Aberdeen has some nice rackmount servers, including the TeraStorus box that holds 24 SATA drives and a server. You can pack a whopping 6TB of storage in one simple box. Use their configurator and choose what you want. If you need custom built stuff, give them a call.
Neat - I didn't know that product existed. I do a lot of freehand sketching on a white-board for laying out project ideas. (I have less artistic talent than a blind dyslexic leper monkey.) What all can you do with Sketchbook? I'm looking for a good white-board replacement that's not "Paint" or the like.
What about a real 3D input solution?
on
3D Mouse
·
· Score: 2, Informative
The Spaceball is specifically designed for 3D manipulation. You can push/pull the ball in 6 directions, and twist it in another 3 axis. You don't physically move the ball around in 3D space, it's more like a 3D-enabled trackpoint.
You're EXACTLY right here. All of the lawsuits being thrown around by the RIAA are predicated on the fact that they would have made a sale in the full amount of the CD (i.e. not on clearance at Wal-Mart) if the swapper hadn't downloaded the songs. Music does NOT equal legal tender, especially since I'm only paying for the right to listen to the song, not the right to own the CD.
I just put a Cisco VoIP system in...
on
Is VOIP Over WLAN DOA?
·
· Score: 4, Informative
...one of our plants in Ohio. The install was a little rocky, and many of the features you'd find in any circuit-based system were simply non-existant or poorly implemented.
Now, that said, I put the system on its own POE switches and isolated network. Nearly 100 phones and the voice quality is superb. As a matter of fact, I had to introduce some comfort-noise because if nobody was talking, you couldn't tell you were even connected to anyone. It was really that clear. The POTS connection was done with a single PRI span, so calls were digital end-to-end.
I had to place two of the ephones on a remote end of a 10MB fiber link. They worked flawlessly. I then tried a single phone on a WIFI bridge, and it worked flawlessly.
Back to the article... The protocol the phones talk to each other using is g729. It uses roughly 9.6K worth of bandwidth, and sends packets every 20ms or so. A quality secured WiFi connection without any interference can support at least 25 to 30 phones before you start having channel speed or bandwidth problems.
In summary, a properly architected system has NO problems, whereas a system implemented over old, crappy hardware will have problem after problem.
If they made a 32S with 4 visible lines of stack, I could die and go to calculator heaven.
Boy, you can say that again. I would love a calculator like that. Solid math functions, some base conversions, good variable storage (a few registers), and some trig stuff... Just a damn-nice non-graphing calculator. It doesn't even need algebraics or calculus. I bought my 49g just for the bigger stack space. I've rarely used the graphing functions.
Wow. Is there any company that can do low-volume production of a device like that?
Re:not gonna happen, the lobbies are too powerful
on
Do-It-Yourself VOIP Telco
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Maybe "packet switching" isn't the term I want to use. Maybe "cell switching" is the term I want to use. Either way, the telco uses a technology to put multiple voice calls on the same wire, and that technology works basically like packet switching: a little bit of this call, then a little bit of that call, then a little bit of the next call.
You're on the right track with this statement. "Circuit switching" is the means by which a T1 slices up it's capacity into channels (1-24 typically) and each phone call gets one channel. The information is digital by the time it enters a T1, but it's not "packet" data in the common use of the word. "Packet switched" data is different from channelized data in that a typical VoIP call is crunched into an 8-12k stream of data, then on-ramped to a data network. A data T1 (1.5MB) can carry nearly 1.5MB/12k*60% = 75 calls with narry a problem. Call volumes can go up further if there is silence on the line (pauses between words, sentences, person talking, etc). A channelized voice T1 can carry 24 calls, period. A data T1 carrying packetized information can easily carry over 3 times that amount.
Think of this slightly lousy analogy:
Each phone call can be represented by a garden hose of data. A typical T1 scenario is simply a bundle of 24 garden hoses provided by the telco. When you place a call, you're hooking your garden hose into one of the 24 made available to you and sending and receiving information.
A packet-switched network takes your garden hose and hooks it up to a box that puts your information into little water-balloons. Each one is colored based on the conversation, so you get blue, your neighbor gets green, etc. Instead of providing you a bundle of hoses, your telco provides you a conveyer belt to put your balloons on. The conveyer is the same size as the bundle of hoses, but you can cram a whole lot more balloons into the same space. The telco then uses the colors of the balloon to route the information on their end.
You can go so far as to code your application to execute "ALTER SESSION SET CURRENT_SCHEMA=blah" right up front and from then on out, your "database", i.e. schema is configurable. You can have a schema called BLAH01 with a version 1 database and a schema called BLAH02 with a version 2 database and your client can just access either one as needed. Schemas are MUCH more elegant than "databases" in SQL Server. They force ownership of data to a user account instead of the system. It's the more unix-ish way to do things.
I agree, but take it up on a whole new level. America's education system is going down the toilet. For christ sake, people threw a fit over testing third-graders for their reading ability. My two-year old is quickly learning her alphabet. She'll be reading books by the time she's 4. My wife and I are seriously considering home-schooling since the moron-to-normal ratio in public schools has gotten too high. There are just too many gangs, drugs, and sluts in school today. (I'm not terribly disgusted with the sluts, but as a guy, I digress.)
Label *everything*. All gang-boxes should have a number corresponding to a number in the wiring closet. Every piece of cable you run should have a number or letter or color or whatever. When it's time to hook up a new phone or TV, you just look for wall plate 6 wire 4 downstairs and you're done.
1) Put one or two strands of CAT 5 and 1 COAX cable to each room for phones, TV, etc. 2) Run CONDUIT everywhere. I can't stress this enough. DO NOT PUT ANY CABLES IN PLACE WITHOUT CONDUIT!!! 3) Make sure and put conduit (empty is fine) in ceiling locations as well. You never know when you might want to install a multi-room audio system. 4) Use 3" conduit in your entertainment room. You will want high-quality audio cables for a surround sound system, and they can quickly fill up a 1" or 2" conduit. 5) Think about running your empty conduit to locations near power, so you don't have to run a bunch of extension cords. 6) Fiber is an option down the road ('cause the equipment is so damn expensive), so don't do any tight conduit turns. This is pretty easy in a 4" stud wall. 7) Run string in the conduits and tie it off on both ends. Running new cable is *really* easy pulling a new cable and string with an existing string. Repeat after me - "string is cheap". 8) Run all your conduit to a central location (probably in the basement). You'll want a nice (rack even?) open area that you can mount equipment as well as patch panels, etc. Wire ties are your friend.
"to some magic 1.22 meg format that mysteriously made my floppies faster"
No magic at all. I used the shit out of that program. It was called fdformat and even came with Pascal source code! scheweet There were two little parameters called Xnnn and Ynnn that did sector sliding.
From the fdformat docs... These options can be used to enhance the performance of your disk up
to 100%. This is a bit difficult to explain. Imagine a standard 360 kB
disk. It has 9 sectors on each track numbered 1 to 9. Normally the
sectors on all tracks ordered "1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9". With sector sliding
of 1 you order "1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9" on track 0, "9 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8" on
track 1, "8 9 1 2 3 4 5 6 7" of track 2 and so on.
You can easily imagine, that it takes a little time, when your
diskette drive head steps from one track to another. But your diskette
continues rotating. Without sector sliding your diskette is positioned
to sector 2 or 3 on the next track, when the stepping is done. It
needs nearly a full revolution until sector 1 of the next track can be
read. With sector sliding of 1 or 2 your diskette is positioned
exactly on sector 1, when it starts reading again.
This little bit of magic was somewhat drive-specific, since some drives were faster than others, you needed to use different sliding numbers, but all in all, it's a very cool hack.
RTFA dude. "It also includes three independent internal UPS systems to ensure that no power loss or power supply failure will stop the RamSan from performing its internal backup procedures."
[Is this thing on?] [I think I see a byte!] [Your friends just looked at your site.] [Your friends clicked refresh a few times.] [Normal] [I'm hosting Janet Jackson porn!] [I'm hosting animal porn! [I'm 'given 'er all she's got!] [Oh Shit, Slashdot.] [Oh SHIT, Google.]
The main problem is that as a C++ developer on Windows, I cannot do/any/ development with Qt without paying a $2000 license fee. The only way to get a GPL version on the Windows platform is to purchase a $50 book that comes with a "limited edition" of Qt/Windows, but lord knows what that means. I wish they had a development version of Qt/Windows that didn't include any deployment licenses...
Re:What is the *source* of the "RMS" controversy?
on
Stallman Goes to India
·
· Score: 1
I called our phone company at work and asked if they sold Caller IQ because, as I explained, there are many idiots at our office and I would like to screen my callers based on their IQ. The sales person didn't have it available yet. Dammit.
Re:Why, exactly, the *fear* of China?
on
The Future of NASA
·
· Score: 1
"There's two billion Chinese. They could kayak over and put up a good fight."
I never did get a satisfactory explanation as to why they weren't verfiying their backup tapes.
I keep about 7 days of backups online for quick access, but our backup guy hasn't verified a backup in I don't know how long... What is it about testing a backup that's so difficult?
Slashdot Mirror
Aberdeen has some nice rackmount servers, including the TeraStorus box that holds 24 SATA drives and a server. You can pack a whopping 6TB of storage in one simple box. Use their configurator and choose what you want. If you need custom built stuff, give them a call.
BTW, their 5 year warranty kicks ass.
Neat - I didn't know that product existed. I do a lot of freehand sketching on a white-board for laying out project ideas. (I have less artistic talent than a blind dyslexic leper monkey.) What all can you do with Sketchbook? I'm looking for a good white-board replacement that's not "Paint" or the like.
The Spaceball is specifically designed for 3D manipulation. You can push/pull the ball in 6 directions, and twist it in another 3 axis. You don't physically move the ball around in 3D space, it's more like a 3D-enabled trackpoint.
I bought a Powershot Pro1 so I could take my own damn pictures. Fuck 'em.
P.S. That means you Sears Photo Center. You will not receive one more dollar of my money.
no.iq
If I had mod points, you would get them.
You're EXACTLY right here. All of the lawsuits being thrown around by the RIAA are predicated on the fact that they would have made a sale in the full amount of the CD (i.e. not on clearance at Wal-Mart) if the swapper hadn't downloaded the songs. Music does NOT equal legal tender, especially since I'm only paying for the right to listen to the song, not the right to own the CD.
...one of our plants in Ohio. The install was a little rocky, and many of the features you'd find in any circuit-based system were simply non-existant or poorly implemented.
Now, that said, I put the system on its own POE switches and isolated network. Nearly 100 phones and the voice quality is superb. As a matter of fact, I had to introduce some comfort-noise because if nobody was talking, you couldn't tell you were even connected to anyone. It was really that clear. The POTS connection was done with a single PRI span, so calls were digital end-to-end.
I had to place two of the ephones on a remote end of a 10MB fiber link. They worked flawlessly. I then tried a single phone on a WIFI bridge, and it worked flawlessly.
Back to the article... The protocol the phones talk to each other using is g729. It uses roughly 9.6K worth of bandwidth, and sends packets every 20ms or so. A quality secured WiFi connection without any interference can support at least 25 to 30 phones before you start having channel speed or bandwidth problems.
In summary, a properly architected system has NO problems, whereas a system implemented over old, crappy hardware will have problem after problem.
If they made a 32S with 4 visible lines of stack, I could die and go to calculator heaven.
Boy, you can say that again. I would love a calculator like that. Solid math functions, some base conversions, good variable storage (a few registers), and some trig stuff... Just a damn-nice non-graphing calculator. It doesn't even need algebraics or calculus. I bought my 49g just for the bigger stack space. I've rarely used the graphing functions.
Wow. Is there any company that can do low-volume production of a device like that?
Maybe "packet switching" isn't the term I want to use. Maybe "cell switching" is the term I want to use. Either way, the telco uses a technology to put multiple voice calls on the same wire, and that technology works basically like packet switching: a little bit of this call, then a little bit of that call, then a little bit of the next call.
You're on the right track with this statement. "Circuit switching" is the means by which a T1 slices up it's capacity into channels (1-24 typically) and each phone call gets one channel. The information is digital by the time it enters a T1, but it's not "packet" data in the common use of the word. "Packet switched" data is different from channelized data in that a typical VoIP call is crunched into an 8-12k stream of data, then on-ramped to a data network. A data T1 (1.5MB) can carry nearly 1.5MB/12k*60% = 75 calls with narry a problem. Call volumes can go up further if there is silence on the line (pauses between words, sentences, person talking, etc). A channelized voice T1 can carry 24 calls, period. A data T1 carrying packetized information can easily carry over 3 times that amount.
Think of this slightly lousy analogy:
Each phone call can be represented by a garden hose of data. A typical T1 scenario is simply a bundle of 24 garden hoses provided by the telco. When you place a call, you're hooking your garden hose into one of the 24 made available to you and sending and receiving information.
A packet-switched network takes your garden hose and hooks it up to a box that puts your information into little water-balloons. Each one is colored based on the conversation, so you get blue, your neighbor gets green, etc. Instead of providing you a bundle of hoses, your telco provides you a conveyer belt to put your balloons on. The conveyer is the same size as the bundle of hoses, but you can cram a whole lot more balloons into the same space. The telco then uses the colors of the balloon to route the information on their end.
A family relative had an analogy that makes perfect sense.
Things can be classified not only because they are secret material, but because someone can use that information to deduce classified material.
Shipping a tent is not a secret thing. Knowing that 100,000 tents just left on a truk to Baghdad is a secret thing.
Because hydrogen goes boom in a big way.
BINGO! We have a winner.
You can go so far as to code your application to execute "ALTER SESSION SET CURRENT_SCHEMA=blah" right up front and from then on out, your "database", i.e. schema is configurable. You can have a schema called BLAH01 with a version 1 database and a schema called BLAH02 with a version 2 database and your client can just access either one as needed. Schemas are MUCH more elegant than "databases" in SQL Server. They force ownership of data to a user account instead of the system. It's the more unix-ish way to do things.
For the love of Christ people, it's a simple thing.
Format links like this: <a href="http://somelink">link text</a>
It takes virtually no extra time and we don't have to trim the fucking slashcode spaces.
Oh, and here's the link.
I agree, but take it up on a whole new level. America's education system is going down the toilet. For christ sake, people threw a fit over testing third-graders for their reading ability. My two-year old is quickly learning her alphabet. She'll be reading books by the time she's 4. My wife and I are seriously considering home-schooling since the moron-to-normal ratio in public schools has gotten too high. There are just too many gangs, drugs, and sluts in school today. (I'm not terribly disgusted with the sluts, but as a guy, I digress.)
Oh yea.
Label *everything*. All gang-boxes should have a number corresponding to a number in the wiring closet. Every piece of cable you run should have a number or letter or color or whatever. When it's time to hook up a new phone or TV, you just look for wall plate 6 wire 4 downstairs and you're done.
1) Put one or two strands of CAT 5 and 1 COAX cable to each room for phones, TV, etc.
2) Run CONDUIT everywhere. I can't stress this enough. DO NOT PUT ANY CABLES IN PLACE WITHOUT CONDUIT!!!
3) Make sure and put conduit (empty is fine) in ceiling locations as well. You never know when you might want to install a multi-room audio system.
4) Use 3" conduit in your entertainment room. You will want high-quality audio cables for a surround sound system, and they can quickly fill up a 1" or 2" conduit.
5) Think about running your empty conduit to locations near power, so you don't have to run a bunch of extension cords.
6) Fiber is an option down the road ('cause the equipment is so damn expensive), so don't do any tight conduit turns. This is pretty easy in a 4" stud wall.
7) Run string in the conduits and tie it off on both ends. Running new cable is *really* easy pulling a new cable and string with an existing string. Repeat after me - "string is cheap".
8) Run all your conduit to a central location (probably in the basement). You'll want a nice (rack even?) open area that you can mount equipment as well as patch panels, etc. Wire ties are your friend.
Hope this helps!
"to some magic 1.22 meg format that mysteriously made my floppies faster"
No magic at all. I used the shit out of that program. It was called fdformat and even came with Pascal source code! scheweet There were two little parameters called Xnnn and Ynnn that did sector sliding.
From the fdformat docs... These options can be used to enhance the performance of your disk up to 100%. This is a bit difficult to explain. Imagine a standard 360 kB disk. It has 9 sectors on each track numbered 1 to 9. Normally the sectors on all tracks ordered "1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9". With sector sliding of 1 you order "1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9" on track 0, "9 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8" on track 1, "8 9 1 2 3 4 5 6 7" of track 2 and so on. You can easily imagine, that it takes a little time, when your diskette drive head steps from one track to another. But your diskette continues rotating. Without sector sliding your diskette is positioned to sector 2 or 3 on the next track, when the stepping is done. It needs nearly a full revolution until sector 1 of the next track can be read. With sector sliding of 1 or 2 your diskette is positioned exactly on sector 1, when it starts reading again.
This little bit of magic was somewhat drive-specific, since some drives were faster than others, you needed to use different sliding numbers, but all in all, it's a very cool hack.
RTFA dude. "It also includes three independent internal UPS systems to ensure that no power loss or power supply failure will stop the RamSan from performing its internal backup procedures."
The little paper insert reads:
[Is this thing on?]
[I think I see a byte!]
[Your friends just looked at your site.]
[Your friends clicked refresh a few times.]
[Normal]
[I'm hosting Janet Jackson porn!]
[I'm hosting animal porn!
[I'm 'given 'er all she's got!]
[Oh Shit, Slashdot.]
[Oh SHIT, Google.]
The main problem is that as a C++ developer on Windows, I cannot do /any/ development with Qt without paying a $2000 license fee. The only way to get a GPL version on the Windows platform is to purchase a $50 book that comes with a "limited edition" of Qt/Windows, but lord knows what that means. I wish they had a development version of Qt/Windows that didn't include any deployment licenses...
Sir, if I had a mod point, it would be yours.
I called our phone company at work and asked if they sold Caller IQ because, as I explained, there are many idiots at our office and I would like to screen my callers based on their IQ. The sales person didn't have it available yet. Dammit.
"There's two billion Chinese. They could kayak over and put up a good fight."
- Paul Gilmartin
I never did get a satisfactory explanation as to why they weren't verfiying their backup tapes.
I keep about 7 days of backups online for quick access, but our backup guy hasn't verified a backup in I don't know how long... What is it about testing a backup that's so difficult?
Um, ROLLBACK. Duh.