For example, a while back some houses were burned in Washington state and it was blamed on ecoterrorists, but to me it looked just like insurance fraud. The housing market was tanking and that's a sufficient motive for someone to burn the property and blame someone else.
Yeah, like four or five years back. When the housing markets *wasn't* tanking. And the group blamed was one whose members had been sighted in the area around time of the fire, and who had previously threatened to destroy the properties, and who were linked with multiple other fires.
Not trying to flame, but honestly who cares how much water flows through a data center?
Anyone who cares about their city and it's infrastructure.
Is there any environmentalist out there who can enlighten me on why the water "consumption" of a data center (or any other major plant) is an issue?
It doesn't take an environmentalist - all it takes is someone familiar with this issues who takes a moment to think.
The problem is that the water for many cities and towns comes from aquifers or dams - which rely on rain to replenish. Many of these are already highly strained, even before the load of a data center is placed on them. The water taken from these sources is then treated, which costs money, and again many cities water systems are already strained because of the high capital cost of building new ones. Again, a data center consumes so much water that this just exacerbates the problem.
This is kind of disturbing. I know politicians turn 180 at the drop of a hat but Obama's entire popularity -- and the benefits that come from it -- relies on being anti-Bush. This is a very hot issue. One of the most important ones in fact. For him to continue supporting it is almost political suicide. Yet he's doing it anyway. Which makes you think, what could possibly be so important to keep secret?
You have to keep in mind that a large percentage of the anti Bush crowd weren't really informed on the issues. They were anti Bush because it was fashionable to anti Bush. All their friends were, all the blogs they read were, much of the other media they were exposed to were. And they went right along with the herd.
Meanwhile, those few of us who (regardless of our personal stance on Bush) tried to explain that the two parties never give up powers and perks gained by the other party were shouted down as 'haters' or ignored as 'irrelevant fossils' or even worse pejoratives. Obama Wasn't Bush - and that was all they needed to know. Those of us who didn't toe the fashion zombie line were cast beyond the pale.
It has nothing to do with anything that must be secret, or national defense, or Cheney, or anything other reason. It's all about the little quid pro quo that goes on in Washington. The two major parties may tear down each others programs - but never the perks and powers, because they want them there when their guy takes the office.
For what it is worth, I switched to neon tubes in most of the house... a single 36W TL totally pwns a 300W setup of incandescent or halogen bulbs, more light and more accurate colours.
What the heck were you doing with 300W of lighting in a single location that it can be replaced with a single bulb? Heck, in my entire house I generally only have about 120W worth of lighting powered up during the evening hours.
even though his last alarm was accurate, even if it wasn't as large an event that he initially thought
Yeah, his last alarm was accurate - except for the fact that earthquake that did happen was minuscule fraction of what he predicted. Which doesn't actually sound accurate at all does it?
Let's suppose that I have a boat. Speed boat, pleasure boat, party barge, sailboat, it doesn't matter. I have a boat. I somehow manage to sink the boat. It lies submerged for months, even years. The thing is ABANDONED. Some dude comes out, spends a day or a week floating my wreck off the bottom, and brings it ashore. Do you think I retain any legal right to that boat?
Actually, depending on the exact circumstances - you do have a legal right to the boat. You also may have legal responsibility for that boat, 'some dude' could come along and raise it and sue you for the costs of raising it. (Or you may be able to sue him for touching it without your permission.)
Or, how about your car? You fail to maintain it, and it slowly rusts away, with the rain washing your rust streak onto my property. One day, I come out and shovel up all the iron (mostly iron oxide) to haul away to a scrap yard. You think you're going to get any of the salvage money?
Actually, under the law, if you enter my property to remove the scrap (which isn't the same thing as a rust streak) - I not only have a right to the salvage money, I can press charges against you for theft and trespassing.
I know Slashdotters seem to have a hard time with this concept, but the law (in general) does not recognize "but they weren't using it" or "but they had abandoned it" as an excuse for violating the legal rights of property owners. The law is built to protect property holders, not to enable thieves.
Then I realised if a small business owner tells you that 15 years ago he set up a system at minimal cost and is only now looking at changing because the hardware is noticeably ageing, you'd have a hard time explaining to him that it's going to be *harder* to set up a system with similar longevity nowadays.
Nowadays is no different than back then - especially because I doubt the guy spent any money on getting a high end ultra-reliable system. He's probably got a straight vanilla commercial box.
Now, because he got lucky and got a system way the hell out on the right end of the bell curve, he mistakenly believes that such things can simply be ordered off the shelf.
That doesn't solve the problem, it ignores his principal request. The guy looking to buy a computer has made it clear that he doesn't want to have to replace his computer every few years
My nine year old niece wants a pink pony with wings, she isn't getting one any more than this guy is getting a computer that's going to last a guaranteed 10-15 years. Both the pony and the computer are imaginary animals.
Your response is typical of IT (and other) professionals who presume to know users want, rather than listening to what they actually want.
No, his response in one of someone used to dealing with reality rather than playing marketing drone and promising the customer something that can't possibly be delivered. The customer isn't always right.
Once you break into my home, I have no idea what your intentions are. I reserve the right to utilize lethal force. Of course, in the US, we have some common sense about this.
Yes, we do have an understanding enshrined in the law - but it's not what most people think it is. Just because someone is in your house without unknown intentions does not give you the right to use deadly force indiscriminately.
In the UK, you try to protect yourself, and *you* end up in jail.
In the US, if you exceed the legal boundaries in what force you are allowed to use to defend yourself (as above, much tighter than many people think), *you* end up in jail.
Actually, they go after people on the Hollywood sign for a slightly different reason. You won't find many pictures taken from the south-west that show anything above the "D" without airbrushing out the background.
Yeah, that antenna farm up there is unsightly as hell.
Among other things, there is a cold-war era relic for the governor's fallout bunker, but this isn't the issue.
A bunker, on top of a hill, right smack in the center of a target area - hundreds of miles from the governor's residence? Cite please.
We're paying prices which have been the same for ages
Which is actually a pretty good deal considering how other prices have risen in the same time frame, including the cost to develop a game.
You make a good point which companies are aware of, they're just too greedy to change
Why *should* they change? Demand for games is largely (though not completely) inelastic - dropping the price doesn't result in an equivalent increase in sales.
Now I'd think their design could be gentle on the 12V batteries, since it's possible to design UPSes that don't murder batteries at the rate cheap store-bought UPSes do. But still, they must have an army of droids swapping out batteries on a continuous basis.
Given what has been said about Google's maintenance policies in the past, probably not. Google doesn't do detail maintenance - they wait till an entire rack (or now probably container) falls below a certain performance level, and then replace it with a new one and scrap the old.
When used for the purpose this machine was built for, these cargo containers outperform a traditional mainframe tasked for the same purpose.
Well, I think it goes without saying that machine A (designed for a specific type of computing) will outperform machine B (not so designed) - and this will remain true whether A is a server cluster and B is a mainframe, or vice versa. And you need to keep in mind there are significant design differences between a server cluster and a mainframe, even when the mainframe is itself a clustered machine.
However, I should probably point out that mainframe systems are always purpose built with a specific goal in mind. No one invests in a hugely expensive machine unless they already have clear and specific intentions for its usage.
Huh? Here in the real world, mainframes are as generic as desktops - what determines what they can do is the OS and the applications. People buy mainframes because they need a mainframe's capability. (And container data centers aren't exactly cheap either - nobody is going to buy them without a use in mind either.)
I don't know which 80's you lived through, but mainframe processing was alive and well in the 80's I lived through. Minicomputers were a joke back then, and were seen as mostly a way to play video games. (With a smattering of spreadsheet and word processing here and there.) In the 90's, PCs started to take hold. They took over the word processing and spreadsheet functionality of the mainframe helper systems. (Anybody here remember BTOS? No? Damn. I'm getting old.)
I don't know what 80's you lived through either. Here in the real world, minicomputers of various stripes were used for a large variety of computational tasks. They were far too expensive to be used for just video games. By the late 80's they were supplanted by workstations, which were themselves supplanted by PC's in the 90's.
Meanwhile, mainframes continued to handle the tasks that mini's, workstations, and PC's couldn't.
Note that this didn't retire the mainframe despite public impressions. It only caused a number of bridge solutions to pop up. It was the rise of the World Wide Web that led to a general shift toward PC server systems over mainframes. All we're doing now is reinventing the mainframe concept in a more modern fashion that supports multimedia and interactivity.
Here in real world, mainframes continue chugging along handling the tasks that mini's, workstations, and PC's can't. You confuse the small corner of the computing world that is the 'net with the whole of the computing world.
We're talking about complete computing elements wired up via a self-contained, high speed network with a combined computing power that far exceeds anything currently identified as a mainframe.
By some measurements they exceed the computing power of a mainframe, by others they don't.
What I cannot understand, though is why, in these cash-strapped times, they did not auction the name off? Could have raised some much-needed funds.
Might have something to do with that being against the law.
Not that it would have done any good either way, as any funds raised that way go into a general fund and are doled back out by Congress. (Which is a feature, not a bug. It's designed to prevent federal agencies from circumventing the budget or selling off federal resources for personal or agency gain.)
What made them cut the project was that the Atlas rockets were already available whereas the more powerful Titan rockets were still four years away.
No... The X-20 was cut for many (good) reasons. The Titan was already flying, but the variant required to launch the X-20 was basically being delayed a day a day (that is it was forever four years away) because it kept growing to support the ever growing X-20. Then there were the persistent problems with aerodynamic heating on re-entry. Then there was the inability of the project to stay anywhere even near within it's budget. Etc... Etc...
The X-20 program was deeply troubled with no end in sight.
Wow, all these years of working on the new moon/Mars project, and they hit upon the ingenious idea of making an Apollo splashdown pod slightly bigger. My tax dollars at work.
I'm more worried about my tax dollars - the ones wasted on your education.
In real world engineering, form follows function. Just like the Airbus 380 is basically an enlarged Boeing Dash 80, the Orion is an enlarged Apollo. For both functions there's only so many forms that work, and no particular reason not to choose something proven. This isn't fad and fashion driven product design (like the latest iCoolthing), but something people's lives will depend on.
Either this is an announcement of something they've already done - or they aren't aware of the capabilities of their own (existing) browser. Entering the two examples into the address bar of my installation of Firefox (v3.0.8) yields the desired results already.
Thanks for all the replies so far, the reason I ask what will look best on a resume is with the economy the way it is, I've begun to wonder what combination of education and experience will give me the most opportunities down the road.
Apples and oranges, fuzzy thinking at best. By the time you get your degree, economic conditions will have changed.
The first thing you need to decide is what *you* want to do and learn - and resorting to Ask Slashdot indicates to me that you haven't done the basic groundwork in that respect that you should have done years ago.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, like four or five years back. When the housing markets *wasn't* tanking. And the group blamed was one whose members had been sighted in the area around time of the fire, and who had previously threatened to destroy the properties, and who were linked with multiple other fires.
Anyone who cares about their city and it's infrastructure.
It doesn't take an environmentalist - all it takes is someone familiar with this issues who takes a moment to think.
The problem is that the water for many cities and towns comes from aquifers or dams - which rely on rain to replenish. Many of these are already highly strained, even before the load of a data center is placed on them. The water taken from these sources is then treated, which costs money, and again many cities water systems are already strained because of the high capital cost of building new ones. Again, a data center consumes so much water that this just exacerbates the problem.
You have to keep in mind that a large percentage of the anti Bush crowd weren't really informed on the issues. They were anti Bush because it was fashionable to anti Bush. All their friends were, all the blogs they read were, much of the other media they were exposed to were. And they went right along with the herd.
Meanwhile, those few of us who (regardless of our personal stance on Bush) tried to explain that the two parties never give up powers and perks gained by the other party were shouted down as 'haters' or ignored as 'irrelevant fossils' or even worse pejoratives. Obama Wasn't Bush - and that was all they needed to know. Those of us who didn't toe the fashion zombie line were cast beyond the pale.
It has nothing to do with anything that must be secret, or national defense, or Cheney, or anything other reason. It's all about the little quid pro quo that goes on in Washington. The two major parties may tear down each others programs - but never the perks and powers, because they want them there when their guy takes the office.
Well, that's why I specified 'powered up'. :) :)
I don't think I'd come anywhere near 5KW with everything on though - nothing here but incandescents.
What the heck were you doing with 300W of lighting in a single location that it can be replaced with a single bulb? Heck, in my entire house I generally only have about 120W worth of lighting powered up during the evening hours.
Yeah, his last alarm was accurate - except for the fact that earthquake that did happen was minuscule fraction of what he predicted. Which doesn't actually sound accurate at all does it?
Except - he didn't predict it. His prediction required a large and destructive quake on March 29th, a quake noticeable by it's absence.
No, you didn't 'fix' it. You altered it to serve your personal agenda - and to demonstrate (probably inadvertently) your utter ignorance.
I have, extensively.
I won't bother to reply to the remainder of your troll because the scenario is irrelevant to the discussion.
Please accept my invitation to fuck off.
Actually, depending on the exact circumstances - you do have a legal right to the boat. You also may have legal responsibility for that boat, 'some dude' could come along and raise it and sue you for the costs of raising it. (Or you may be able to sue him for touching it without your permission.)
Actually, under the law, if you enter my property to remove the scrap (which isn't the same thing as a rust streak) - I not only have a right to the salvage money, I can press charges against you for theft and trespassing.
I know Slashdotters seem to have a hard time with this concept, but the law (in general) does not recognize "but they weren't using it" or "but they had abandoned it" as an excuse for violating the legal rights of property owners. The law is built to protect property holders, not to enable thieves.
Nowadays is no different than back then - especially because I doubt the guy spent any money on getting a high end ultra-reliable system. He's probably got a straight vanilla commercial box.
Now, because he got lucky and got a system way the hell out on the right end of the bell curve, he mistakenly believes that such things can simply be ordered off the shelf.
My nine year old niece wants a pink pony with wings, she isn't getting one any more than this guy is getting a computer that's going to last a guaranteed 10-15 years. Both the pony and the computer are imaginary animals.
No, his response in one of someone used to dealing with reality rather than playing marketing drone and promising the customer something that can't possibly be delivered. The customer isn't always right.
Yeah, and civics education seems to have faded from your memory too... The FBI had a warrant, a warrant is due process.
In other words, you're blowing smoke.
Yes, we do have an understanding enshrined in the law - but it's not what most people think it is. Just because someone is in your house without unknown intentions does not give you the right to use deadly force indiscriminately.
In the US, if you exceed the legal boundaries in what force you are allowed to use to defend yourself (as above, much tighter than many people think), *you* end up in jail.
Yeah, that antenna farm up there is unsightly as hell.
A bunker, on top of a hill, right smack in the center of a target area - hundreds of miles from the governor's residence? Cite please.
Which is actually a pretty good deal considering how other prices have risen in the same time frame, including the cost to develop a game.
Why *should* they change? Demand for games is largely (though not completely) inelastic - dropping the price doesn't result in an equivalent increase in sales.
Given what has been said about Google's maintenance policies in the past, probably not. Google doesn't do detail maintenance - they wait till an entire rack (or now probably container) falls below a certain performance level, and then replace it with a new one and scrap the old.
Well, I think it goes without saying that machine A (designed for a specific type of computing) will outperform machine B (not so designed) - and this will remain true whether A is a server cluster and B is a mainframe, or vice versa. And you need to keep in mind there are significant design differences between a server cluster and a mainframe, even when the mainframe is itself a clustered machine.
Huh? Here in the real world, mainframes are as generic as desktops - what determines what they can do is the OS and the applications. People buy mainframes because they need a mainframe's capability. (And container data centers aren't exactly cheap either - nobody is going to buy them without a use in mind either.)
I don't know what 80's you lived through either. Here in the real world, minicomputers of various stripes were used for a large variety of computational tasks. They were far too expensive to be used for just video games. By the late 80's they were supplanted by workstations, which were themselves supplanted by PC's in the 90's.
Meanwhile, mainframes continued to handle the tasks that mini's, workstations, and PC's couldn't.
Here in real world, mainframes continue chugging along handling the tasks that mini's, workstations, and PC's can't. You confuse the small corner of the computing world that is the 'net with the whole of the computing world.
By some measurements they exceed the computing power of a mainframe, by others they don't.
Might have something to do with that being against the law.
Not that it would have done any good either way, as any funds raised that way go into a general fund and are doled back out by Congress. (Which is a feature, not a bug. It's designed to prevent federal agencies from circumventing the budget or selling off federal resources for personal or agency gain.)
No... The X-20 was cut for many (good) reasons. The Titan was already flying, but the variant required to launch the X-20 was basically being delayed a day a day (that is it was forever four years away) because it kept growing to support the ever growing X-20. Then there were the persistent problems with aerodynamic heating on re-entry. Then there was the inability of the project to stay anywhere even near within it's budget. Etc... Etc...
The X-20 program was deeply troubled with no end in sight.
I'm more worried about my tax dollars - the ones wasted on your education.
In real world engineering, form follows function. Just like the Airbus 380 is basically an enlarged Boeing Dash 80, the Orion is an enlarged Apollo. For both functions there's only so many forms that work, and no particular reason not to choose something proven. This isn't fad and fashion driven product design (like the latest iCoolthing), but something people's lives will depend on.
Either this is an announcement of something they've already done - or they aren't aware of the capabilities of their own (existing) browser. Entering the two examples into the address bar of my installation of Firefox (v3.0.8) yields the desired results already.
Apples and oranges, fuzzy thinking at best. By the time you get your degree, economic conditions will have changed.
The first thing you need to decide is what *you* want to do and learn - and resorting to Ask Slashdot indicates to me that you haven't done the basic groundwork in that respect that you should have done years ago.