without a leg to stand on (even with one's HR department), is to cry foul in a situation like this. The HR department has no desire nor any authority to make one's peers actually like you.
Most hip men don't haze women because they know they don't get it. Be that as it may.
A workplace is not magically become "hostile" because it has characteristics that are stereotypically male. You won't find a single fortune 500 training tape even vaguely hinting at it. God knows, I've seen enough of them!
I might suggest a read of "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus" as a start for you in comprehending, accepting, and coping with gender communications differences. There are also other great books emphasizing non-gender based communications between individuals that are also worthwhile.
(And if you were astute enough to notice that maybe most men in IT could use a good read of the same, you would of course be right).
Be well,
C//