Not that there haven't been enough wasted keystrokes in Vi/Emacs flamewars to make up for it 8^) --
Re:Small niggle with the article
on
2.2 vs 2.4
·
· Score: 2
Thanks for eventually replying...
>"We've actually tested various UDMA 100 controlers on a RAM IDE drives. (Where storage was to NVRAM not a platter) And we've seen sustained transfer rates of up to 70-92 MB/sec (depending on the IDE controler) Yes 92MB/sec."
Yes, and it's that 70-85 range that bothers me (probably limited on the other side of the controller), though UDMA/100 is better than UDMA 66 and 33 in terms of actually reaching the theoretical throughput. With some of the Quantum solid state drives, we've achieved 75+MB/s on an U2W system (a few different controllers) (and 70+ on many others).
>"Sure if you are using a 40MB/sec drive on a UDMA 33 channel you're limiting factor will be the IDE channel. But that's like using a UW drive on a SCSI 1 controler. Same issues."
UW on SCSI1... that's more like using a 40MB/s drive on a PIO/1 channel... or 40MB/s 66/100 drive on a UDMA/33 channel is like using a 40MB/s U2W drive on a F/W or UW channel.
>"Ok Driver isssues? Exactly what driver issues are you refering too? The only drivers you need for IDE are for the controller and only if u want to use the high performance features of SOME manufacturers. (Same as with SCSI or are you trying to tell me I don't need the Adaptec 2940 etc SCSI driver to use a scsi drive? )"
I was referring to the specific device support, rather than the driver for the controller. SCSI has a (IMHO) nicer command set to work with, which makes disparate types of devices easier to work with.
>"Well if I get the data to the drive cache that quickly it's ALREADY traveled over the channel. Tus the speed the data arived in the cache == speed of the channel. hmm make sense? Or are you trying to convince me that data magically arives at the drive cache and THEN travels over the channel."
I'm getting the data to the cache from the media, as I've tried to make clear with: "disk -> cache" (assuming that one enables the read cache on the drive), since bursting from the cache (as I was saying) gives the highest possible channel speed.
>So before you argue with someone that's written drive firmware as well as debuged drive hardware please read up on disk drive design 101.
Ok, I talked to myself and some others here at work (some guys who collectively have a couple decades of IDE and SCSI hardware and firmware experience), so you could take that advice yourself, and try to read and understand my comments before you reply... so far you have managed to take quite a bit out of context and not attempted to understand the basic points.
>"And by the way an 2-3 year old SCSI drive will no way in hell sustain 33-35 MB/sec as you claim. Check your numbers. Like I've said earlier the sustained transfer rate is a component of (media density)*(rpm). The current generation plater technology is now at 20MB/platter (soon to be 30) 2 years ago they were still at about 6MB. This is roughlya 2.5-3x performance increase in raw transfer rate. A 2-3 year old 7200 rpm drive is somewhere near 18-20 MB/sec at best. "
But I said (note the new emphasis):
"Well, using my Adaptec 2940-UW, and ***a couple*** of 2-3 yr old (maybe a generation ago, if you like) UW drives (10krpm 9GB, 7200 RPM 18GB) I can do 33-35MB/s at about 4-6% util"
Note that "a couple" of drives would indicate that more than one is actually used at once... two at 18-20MB/s (which is what they do, roughly) => ~36MB/s. Wow. I'm glad you read that line before irrationally flying off the handle again.
>"I will stick by what I have said earlier. SCSI is a waste of your money unless you have a need for more then 4 drives in your PC or are running a heavily accessed DB or over loaded (Seek Heavy) server. So before you flame me for not checking MY facts.. please insure you have yours strait. And please get a clue to what you are talking about. What you have said is typical "I spent a crapload of money on SCSI hardware and need to defend my decision FUD".
I agree that the new IDE drives are a far cry better than they used to be, and priced very well. Right now I have 8 hard drives, two removable media drives, two CD/DVD/CD-R drives, and one tape drive attached to one system (for personal use). Nice and easy with SCSI (maybe once I see some reasonable DDS-3 IDE drives we'll talk).
>What you have said is typical "I spent a crapload of money on SCSI hardware and need to defend my decision FUD"
Actually, I spently fairly little money (relative to the regular retail cost of the setup), and something about working with machines at work that (typically) have anywhere from 30-300 drives (not to mention the amazingly expensive controllers we happen to produce). Sounds like a pretty good reason to me. I'm justifying work results more than home use. My two other systems are IDE, with gobs of storage (cheap). Personally, I have tested the speed of the same system with the 2-3 yr old SCSI storage in it vs. the 6-mo old IDE storage... the older stuff comes out ahead on anything that bothers with any sort of seeks.
BTW, the areal density on the biggest SCSI drives isn't any different than that of the big IDE drives right now.
I'm not spouting FUD to justify myself. I mostly object to the fact that you can't read and digest my comments without misunderstanding them. --
Well, my name originally derives from The Tower of Power (one heck of a group, if I do say so), and I've been using the handle for CB/BBS/logins/muds/gaming/etc/etc/etc since ~1993... --
Ah, you must mean the XFL, starting in a week or two. Yeah, not the pinnacle of human achievement.
>The 'super bowl' is a rital of group hysteria, with no value and base exicution (sic)
As for myself, I watch the superbowl every year because I am a football fan. I ignore the pre-game hysteria, switch channels at halftime, and don't really care all that much about the commercials. I am interested in seeing a number of highly skilled players in a game that I myself played for a number of years. If you watch it for the game, it is great (except when your team loses 31-7). The announcers and all the rest are rather easy to tune out, and heck, sometimes a little mind-numbing time is the best relaxation a brain can have.
I was discussing the Accenture name change with the others at my superbowl party today (I'm a Giants fan in Rochester, MN... it will be very lonely tomorrow) - we can't figure out why a company who only has mindshare through their name would change the only thing they have going for them... of course, if they are anywhere near as bad as I've heard (and could guess from the quality people from my school that they hired "Hey, you barely graduated - want a job?") maybe the name change is a good idea...
Funny time zone things...
I see Taco @ 02:18PM (1424), Hemos @ 04:18PM (1618)... I'm reading this @ 3:37PM (local = CST), with your post listed at 2:40PM (1440)...
But I do believe that Hemos can time travel, but only with Norby's help... --
Re:Small niggle with the article
on
2.2 vs 2.4
·
· Score: 2
" I've worked in the HD industry for 3 YEARS."
That's nice, I've been working with the hardware and firmware for drive controllers for a while myself...
Thank you for completely misreading my post...You said: "And the fact of the matter is that an IDE drive can SUSTAIN over 40MB/sec at the outer diameter. THIS IS TO THE MEDIA rate."
because I said: "Just because you can get the data to the drive cache that quickly doesn't mean you can pump it over the channel that fast... ie the speed of the channel. 33/66/or 100 MB/sec (UDMA33/66/100)"
Meaning: Just because disk -> cache = 40MB/s
!=> cache -> controller via ide cable at 40MB/s
So you are hot and bothered about agreeing with me... (except that a 33/66/100MB/s is the peak burst rate, not sustained - that was my point).
You said: "Remeber the OD moves FASTER then the ID relative to the head. This is why the OD transfer rate is much higher."
I don't remember disputing that, but thanks for sharing.
You: "The BS you are saying about SCSI is just that; BS and FUD. The only differance between SCSI and IDE is the protocol and controller. It's the same PHYSICAL hardware with a diff chipset."
Me: "IDE is a *slow* protocol, and fairly braindead"
Wow, we were both talking about the protocol, and I never mentioned drive hardware - just interface hardware. Looks like you are upset about agreeing again. Obviously, the newer technology that was developed for server drives is now on the desktop. I never disputed that.
You: "SCSI is excelent for multiple devices on a chain. That's about it."
Well, let's see - try to attach an external cabinet with IDE... oops, sorry. The range of devices is better, the driver support isn't as complicated, and there's better error reporting, configuration, and on-the-fly debugging... but that's ok - that's beyond the desktop space anyway, and it doesn't seem as if you want to consider that. I'll get back to my utilization #s a little later.
You: "since there is no IDE drives at 10K right now"
Well, I've had my 10krpm UW SCSI drives for a couple of years now - some things don't catch up as quickly as areal density (mostly because people don't want to pay for them).
You: " Additionally those 180MB/sec 360MB/sec SCSI transfer rates are also misleading. For that kind of performance they require a 64Bit/66Mhz pci slot.. because otherwise you are limited to a max of 132MB/sec by your PCI bus ANYWAYS."
Another true statement that is irrelevant to my argument... I only mentioned U2W, which is 80MB/s, and has worked (for quite some time now) rather quickly. A lot of the equipment I work with has had 64b/66MHz slots for a long time, too... but again, for the desktop space, U2W is pretty reasonable.
You: "The problem you see with IDE drive "slowness" is because your PC does not have UDMA mode turned on. "/hdparm -d1/dev/hda" (Or compile it as default into the kernel) A current generation IDE drive running in UDMA100 mode streaming data at 35MB/sec only uses 10-15% CPU on a P2-400."
Well, using my Adaptec 2940-UW, and a couple of 2-3 yr old (maybe a generation ago, if you like) UW drives (10krpm 9GB, 7200 RPM 18GB) I can do 33-35MB/s at about 4-6% util on a Celeron 300a... bummer. That's not as many %s as you, I gess you win that one;-)
You: "So before you go of and tout how SCSI creams IDE. 1st check your facts and LOOK at www.storagereview.com and compare 7200 rpm scsi and 7200 rpm IDE drives."
So before you go off and FLAME someone using CAPITALIZED WORDS all OVER the place, MAYBE you should READ the other post and THINK and/or CHECK your FACTS... --
In terms of the L2 cache stealing... say you only have 64/128kB of L2... that you could store in an internal RAM on a network card, though most don't have buffers quite that large. Even if they did, the card wouldn't have access via the PCI bus to the L2 RAMS directly... you'd have to wrangle it out with the device driver. Hmmm, they'd probably end up with a few copies of the task schedulers and network device drivers, though there could be some interesting stuff in there, if it knew when to look (that's the key). If it sampled from the cache only when it was going to xmit (the couple of bytes), then you'd end up with a lot of garbage... better to do spurious DMAs from known good pages in memory... hmm, that *would* make an interesting project.
--
Re:Small niggle with the article
on
2.2 vs 2.4
·
· Score: 2
Peak media transfer rate != channel rate... Just because you can get the data to the drive cache that quickly doesn't mean you can pump it over the channel that fast. IDE is a *slow* protocol, and fairly braindead, especially the older versions (<=33MB/s). U2W can beat out ATA/100 any day, esepcially considering the fact that you can't chain nearly as many devices on an IDE chain... Heck, my setup on an old UW controller can beat out any ATA/66 system for throughput and CPU utilization... it's not a caching RAID controller - it just works better. --
The problem isn't usually the implementation, but the lack of proper architecture and definition... once the problem is clearly defined, any good programmer can solve the problem. Getting the puzzled divided into the proper sections, and making sure that all of those pieces fit together in a nice way - that's tougher.
Software engineering isn't about the "passed in this stuff, do a bunch of stuf and spit this out" as much as it has to do with defining what will be passed in, what is spit out, and properly controlling those interfaces. Since you have already given them a small, defined problem, the Sotware Engineering portion is taken out of the equation. It's architecture, control, and testability, rather than the specific methods to a given function. --
Yes, I am aware of that (they speak English in Canada, too 8^D), but I would think that one would be courteous enough to try and make their story submissions semi-readable. Comments are one thing, story submissions are another (my view). Then there's always the lame cop-out: "Well, I wouldn't post on a [spanish/french/polish/korean] board without a good grasp of the language!"...
Maybe people are just too busy trying to submit things quickly to check them over... and maybe I'm just too bothered by simple mistakes 8^) --
>it always cracks me up that the people willing to cast aspersions on Bush's intellect are the same people
who were bitching and moaning that the florida ballots were too confusing.
Where did I mention the Florida ballots? I know who *I* voted for...
it always amuses me that people who pick on other people around here are the same people that aren't willing to back up their comments. Stupid ACs. --
The power shifts slightly every year with the races for Congress and state Governors. A Party X president with a 75% Party Y Congress could have a lot of trouble 'taking the reins' and driving everything... but as you say, many from each of the two major parties are basically centrist.
The best quote I saw about Dubya: He is going to bring unity between the two groups - Conservatives and Ultra-Conservatives... --
"We" (and I use that term loosely) elected Dick Cheney, the previous Bush admins, and a "President" that ranks above such luminaries as Dan Quayle on the IQ scale (look! he can tie his own boots!). I never did agree with a lot of what Gore claimed to stand for, but I couldn't in a hundred years vote for such an obious figurehead who lacks the necessary experience, skills, and intelligence for negotiation (think: foreign affairs), and even sounds stupid when reading a prepared speech. We get another chance in four years.
I did mention cost twice in there, I think... I'm still working on the "really big Acme(tm) rubber band" method of slingshot to hurl the waste into space... as of yet, unsucessfully...
Yeah, they aren't cheap, that's for sure, and now with the greater price of nat gas, they are more expensive to run (though gasoline has risen over that timeframe, too). There are (as always) improvements being made for reliability, but as is often the case, cost is the tradeoff for other better characteristics. --
It is too bad that most of the slashdot readership caint ferm gud sentanses if there live dependsed onit. As usualy, the greater the size of the community, the lower the average IQ level. Oh, well [/useless bitching]
Also, don't forget all of the transmission losses that go along with getting the power from the generation facility to the charger for the car... The charger itself has a sub-optimal efficiency, and add that in with line losses, and transformer losses, and you don't end up saving much. Hybrid cars are 'better' than straight electrics by that measure. Manufacture and disposal of the batteries is another problem... --
Most of the NYC busses have been converter to CNG (compressed natural gas). Cleaner emissions with similar power and range to a gasoline engine. Not the last step, but a really good one, especially for local pollution and air quality. --
Slashdot Mirror
Sure, but that's still an extra keystroke ;-)
Not that there haven't been enough wasted keystrokes in Vi/Emacs flamewars to make up for it 8^)
--
Thanks for eventually replying...
>"We've actually tested various UDMA 100 controlers on a RAM IDE drives. (Where storage was to NVRAM not a platter) And we've seen sustained transfer rates of up to 70-92 MB/sec (depending on the IDE controler) Yes 92MB/sec."
Yes, and it's that 70-85 range that bothers me (probably limited on the other side of the controller), though UDMA/100 is better than UDMA 66 and 33 in terms of actually reaching the theoretical throughput. With some of the Quantum solid state drives, we've achieved 75+MB/s on an U2W system (a few different controllers) (and 70+ on many others).
>"Sure if you are using a 40MB/sec drive on a UDMA 33 channel you're limiting factor will be the IDE channel. But that's like using a UW drive on a SCSI 1 controler. Same issues."
UW on SCSI1... that's more like using a 40MB/s drive on a PIO/1 channel... or 40MB/s 66/100 drive on a UDMA/33 channel is like using a 40MB/s U2W drive on a F/W or UW channel.
>"Ok Driver isssues? Exactly what driver issues are you refering too? The only drivers you need for IDE are for the controller and only if u want to use the high performance features of SOME manufacturers. (Same as with SCSI or are you trying to tell me I don't need the Adaptec 2940 etc SCSI driver to use a scsi drive? )"
I was referring to the specific device support, rather than the driver for the controller. SCSI has a (IMHO) nicer command set to work with, which makes disparate types of devices easier to work with.
>"Well if I get the data to the drive cache that quickly it's ALREADY traveled over the channel. Tus the speed the data arived in the cache == speed of the channel. hmm make sense? Or are you trying to convince me that data magically arives at the drive cache and THEN travels over the channel."
I'm getting the data to the cache from the media, as I've tried to make clear with: "disk -> cache" (assuming that one enables the read cache on the drive), since bursting from the cache (as I was saying) gives the highest possible channel speed.
>So before you argue with someone that's written drive firmware as well as debuged drive hardware please read up on disk drive design 101.
Ok, I talked to myself and some others here at work (some guys who collectively have a couple decades of IDE and SCSI hardware and firmware experience), so you could take that advice yourself, and try to read and understand my comments before you reply... so far you have managed to take quite a bit out of context and not attempted to understand the basic points.
>"And by the way an 2-3 year old SCSI drive will no way in hell sustain 33-35 MB/sec as you claim. Check your numbers. Like I've said earlier the sustained transfer rate is a component of (media density)*(rpm). The current generation plater technology is now at 20MB/platter (soon to be 30) 2 years ago they were still at about 6MB. This is roughlya 2.5-3x performance increase in raw transfer rate. A 2-3 year old 7200 rpm drive is somewhere near 18-20 MB/sec at best. "
But I said (note the new emphasis):
"Well, using my Adaptec 2940-UW, and ***a couple*** of 2-3 yr old (maybe a generation ago, if you like) UW drives (10krpm 9GB, 7200 RPM 18GB) I can do 33-35MB/s at about 4-6% util"
Note that "a couple" of drives would indicate that more than one is actually used at once... two at 18-20MB/s (which is what they do, roughly) => ~36MB/s. Wow. I'm glad you read that line before irrationally flying off the handle again.
>"I will stick by what I have said earlier. SCSI is a waste of your money unless you have a need for more then 4 drives in your PC or are running a heavily accessed DB or over loaded (Seek Heavy) server. So before you flame me for not checking MY facts.. please insure you have yours strait. And please get a clue to what you are talking about. What you have said is typical "I spent a crapload of money on SCSI hardware and need to defend my decision FUD".
I agree that the new IDE drives are a far cry better than they used to be, and priced very well. Right now I have 8 hard drives, two removable media drives, two CD/DVD/CD-R drives, and one tape drive attached to one system (for personal use). Nice and easy with SCSI (maybe once I see some reasonable DDS-3 IDE drives we'll talk).
>What you have said is typical "I spent a crapload of money on SCSI hardware and need to defend my decision FUD"
Actually, I spently fairly little money (relative to the regular retail cost of the setup), and something about working with machines at work that (typically) have anywhere from 30-300 drives (not to mention the amazingly expensive controllers we happen to produce). Sounds like a pretty good reason to me. I'm justifying work results more than home use. My two other systems are IDE, with gobs of storage (cheap). Personally, I have tested the speed of the same system with the 2-3 yr old SCSI storage in it vs. the 6-mo old IDE storage... the older stuff comes out ahead on anything that bothers with any sort of seeks.
BTW, the areal density on the biggest SCSI drives isn't any different than that of the big IDE drives right now.
I'm not spouting FUD to justify myself. I mostly object to the fact that you can't read and digest my comments without misunderstanding them.
--
well... :w ...
Ctrl-(x s)
Ctrl-s
and
Alt-f s are all quicker than Esc
Of course, one could argue that Vi saves the file faster than Emacs, Nedit, or (notepad/whatever)...
--
kmines has been in KDE Games since version 1... even runs on AIX ;-)
--
Well, my name originally derives from The Tower of Power (one heck of a group, if I do say so), and I've been using the handle for CB/BBS/logins/muds/gaming/etc/etc/etc since ~1993...
--
26 is the magic number for the +1 bonus, not for moderation...
--
>Denial of Service attacks (rednecks driving by in pickups with baseball bats)
hmmm, they'd have to come all the way up my lawn and up my front steps to get to it... I s'pose yous country boys got mo' pro'lms widdat...
--
I lost all respect for Bob Dole a long time ago, but some of this stuff is really ridiculous...
--
>the WWF will be a football league next year...
Ah, you must mean the XFL, starting in a week or two. Yeah, not the pinnacle of human achievement.
>The 'super bowl' is a rital of group hysteria, with no value and base exicution (sic)
As for myself, I watch the superbowl every year because I am a football fan. I ignore the pre-game hysteria, switch channels at halftime, and don't really care all that much about the commercials. I am interested in seeing a number of highly skilled players in a game that I myself played for a number of years. If you watch it for the game, it is great (except when your team loses 31-7). The announcers and all the rest are rather easy to tune out, and heck, sometimes a little mind-numbing time is the best relaxation a brain can have.
--
I was discussing the Accenture name change with the others at my superbowl party today (I'm a Giants fan in Rochester, MN... it will be very lonely tomorrow) - we can't figure out why a company who only has mindshare through their name would change the only thing they have going for them... of course, if they are anywhere near as bad as I've heard (and could guess from the quality people from my school that they hired "Hey, you barely graduated - want a job?") maybe the name change is a good idea...
--
Funny time zone things...
I see Taco @ 02:18PM (1424), Hemos @ 04:18PM (1618)... I'm reading this @ 3:37PM (local = CST), with your post listed at 2:40PM (1440)...
But I do believe that Hemos can time travel, but only with Norby's help...
--
" I've worked in the HD industry for 3 YEARS."
/dev/hda" (Or compile it as default into the kernel) A current generation IDE drive running in UDMA100 mode streaming data at 35MB/sec only uses 10-15% CPU on a P2-400."
;-)
That's nice, I've been working with the hardware and firmware for drive controllers for a while myself...
Thank you for completely misreading my post...You said: "And the fact of the matter is that an IDE drive can SUSTAIN over 40MB/sec at the outer diameter. THIS IS TO THE MEDIA rate."
because I said: "Just because you can get the data to the drive cache that quickly doesn't mean you can pump it over the channel that fast... ie the speed of the channel. 33/66/or 100 MB/sec (UDMA33/66/100)"
Meaning: Just because disk -> cache = 40MB/s
!=> cache -> controller via ide cable at 40MB/s
So you are hot and bothered about agreeing with me... (except that a 33/66/100MB/s is the peak burst rate, not sustained - that was my point).
You said: "Remeber the OD moves FASTER then the ID relative to the head. This is why the OD transfer rate is much higher."
I don't remember disputing that, but thanks for sharing.
You: "The BS you are saying about SCSI is just that; BS and FUD. The only differance between SCSI and IDE is the protocol and controller. It's the same PHYSICAL hardware with a diff chipset."
Me: "IDE is a *slow* protocol, and fairly braindead"
Wow, we were both talking about the protocol, and I never mentioned drive hardware - just interface hardware. Looks like you are upset about agreeing again. Obviously, the newer technology that was developed for server drives is now on the desktop. I never disputed that.
You: "SCSI is excelent for multiple devices on a chain. That's about it."
Well, let's see - try to attach an external cabinet with IDE... oops, sorry. The range of devices is better, the driver support isn't as complicated, and there's better error reporting, configuration, and on-the-fly debugging... but that's ok - that's beyond the desktop space anyway, and it doesn't seem as if you want to consider that. I'll get back to my utilization #s a little later.
You: "since there is no IDE drives at 10K right now"
Well, I've had my 10krpm UW SCSI drives for a couple of years now - some things don't catch up as quickly as areal density (mostly because people don't want to pay for them).
You: " Additionally those 180MB/sec 360MB/sec SCSI transfer rates are also misleading. For that kind of performance they require a 64Bit/66Mhz pci slot.. because otherwise you are limited to a max of 132MB/sec by your PCI bus ANYWAYS."
Another true statement that is irrelevant to my argument... I only mentioned U2W, which is 80MB/s, and has worked (for quite some time now) rather quickly. A lot of the equipment I work with has had 64b/66MHz slots for a long time, too... but again, for the desktop space, U2W is pretty reasonable.
You: "The problem you see with IDE drive "slowness" is because your PC does not have UDMA mode turned on. "/hdparm -d1
Well, using my Adaptec 2940-UW, and a couple of 2-3 yr old (maybe a generation ago, if you like) UW drives (10krpm 9GB, 7200 RPM 18GB) I can do 33-35MB/s at about 4-6% util on a Celeron 300a... bummer. That's not as many %s as you, I gess you win that one
You: "So before you go of and tout how SCSI creams IDE. 1st check your facts and LOOK at www.storagereview.com and compare 7200 rpm scsi and 7200 rpm IDE drives."
So before you go off and FLAME someone using CAPITALIZED WORDS all OVER the place, MAYBE you should READ the other post and THINK and/or CHECK your FACTS...
--
In terms of the L2 cache stealing... say you only have 64/128kB of L2... that you could store in an internal RAM on a network card, though most don't have buffers quite that large. Even if they did, the card wouldn't have access via the PCI bus to the L2 RAMS directly... you'd have to wrangle it out with the device driver. Hmmm, they'd probably end up with a few copies of the task schedulers and network device drivers, though there could be some interesting stuff in there, if it knew when to look (that's the key). If it sampled from the cache only when it was going to xmit (the couple of bytes), then you'd end up with a lot of garbage... better to do spurious DMAs from known good pages in memory... hmm, that *would* make an interesting project.
--
Peak media transfer rate != channel rate... Just because you can get the data to the drive cache that quickly doesn't mean you can pump it over the channel that fast. IDE is a *slow* protocol, and fairly braindead, especially the older versions (<=33MB/s). U2W can beat out ATA/100 any day, esepcially considering the fact that you can't chain nearly as many devices on an IDE chain... Heck, my setup on an old UW controller can beat out any ATA/66 system for throughput and CPU utilization... it's not a caching RAID controller - it just works better.
--
The problem isn't usually the implementation, but the lack of proper architecture and definition... once the problem is clearly defined, any good programmer can solve the problem. Getting the puzzled divided into the proper sections, and making sure that all of those pieces fit together in a nice way - that's tougher.
Software engineering isn't about the "passed in this stuff, do a bunch of stuf and spit this out" as much as it has to do with defining what will be passed in, what is spit out, and properly controlling those interfaces. Since you have already given them a small, defined problem, the Sotware Engineering portion is taken out of the equation. It's architecture, control, and testability, rather than the specific methods to a given function.
--
Yes, I am aware of that (they speak English in Canada, too 8^D), but I would think that one would be courteous enough to try and make their story submissions semi-readable. Comments are one thing, story submissions are another (my view). Then there's always the lame cop-out: "Well, I wouldn't post on a [spanish/french/polish/korean] board without a good grasp of the language!"...
Maybe people are just too busy trying to submit things quickly to check them over... and maybe I'm just too bothered by simple mistakes 8^)
--
>it always cracks me up that the people willing to cast aspersions on Bush's intellect are the same people
who were bitching and moaning that the florida ballots were too confusing.
Where did I mention the Florida ballots? I know who *I* voted for...
it always amuses me that people who pick on other people around here are the same people that aren't willing to back up their comments. Stupid ACs.
--
The power shifts slightly every year with the races for Congress and state Governors. A Party X president with a 75% Party Y Congress could have a lot of trouble 'taking the reins' and driving everything... but as you say, many from each of the two major parties are basically centrist.
The best quote I saw about Dubya: He is going to bring unity between the two groups - Conservatives and Ultra-Conservatives...
--
>"We elected a what?"
"We" (and I use that term loosely) elected Dick Cheney, the previous Bush admins, and a "President" that ranks above such luminaries as Dan Quayle on the IQ scale (look! he can tie his own boots!). I never did agree with a lot of what Gore claimed to stand for, but I couldn't in a hundred years vote for such an obious figurehead who lacks the necessary experience, skills, and intelligence for negotiation (think: foreign affairs), and even sounds stupid when reading a prepared speech. We get another chance in four years.
--
One or two more options, and we have the next /. poll!
--
I did mention cost twice in there, I think... I'm still working on the "really big Acme(tm) rubber band" method of slingshot to hurl the waste into space... as of yet, unsucessfully...
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Yeah, they aren't cheap, that's for sure, and now with the greater price of nat gas, they are more expensive to run (though gasoline has risen over that timeframe, too). There are (as always) improvements being made for reliability, but as is often the case, cost is the tradeoff for other better characteristics.
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>Why is HTML the default??
You can reset that default in your user prefs.
It is too bad that most of the slashdot readership caint ferm gud sentanses if there live dependsed onit. As usualy, the greater the size of the community, the lower the average IQ level. Oh, well [/useless bitching]
Mr. Chips rocked.
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Also, don't forget all of the transmission losses that go along with getting the power from the generation facility to the charger for the car... The charger itself has a sub-optimal efficiency, and add that in with line losses, and transformer losses, and you don't end up saving much. Hybrid cars are 'better' than straight electrics by that measure. Manufacture and disposal of the batteries is another problem...
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Most of the NYC busses have been converter to CNG (compressed natural gas). Cleaner emissions with similar power and range to a gasoline engine. Not the last step, but a really good one, especially for local pollution and air quality.
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