The USAF kept saying "We have no idea what that is, it's not ours, etc". While Aviation Week kept publishing pictures of the things flying over Nevada and Utah, well away from the airline flight routes.
IIRC, anyway. You ask a group of experts "What is the probability of X" and, in effect, average their answers. Answers which are usually no better than informed guesses. Turns out to be surprisingly effective.
From the April 1998 (!) issue of Byte (back when it was an excellent printed magazine):
"The fundamental concept of the personal computer was to make trade-offs that guaranteed PCs would crash more often...The first PCs cut corners in ways that horrified computer scientists at the time, but the idea was to make a computer that was more affordable and more compact."
"Having 15 million lines of code isn't as bad as having 15 million lines of new code"
Millions of PC users would be overjoyed with an MTBCF of just one day. Yet mainframes are big, complex systems that often have clusters of CPUs, gigab ytes of main memory, and thousands of users. What makes them so reliable?
Mainframe experts say that it's a matter of priorities.... . When a mainframe crashes, however, it's a major catastrophe. It's General Motors calling up IBM to demand answers.
It's interesting how little has really changed in the past 5 years...
And industrial automation is a very conservative field. Conservative meaning "why use something new and untried when we have something old that is known to work?" Conservative meaning that MS-DOS was still being used into the late 90's for non-real time embedded apps. It may not have been stable, but it's faults, and how to avoid them, were well understood, making it a fairly robust OS.
Similarly, while PC/104 is not new, fast, or high powered, it is stable, robust, and everyone knows it.
Oh, and one of the reasons that 33mhz 486s are used is because they can handle hot environments without melting down. What would happen if you put an Athlon or P4 in an unventilated cabinet in a plating shop in Oklahoma in August? 100 degrees F on the outside of the cabinet.
Another reason for high cost of PC/104 is robustness. How well does the Soekris board handle vibration? Will the CF chip wiggle its way out of the slot? These are used in systems that have to have near-mainframe reliability. If the system crashes (sometimes literally, if it's an automated multiple-hoist line) due to a hardware failure, with a millionm dollars worth of product in the line, there will be a technician on an airplane that day. A stable, robust, PC/104 board is a hell of a lot cheaper than that!
First is that the cost/gb is much higher. The second is that non-volatile flash memories have a limited number of writes. 1000 or so for compact flash media, IIRC. Non-volatile, battery backed, has the problem of: What if the battery dies?
What might work is, say, a 1 gigabyte solid state module for the OS and files needed at boot (GUI, etc), for startup speed,and maybe another for the most commonly used applications. Everything else, including data, goes on large hard drives.
It's an invasion of privacy. OTOH, in theory, I'd rather see Bad Guys stopped at the border, before they get in, than have the Feds looking for them once they are in. The latter requires severe restrictions on privacy. Think "Patriot III"
Slashdot Mirror
But it did get posted at HuSi.
a beowulf cluster of Wireless Borg Monkeys and you'll have some /real/ fun.
Returns 9140 hits. Hmmm.
We're doomed.
that would depend on the job, wouldn't it. Sounds like a first rate sysadmin. The sort who applies larts without hesitation.
I know quite a few people like that who are gainfully employed. But then, I'm in aa. Lotsa weirdos around there...
The USAF kept saying "We have no idea what that is, it's not ours, etc". While Aviation Week kept publishing pictures of the things flying over Nevada and Utah, well away from the airline flight routes.
Or notes, or something. Write up an article that expands the above and put it in the company policies book.
Except in hindsight.
IIRC, anyway. You ask a group of experts "What is the probability of X" and, in effect, average their answers. Answers which are usually no better than informed guesses. Turns out to be surprisingly effective.
Finally, a useable version.
It's interesting how little has really changed in the past 5 years...
Similarly, while PC/104 is not new, fast, or high powered, it is stable, robust, and everyone knows it.
Oh, and one of the reasons that 33mhz 486s are used is because they can handle hot environments without melting down. What would happen if you put an Athlon or P4 in an unventilated cabinet in a plating shop in Oklahoma in August? 100 degrees F on the outside of the cabinet.
Another reason for high cost of PC/104 is robustness. How well does the Soekris board handle vibration? Will the CF chip wiggle its way out of the slot? These are used in systems that have to have near-mainframe reliability. If the system crashes (sometimes literally, if it's an automated multiple-hoist line) due to a hardware failure, with a millionm dollars worth of product in the line, there will be a technician on an airplane that day. A stable, robust, PC/104 board is a hell of a lot cheaper than that!
Unlike the 737 and 747, which have been continuously upgraded, it's essentially unchanged. Almost as outdated as the 707.
Infantry proof?
What's your full name and your mother's maiden name?
And no matter what he rolls."A grue eats you."
If it's just the cost of maintaining the line, then where's the incentive to put in new lines and roll out new services?
DefCon 5 is the lowest state of alert.
What might work is, say, a 1 gigabyte solid state module for the OS and files needed at boot (GUI, etc), for startup speed,and maybe another for the most commonly used applications. Everything else, including data, goes on large hard drives.
Any US citizen who doesn't like it can stay home.
In theory, there's no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is.
Yogi Berra(?)
It's an invasion of privacy. OTOH, in theory, I'd rather see Bad Guys stopped at the border, before they get in, than have the Feds looking for them once they are in. The latter requires severe restrictions on privacy. Think "Patriot III"
That window manager was rather nice.
My last name is Case, and my father wanted to name me Justin. My mother threatened him with unspecified dire consequences.