The iPads aren't directly controlling any of the flight or navigation systems. If an ipad "crashed" in flight, it would be an inconvenience but not a major flight safety issue. The plane would continue to fly, and the pilots could navigate safely to an airport via ground control. All of the ipads crashing at one time might overload ground control, but not likely. Also, the flight waypoints are preloaded into the navigation computers prior to takeoff, so plane will continue on its flightpath with or without the ipad.
I guess I'd be really scared when they start using the ipad for navigation, engine control or auto pilot. (Or perhaps, just for the inflight entertainment).
Although I agree that some of the user-facing electronics in automobiles are overpriced, the core components use time-proven technology that is reliable. Even a low-end car (sold for less than $20,000) has engine electronics that are expected to last for ten or more years, an operating temperature range of probably 0 F to 120 F, and can withstand fairly heavy vibration over its lifetime. Your average computer or phone perhaps operates from 40 to 90 (although rated for much less) and would fall apart if put on a shaker. The electrical environment is relatively bad -- voltages range from 10 to 14 V and there are 4, 6 or 8 plugs firing off sparks. Some of the devices also are critical safety items -- for example brakes need to have redundancy and degrade gracefully if power is lost.
Contrast that to your average PC/Mac/iThing which is put into the market with buggy software and has critical patches every month.
For airplanes, cars and other transportation, I'd trade off tested and proven hardware and software for cool-looking flat icons on the touch screen.
A functioning economy with commerce is part of the solution. One of the functions of banks, beside a more secure place to hold your cash, is to use the deposits to make loans that allow businesses to develop. Businesses generate jobs, wages and more infrastructure. All which help develop civil and functioning societies. Although far from a complete success, take a look at how Rwanda has developed post civil war.
I not sure that this particular company will not suffer the fate of other attempts, but the concept of providing banking to otherwise unbanked is a good idea.
On a production engine, the specs of every unit will be identical (to machining tolerances.001 in). So once you solve the problem just encode the parameters in the controller and you can use something much less powerful (and more reliable). For solving the problem, use whatever high-power equipment you'd like. Attach a hundred sensors and throw a supercomputer at it. Even better, rather than "machine learning" (aka, we don't understand it, we will let the computer tweak it until it gets better), simulate the physics and solve the equations for a complete solution.
The real question is what is your budget? At the very high end, you could get a custom machined box for the heat sinks and customized components. You could also actually pay someone to calculate the thermodynamics and heat flows. As others have stated, detailed specs (application, requirements, budget, timeline, quantity) are really a requirement.
I'm guessing that there are military, aircraft solutions that fit the bill (but might require you to drop $10K on the system. It seems to me that the requirements for satellites are at least as stringent -- and repair isn't an option.
Even in an old house, an electrician who is experienced with the local construction can run CAT6 cable. At the same time, the electrician can put in power outlets where you really want them and add any (electrical) switches that are inconveniently placed. Maybe you'd like a couple of outside outlets and to upgrade some of the lighting at the same time
Figure about 2 days of an electrician + a helper at most; maybe $1,500 or $2,000. Consider it part of the purchase price of the house.
Wiring is really a well-solved science, and there are professionals (or trades people) who know how to do it.
Like all technology, it's really about what you are trying to protect. For most people and applications HTTPS is probably enough, if you're protecting multi-billion dollar transactions or infrastructure then you should use something stronger. Think of it like door locks -- all are flawed, but it's not worth spending $1 million on security to protect a $300,000 house.
I'm reasonably satisfied with the level of protection from HTTPS for my twitter posts and even banking.
As an aside, is the Microsoft HTTPS implementation any better? It seems like only open source and Apple have been implicated in the HTTPSgate scandal.
Mythbusters (almost as accurate as wikipedia) tested the myth of an untrained pilot landing a plane with coaching from the ground. They concluded it was "plausable".
But their second go-round with coaching assistance from an air traffic officer was much smoother sailing. Though the coach wasn't inside the simulator with Jamie and Adam, he was able to point out the gauges and controls and how to use them to correctly maneuver the plane. After being talked through how to steer and land step-by-step, Jamie and Adam each brought their imaginary planes safely to the ground, leading the MythBusters to rule this one "plausible" for someone actually flying the friendly skies. And at the end of the show, they said had they used the automation available, it would have been much easier....
Actually BCD was (is) mostly used for accounting application where rounding isn't acceptable. Scientists mostly use floating point where the rounding doesn't matter. For those who want a COBOL example PIC 9(6)V99 could well be stored and calculated as BCD arithmetic and would retain 8 digits of precision.
The $100/hour seems about right for what utilities and others pay for a cop on private detail. The officer gets some of that in overtime, the city gets the rest as "profit" and overhead. $200k/year for a trained, licensed cop seems in the ballpark once you take into effect training, equipment, benefits, hiring and other costs. Your $75K/year PHP programmer probably costs the company $150K/year once you add in benefits, recruiting, real estate and training.
I'd bet it's a jelly donut. If it's about the size of a jelly donut, it's probably a jelly donut. Not a good time to speed as there's probably a cop nearby.
Actually you have your choice (these and many more). Probably with all of these gates you could solve almost any problem: Bill Gates (Chairman of Microsoft) Melinda Gates (American philanthropist) Robert Gates (Former Defense Secretary)Antonio Gates (San Diego Chargers Tight End) Brent Gates (American professional baseball player) Clyde Gates (New York Jets Wide Receiver) Lionel Gates (American professional football player)servants[edit] Artemus Gates (American financier and Undersecretary of the Navy)'
...blinded by the light reved up like a deuce. A "deuce" is slang for a street rod which probably didn't have laser headlights. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Model_B_(1932)#Deuce_coupe)
I hate to think how much these BMW laser headlights will cost to replace after a minor fender bender. I remember when all the headlights were the standard round ones and probably cost $20 or $30 to replace. Even cheap headlights are in the hundreds of dollars now... the current BMW headlight is probably $1000.
You might look into retrospect (http://retrospect.com/). The have clients for macs and PC (and some flavors of Linux) and it's pretty easy to use. You can back up remotely (on schedule or on demand) and could restore locally of the hard drive. You & your neighbor can also back up locally onto a 2nd hard drive. The program has been around for 20+ years, it's reasonably price and the support is slightly above average. They have a free trial.
I have to agree that the host/server/bandwidth costs should be a relatively small factor on your calculation. Reliability, security and responsiveness really should be more important. The difference between top tier and bottom tier hosting/cloud is probably no more than a factor of 2 -- you can easily burn thru that savings with a couple of hours of downtime or a hosting vendor screw up.
If cost is really important, I'd get it working first at a top tier vendor and then overtime try to squeeze out costs--either negotiating a better rate (based on your volume) or switching to a lower cost vendor.
Alternative, why not just buy more bandwidth to your location. The bandwidth costs should be relatively low compared to the overall project costs. Also, this will provide you with office redundancy (at least at some level).
Too often in trying to save money, people focus on the wrong part of the problem.
I have to say with all of the big names having problems recently this has been one of the best weeks ever for the lowly corporate sys admin. Now if the company's email, file or web server--or even the coffee machine goes down, they can point to the big names that also have problems. It's great to be able to say that even at companies like Amazon, Google or Microsoft with all of their talents their servers also have problems. It's the greatest excuse ever for tripping over the power cord. And if that doesn't work, you can always blame the NSA for the typo in your email or the late TPS reports.
Thanks everyone and happy SysAdmin day! (which isn't today, but due to the unexpected outage is running late)
How up time is calculated is one of the really weaselly ways that companies set up SLAs. Some companies don't start counting downtime until it's reported, others require a minimum threshold of downtime before it counts, others define available in somewhat meaningless terms (e.g., server up, but network down doesn't count).
Somewhat OT, but I was pleasantly surprised to find a number of third-party sources to repair micro USB connectors. I don't know if it was a manufacturing issue, but the micro USB went on my Samsung & HTC at about the same time. For around $30 to $40 each, I was able to get them repaired.
I'm waiting for someone to announce a rack mount kit for a tubular computer case. Actually, anyone who needs cheap computing horsepower probably isn't buying mac computers. These are targeted at the single-shingle video producers and others for whom a single "work station" is fine. At the high end, all of the disk is iSCSI or something similar so TB doesn't matter.
At least on the Prius once the car is running even if you move the key fob out of range, the car keeps running (actually a good safety feature as you wouldn't want the car to shutdown on a key fob failure.) On the Prius (and maybe other Toyotas), there is a metal key for mechanically unlocking the driver's side door and a electronic slot for starting the car. You can use the electronic slot if the key fob batter is completely dead so I suspect it's a passive NFC device. There is also a mode that you can disable the active detection feature and always have to use the dashboard slot. Other models probably have similar features.
Other than the looks, you don't really need the MBP sitting on your desk. You could use any commodity laptop to SSH into the server farm. Nothing wrong with the MBP, but overkill as a dumb terminal.
In the late 70's I worked on one of the original Crays and it had an option to specify a file deletion date (or retention time) when you created a file. The file would be automatically deleted (or maybe archived) at the appointed time. I've often thought that this would be useful in a desktop OS--when I create the file, specify that it should be deleted in 2 weeks. Same with email--it would be great if you could read an email and then indicate that its retention should be two weeks or one year... and then it would automatically disappear.
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Agreed, taking off without charts is just dumb. I was more concerned about the iPad failing mid-flight.
The iPads aren't directly controlling any of the flight or navigation systems. If an ipad "crashed" in flight, it would be an inconvenience but not a major flight safety issue. The plane would continue to fly, and the pilots could navigate safely to an airport via ground control. All of the ipads crashing at one time might overload ground control, but not likely. Also, the flight waypoints are preloaded into the navigation computers prior to takeoff, so plane will continue on its flightpath with or without the ipad.
I guess I'd be really scared when they start using the ipad for navigation, engine control or auto pilot. (Or perhaps, just for the inflight entertainment).
Although I agree that some of the user-facing electronics in automobiles are overpriced, the core components use time-proven technology that is reliable. Even a low-end car (sold for less than $20,000) has engine electronics that are expected to last for ten or more years, an operating temperature range of probably 0 F to 120 F, and can withstand fairly heavy vibration over its lifetime. Your average computer or phone perhaps operates from 40 to 90 (although rated for much less) and would fall apart if put on a shaker. The electrical environment is relatively bad -- voltages range from 10 to 14 V and there are 4, 6 or 8 plugs firing off sparks. Some of the devices also are critical safety items -- for example brakes need to have redundancy and degrade gracefully if power is lost.
Contrast that to your average PC/Mac/iThing which is put into the market with buggy software and has critical patches every month.
For airplanes, cars and other transportation, I'd trade off tested and proven hardware and software for cool-looking flat icons on the touch screen.
A functioning economy with commerce is part of the solution. One of the functions of banks, beside a more secure place to hold your cash, is to use the deposits to make loans that allow businesses to develop. Businesses generate jobs, wages and more infrastructure. All which help develop civil and functioning societies. Although far from a complete success, take a look at how Rwanda has developed post civil war.
I not sure that this particular company will not suffer the fate of other attempts, but the concept of providing banking to otherwise unbanked is a good idea.
On a production engine, the specs of every unit will be identical (to machining tolerances .001 in). So once you solve the problem just encode the parameters in the controller and you can use something much less powerful (and more reliable). For solving the problem, use whatever high-power equipment you'd like. Attach a hundred sensors and throw a supercomputer at it. Even better, rather than "machine learning" (aka, we don't understand it, we will let the computer tweak it until it gets better), simulate the physics and solve the equations for a complete solution.
The real question is what is your budget? At the very high end, you could get a custom machined box for the heat sinks and customized components. You could also actually pay someone to calculate the thermodynamics and heat flows. As others have stated, detailed specs (application, requirements, budget, timeline, quantity) are really a requirement.
I'm guessing that there are military, aircraft solutions that fit the bill (but might require you to drop $10K on the system. It seems to me that the requirements for satellites are at least as stringent -- and repair isn't an option.
Even in an old house, an electrician who is experienced with the local construction can run CAT6 cable. At the same time, the electrician can put in power outlets where you really want them and add any (electrical) switches that are inconveniently placed. Maybe you'd like a couple of outside outlets and to upgrade some of the lighting at the same time
Figure about 2 days of an electrician + a helper at most; maybe $1,500 or $2,000. Consider it part of the purchase price of the house.
Wiring is really a well-solved science, and there are professionals (or trades people) who know how to do it.
If you can afford the house, hire some.
Like all technology, it's really about what you are trying to protect. For most people and applications HTTPS is probably enough, if you're protecting multi-billion dollar transactions or infrastructure then you should use something stronger. Think of it like door locks -- all are flawed, but it's not worth spending $1 million on security to protect a $300,000 house.
I'm reasonably satisfied with the level of protection from HTTPS for my twitter posts and even banking.
As an aside, is the Microsoft HTTPS implementation any better? It seems like only open source and Apple have been implicated in the HTTPSgate scandal.
Mythbusters (almost as accurate as wikipedia) tested the myth of an untrained pilot landing a plane with coaching from the ground. They concluded it was "plausable".
But their second go-round with coaching assistance from an air traffic officer was much smoother sailing. Though the coach wasn't inside the simulator with Jamie and Adam, he was able to point out the gauges and controls and how to use them to correctly maneuver the plane. After being talked through how to steer and land step-by-step, Jamie and Adam each brought their imaginary planes safely to the ground, leading the MythBusters to rule this one "plausible" for someone actually flying the friendly skies. And at the end of the show, they said had they used the automation available, it would have been much easier....
see: http://www.discovery.com/tv-sh...
Actually BCD was (is) mostly used for accounting application where rounding isn't acceptable. Scientists mostly use floating point where the rounding doesn't matter. For those who want a COBOL example PIC 9(6)V99 could well be stored and calculated as BCD arithmetic and would retain 8 digits of precision.
The $100/hour seems about right for what utilities and others pay for a cop on private detail. The officer gets some of that in overtime, the city gets the rest as "profit" and overhead. $200k/year for a trained, licensed cop seems in the ballpark once you take into effect training, equipment, benefits, hiring and other costs. Your $75K/year PHP programmer probably costs the company $150K/year once you add in benefits, recruiting, real estate and training.
I'd bet it's a jelly donut. If it's about the size of a jelly donut, it's probably a jelly donut. Not a good time to speed as there's probably a cop nearby.
Actually you have your choice (these and many more). Probably with all of these gates you could solve almost any problem:
Bill Gates (Chairman of Microsoft)
Melinda Gates (American philanthropist)
Robert Gates (Former Defense Secretary)Antonio Gates (San Diego Chargers Tight End)
Brent Gates (American professional baseball player)
Clyde Gates (New York Jets Wide Receiver)
Lionel Gates (American professional football player)servants[edit]
Artemus Gates (American financier and Undersecretary of the Navy)'
...blinded by the light reved up like a deuce. A "deuce" is slang for a street rod which probably didn't have laser headlights. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Model_B_(1932)#Deuce_coupe)
I hate to think how much these BMW laser headlights will cost to replace after a minor fender bender. I remember when all the headlights were the standard round ones and probably cost $20 or $30 to replace. Even cheap headlights are in the hundreds of dollars now... the current BMW headlight is probably $1000.
Now you kids get off my lawn.
I believe the earlier name for "cloud services" was timesharing. The 70's called and want their VM370/TSO back.
You might look into retrospect (http://retrospect.com/). The have clients for macs and PC (and some flavors of Linux) and it's pretty easy to use. You can back up remotely (on schedule or on demand) and could restore locally of the hard drive. You & your neighbor can also back up locally onto a 2nd hard drive. The program has been around for 20+ years, it's reasonably price and the support is slightly above average. They have a free trial.
I have to agree that the host/server/bandwidth costs should be a relatively small factor on your calculation. Reliability, security and responsiveness really should be more important. The difference between top tier and bottom tier hosting/cloud is probably no more than a factor of 2 -- you can easily burn thru that savings with a couple of hours of downtime or a hosting vendor screw up.
If cost is really important, I'd get it working first at a top tier vendor and then overtime try to squeeze out costs--either negotiating a better rate (based on your volume) or switching to a lower cost vendor.
Alternative, why not just buy more bandwidth to your location. The bandwidth costs should be relatively low compared to the overall project costs. Also, this will provide you with office redundancy (at least at some level).
Too often in trying to save money, people focus on the wrong part of the problem.
I have to say with all of the big names having problems recently this has been one of the best weeks ever for the lowly corporate sys admin. Now if the company's email, file or web server--or even the coffee machine goes down, they can point to the big names that also have problems. It's great to be able to say that even at companies like Amazon, Google or Microsoft with all of their talents their servers also have problems. It's the greatest excuse ever for tripping over the power cord. And if that doesn't work, you can always blame the NSA for the typo in your email or the late TPS reports.
Thanks everyone and happy SysAdmin day! (which isn't today, but due to the unexpected outage is running late)
How up time is calculated is one of the really weaselly ways that companies set up SLAs. Some companies don't start counting downtime until it's reported, others require a minimum threshold of downtime before it counts, others define available in somewhat meaningless terms (e.g., server up, but network down doesn't count).
Somewhat OT, but I was pleasantly surprised to find a number of third-party sources to repair micro USB connectors. I don't know if it was a manufacturing issue, but the micro USB went on my Samsung & HTC at about the same time. For around $30 to $40 each, I was able to get them repaired.
As long as what you want isn't iSCSI, FCoE or 10gig either.
I'm waiting for someone to announce a rack mount kit for a tubular computer case. Actually, anyone who needs cheap computing horsepower probably isn't buying mac computers. These are targeted at the single-shingle video producers and others for whom a single "work station" is fine. At the high end, all of the disk is iSCSI or something similar so TB doesn't matter.
At least on the Prius once the car is running even if you move the key fob out of range, the car keeps running (actually a good safety feature as you wouldn't want the car to shutdown on a key fob failure.) On the Prius (and maybe other Toyotas), there is a metal key for mechanically unlocking the driver's side door and a electronic slot for starting the car. You can use the electronic slot if the key fob batter is completely dead so I suspect it's a passive NFC device. There is also a mode that you can disable the active detection feature and always have to use the dashboard slot. Other models probably have similar features.
Other than the looks, you don't really need the MBP sitting on your desk. You could use any commodity laptop to SSH into the server farm. Nothing wrong with the MBP, but overkill as a dumb terminal.
In the late 70's I worked on one of the original Crays and it had an option to specify a file deletion date (or retention time) when you created a file. The file would be automatically deleted (or maybe archived) at the appointed time. I've often thought that this would be useful in a desktop OS--when I create the file, specify that it should be deleted in 2 weeks. Same with email--it would be great if you could read an email and then indicate that its retention should be two weeks or one year... and then it would automatically disappear.