General Electric has been doing this for years
on
Japan's War On E-Waste
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· Score: 4, Interesting
GE Medical systems has a salvage operation, where they take field returns of computers, circuit boards, monitors, x-ray tubes, and traded-in equipment. They test items that have a demand, and resell them if possible, and then the rest goes into the process.
There is a group of people who snip the gold contact fingers off of circuit boards - the gold contacts go to one process, the boards go off to China for reuse of the components (so, that cheap Chinese toy you buy, might have 15 year old resisters that used to be in an Xray machine!). The CRTs are, as the article mentioned, separated for leaded vs. unleaded glass; chassis are stripped, steel & aluminum go off into their own recycling places.
Some of the more intersting stuff is the tungsten rotors from the Xray tubes - some seriously heavy stuff, and the mu-metal from inside of some monitors and image intensifiers. Some of the scrap they come up with is painfully expensive stuff, some of it is toxic, and all of it would end up in a dump somewhere if they weren't doing it.
Of course, GE being GE, they're not doing this just because it's a good thing to do, but I understand that they actually turn a profit at all of this. I'm guessing other GE businesses do it to, and I'd be surprised if there aren't dozens or hundreds of places in the US doing it already. If there aren't, maybe it'd be a good thing to look into.
While in an ideal world, the entire setup would instantly switch to a purely linux solution, the real world doesn't work that way. You'll always have people who are more comfortable with certain apps, and you'll have applications that just plain aren't available for Linux just yet.
By running the workstation on Linux, and by locking Windows into it's own little virtual machine jail, this accomplishes several important things: 1. Gets Linux on the desktop 2. Handles any/all remote display sessions, eliminating cost of a windows X-desktop solution. 3. Handles remote NFS mounts to *nix servers, eliminating *that* cost. 4. Allows users to continue with most of their work when the Windows VM bluescreens - reboot the VM and keep going.
As long as 3 years ago, a Linux desktop with VMWare running Windows was a viable solution from a cost perspective, and with the reliability and other improvements in VMWare, it's an excellent solution in a hybrid environment.
While many of us would prefer to be in a Pure Open Environment, the reality of the world is that this doesn't exist in many places just yet. Moves such as this will go a long way torwards getting us there, and in the meantime, there are a bunch of desktops which will be far more stable and usable than if they were running only Windows. I've been running this way for around 3 years now, and it's a perfectly viable solution. It gets Linux the exposure it needs, and the quality of the product will do the rest.
Yes, there is good new technology out there. My point is, lying about the current technology isn't the right way to promote something new. If the product is good, time will prove it out. If it's not, then one conclusion about their methods is that the only way they can look good, is to lie about the other technologies.
The article opens with comments about "40 minute MRI and CAT scans", and "the narrow tube of the MRI scanner". It proceeds to state that an MRI costs "$1000 of the patient's money". While the first two were maybe true a decade ago, the days of even a 20 minute MRI scan are long gone. The medical imaging business is half about diagnostic quality, and half about patient throughput.
By speeding up the scans as they've been doing since day one, they get more patients through during a day, allowing the scanners to be more profitable, and for the costs to go down. The $3,000,000 figure is awfully high for even a high-end MRI scanner these days.
This might very well be an interesting, promising device. But, making it look as if it's really good, by presenting deceptive information about the current options, is a huge red flag as far as I'm concerned.
If it's really a useful device, present it as it is - don't lie about the other technologies. If it's that superior, the marketplace will find it and respond accordingly.
It sounds like this might be a good application for a co-generation setup. Simply put, you use not only the electricity created by the generator, but also the waste heat for heating the structure, or domestic hot water, or other uses. In a liquid-cooled engine / generator setup, you can blow air through the radiator of the engine, within a duct, and use the heat from that to help heat the house, for instance.
Getting a bit more exotic (and silly? I dunno...), one could use a Stirling engine to power (something?); needs a hot side and a cold side. Put the "cold" side outside the enclosure, and presto, you have a temperature differential to work with.
Initially, I can see fuel cells as stationary power generation units - get some installed base & learning time in, as they work on making it more portable and physically robust. I'd buy one today if it was anywhere near cost-effective.
Doesn't help me now though, does it.
on
My Visit to SCO
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Problem with that, is until this is settled one way or another, the pointy-haired-bosses who approve my technology architecture decisions, are likely to be put of from appropriate solutions due to the FUD.
I'm not sure giving SCO lots of money to go away sends the right message, but until they go away, it's complicating my proposals. *BSD is a subject I've wanted to bring up for some time, looks like that may be our new direction, at least until SCO goes away. This annoys me mightily, again more for reasons of principle than for technical reasons.
Does Intel not realize how many of their processors are running Linux? Are they just telling us to buy AMD?
Netcraft can't measure above 497 days...
on
Sun's Last Stand
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Netcraft's site discusses how they gather the uptime, and states that Solaris, Linux, and HP-UX (maybe more) all will max out in those charts at 497 days, due to limitations in whatever they're using to measure uptime remotely.
The *BSD boxes don't have that limitation, it seems.
I wonder how many boxes are out there where this 497-day counter has "rolled over", and if this figure is accurate given that limitation?
I've got a Computer Shopper in front of me from 1993. On the cover is a reasonably high-end system, for 1500 bucks. Today, one can buy a reasonably high-end system for 1500 bucks.
At the time, it took a couple of minutes for windows to boot, on a 486-33. Today, it takes a couple of minutes for Windows to boot, on say a 1.6 GHz P4. Yes, it's doing a lot more, but it's taking just as long as it did a decade ago.
"I haven't seen any Netflix popups with Safari, can you point us to a site that causes the popup?"
Found it. Upon leaving http://www.cnn.com I am sent a popup with the URL of http://www.cnn.com/cnn_adspaces/adsPopup2.html?0 which displays the Netflix pop-under ad to me.
Actually, this is with Safari on the Mac, which has been otherwise very good about blocking unwanted popups. The ad in question has just shown up in the last couple of days. I'm still debating which browser to settle on for the Mac, but I know what it won't be...
Given that NetFlix has been pushing pop-under ads to my browser, I've chosen to avoid being a customer of theirs. So, as long as Wal-Mart doesn't start doing the same sort of thing, this sounds like a great idea.
I wonder if they'll have a similar "frequent renters get lower priority" scheme to what NetFlix has.
In our state, we recently had a no-call list instituted state wide. The telemarketing groups, of course, fought it tooth and nail.
What I don't understand, is how they think that they are losing business. If I sign up for the list (which I did), I am stating an unwillingness to deal with a telemarketer already - they haven't lost a potential sale, because there is no way I'd buy from one anyway, and if anything they've saved their call center a bit of time and abuse.
Even more puzzling are those who choose to ignore the state law and call anyway - like they think I maybe forgot I signed up, or that I'll be so happy to hear about the new windows or whatever they're selling that I'll change my mind.
Why do telemarketing groups fight something which keeps them from wasting time calling folks who identify themselves as "not interested"?
One of the biggest problems I've seen with EE grads, is that some of them don't have any real-world experience. Sure, they can tell you the noise characteristics for a carbon resistor, but ask them to pick a 1/2 watt carbon resistor of a given value out of a bin, and they can't recognize it. A lack of hands-on experience, in my opinion, leads to them coming up with bad designs - either unworkably over-precise, or using non-standard parts, and so on.
While understanding theory is important, it's only half of the job; if one doesn't have a way to apply it, they're only half-educated.
I think the best engineers are those who have spent some time being technicians first.
The latency would be trivial. Satellite internet feeds have latency because, the geostationary satellites are about 23,000 miles away. With the speed of light being 186,000 miles per second, this distance adds up.
Consider this - your request for a webpage originates on your desk. Goes up to the bird - there's 23,000 miles. Goes from the bird to wherever your sat ISP's switchgear is, there's another 23,000 miles (more, actually, depending on relative locations on the ground, a bunch of trig, and more math than this point warrants). Great, now your request is back on a land-based connection to the internet. You'll have the normal routing from there, to the host system.
At this point, the HTML you requested will get sent back to your ISP's gear, sent up to the bird (a third 23,000 mile trip), and down to your system (a fourth trip).
We're at 92,000 miles, and all you have is the HTML, which tells your browser which objects to go fetch (graphics, style sheets, and so on). So, a single packet takes roughly 1/2 second just in space, speed of light transit time; let alone the rest of the ground and server-based waits.
Contrast this to the balloon, where it's about a mile up. Delay there will be 1/186,000ths of a second each trip.
So, yes, they both have a delay, we're talking many orders of magnitude in difference. Measureable, maybe. Noticable? Nope.
What the hell is Sun thinking...
on
Gator Examined
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· Score: 4, Insightful
...but I repeat myself.
Sun Microsystems is using this spyware windows program to target people going to IBM's website? Is this an allegorical example fabricated for the article, or is Sun actually doing this?
I've disagreed with some of their technical decisions lately. I've certainly disagreed with some of their marketing decisions lately. But, for them to use one of the most abusive advertizing mechanisms on the Internet, is dissapointing if it's true.
What's next - "Get a B!GG3R Server - She won't believe your bandwidth" in my in-box?
I'm in a corporate environment where trying to get Linux or *BSD into the data center is an uphill battle. If the box comes from Sun, and runs Oracle, that makes that argument a whole lot easier for me. Even if it's more expensive than commodity hardware, they do have a deserved reputation for solid hardware, and I can use the logic that if Sun is willing to put their name on it, they're willing to back it up. I'm building a support system that's going to need it's own database; this box is worth looking into, for me.
A few months back, my company underwent a security audit from one of the third-party companies who do that sort of thing. It was truly beautiful watching their analysts do things to our web-app which we had never intended people to do. They're real artists.
We're a small-ish company, these guys came in for a week, exposed some weaknesses and some stylistic quibbles, and they're fixed.
If we can bring in an expert in this sort of thing, why can't Microsoft? Is it arrogance, apathy, or ignorance, or something else?
So much for M$'s one redeeming contribution...
on
Microsoft's Athens PC
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· Score: 1
Love 'em or hate 'em, Microsoft's popularity has helped to bring computer components down in price. So, even though I won't use their stuff unless forced to, I have benefitted indirectly from the economies of scale that the popularity of Windows has provided.
It looks like now, even that may change, and I can cleanse myself of that uneasy feeling of "yeah, well, they *have* done something positive", which had until now been causing a noticable angst. Thank you, Microsoft, for freeing me of my last shred of gratitude or respect for you!
I question the demographics...
on
Hi-Tech Weed-Killer
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· Score: 5, Insightful
Around here (midwestern USA), the farmers are reluctant to try even the most basic of new things (no-till farming, organics, etc). I'm having a hard time imagining any of the farmers that I know shelling out a couple of grand on a robot with a camera, to run up & down the fields.
Then
again, if they can show how the cost is offset by gains in yields, then it just might get some use. Another concern is battery life - just how far is this thing going to go on a charge? 1 mile? That'll cover 4 rows...then what?
I'm not a game developer, but it seems to me that the amount of effort required to make something run for, say, Linux, may be somewhat high...but once you do that, the additional effort to also build it for the BSDs and for MacOS-X is minimal. Compilers, libraries, and all that, all the hard work is mostly done.
It'd be interesting to see if this sort of trend could be encouraged.
After my grandfather died, we discovered that he had been paying the local phone company for a "line maintenance charge" of a few bucks a month, for years and/or decades. Fine, except that he lived in a condo, where he didn't own the building or the wires.
I wonder how many other senior citizens are paying their local phone companies for a support contract on wires which are not theirs to worry about in the first place.
Slashdot Mirror
GE Medical systems has a salvage operation, where they take field returns of computers, circuit boards, monitors, x-ray tubes, and traded-in equipment. They test items that have a demand, and resell them if possible, and then the rest goes into the process.
There is a group of people who snip the gold contact fingers off of circuit boards - the gold contacts go to one process, the boards go off to China for reuse of the components (so, that cheap Chinese toy you buy, might have 15 year old resisters that used to be in an Xray machine!). The CRTs are, as the article mentioned, separated for leaded vs. unleaded glass; chassis are stripped, steel & aluminum go off into their own recycling places.
Some of the more intersting stuff is the tungsten rotors from the Xray tubes - some seriously heavy stuff, and the mu-metal from inside of some monitors and image intensifiers. Some of the scrap they come up with is painfully expensive stuff, some of it is toxic, and all of it would end up in a dump somewhere if they weren't doing it.
Of course, GE being GE, they're not doing this just because it's a good thing to do, but I understand that they actually turn a profit at all of this. I'm guessing other GE businesses do it to, and I'd be surprised if there aren't dozens or hundreds of places in the US doing it already. If there aren't, maybe it'd be a good thing to look into.
I don't know yet, I've only been running this sort of setup for 3 years...
While in an ideal world, the entire setup would instantly switch to a purely linux solution, the real world doesn't work that way. You'll always have people who are more comfortable with certain apps, and you'll have applications that just plain aren't available for Linux just yet.
By running the workstation on Linux, and by locking Windows into it's own little virtual machine jail, this accomplishes several important things:
1. Gets Linux on the desktop
2. Handles any/all remote display sessions, eliminating cost of a windows X-desktop solution.
3. Handles remote NFS mounts to *nix servers, eliminating *that* cost.
4. Allows users to continue with most of their work when the Windows VM bluescreens - reboot the VM and keep going.
As long as 3 years ago, a Linux desktop with VMWare running Windows was a viable solution from a cost perspective, and with the reliability and other improvements in VMWare, it's an excellent solution in a hybrid environment.
While many of us would prefer to be in a Pure Open Environment, the reality of the world is that this doesn't exist in many places just yet. Moves such as this will go a long way torwards getting us there, and in the meantime, there are a bunch of desktops which will be far more stable and usable than if they were running only Windows. I've been running this way for around 3 years now, and it's a perfectly viable solution. It gets Linux the exposure it needs, and the quality of the product will do the rest.
Yes, there is good new technology out there. My point is, lying about the current technology isn't the right way to promote something new. If the product is good, time will prove it out. If it's not, then one conclusion about their methods is that the only way they can look good, is to lie about the other technologies.
The article opens with comments about "40 minute MRI and CAT scans", and "the narrow tube of the MRI scanner". It proceeds to state that an MRI costs "$1000 of the patient's money". While the first two were maybe true a decade ago, the days of even a 20 minute MRI scan are long gone. The medical imaging business is half about diagnostic quality, and half about patient throughput.
By speeding up the scans as they've been doing since day one, they get more patients through during a day, allowing the scanners to be more profitable, and for the costs to go down. The $3,000,000 figure is awfully high for even a high-end MRI scanner these days.
This might very well be an interesting, promising device. But, making it look as if it's really good, by presenting deceptive information about the current options, is a huge red flag as far as I'm concerned.
If it's really a useful device, present it as it is - don't lie about the other technologies. If it's that superior, the marketplace will find it and respond accordingly.
Anyone else remember the Compaq Luggable? Or I think it was the Osbourne?
"Truly portable - only 45 pounds!". Scary stuff.
It sounds like this might be a good application for a co-generation setup. Simply put, you use not only the electricity created by the generator, but also the waste heat for heating the structure, or domestic hot water, or other uses. In a liquid-cooled engine / generator setup, you can blow air through the radiator of the engine, within a duct, and use the heat from that to help heat the house, for instance.
Getting a bit more exotic (and silly? I dunno...), one could use a Stirling engine to power (something?); needs a hot side and a cold side. Put the "cold" side outside the enclosure, and presto, you have a temperature differential to work with.
Initially, I can see fuel cells as stationary power generation units - get some installed base & learning time in, as they work on making it more portable and physically robust. I'd buy one today if it was anywhere near cost-effective.
Problem with that, is until this is settled one way or another, the pointy-haired-bosses who approve my technology architecture decisions, are likely to be put of from appropriate solutions due to the FUD.
I'm not sure giving SCO lots of money to go away sends the right message, but until they go away, it's complicating my proposals. *BSD is a subject I've wanted to bring up for some time, looks like that may be our new direction, at least until SCO goes away. This annoys me mightily, again more for reasons of principle than for technical reasons.
Does Intel not realize how many of their processors are running Linux? Are they just telling us to buy AMD?
Netcraft's site discusses how they gather the uptime, and states that Solaris, Linux, and HP-UX (maybe more) all will max out in those charts at 497 days, due to limitations in whatever they're using to measure uptime remotely.
The *BSD boxes don't have that limitation, it seems.
I wonder how many boxes are out there where this 497-day counter has "rolled over", and if this figure is accurate given that limitation?
I've got a Computer Shopper in front of me from 1993. On the cover is a reasonably high-end system, for 1500 bucks. Today, one can buy a reasonably high-end system for 1500 bucks.
At the time, it took a couple of minutes for windows to boot, on a 486-33. Today, it takes a couple of minutes for Windows to boot, on say a 1.6 GHz P4. Yes, it's doing a lot more, but it's taking just as long as it did a decade ago.
"I haven't seen any Netflix popups with Safari, can you point us to a site that causes the popup?"
Found it. Upon leaving http://www.cnn.com I am sent a popup with the URL of http://www.cnn.com/cnn_adspaces/adsPopup2.html?0 which displays the Netflix pop-under ad to me.
Actually, this is with Safari on the Mac, which has been otherwise very good about blocking unwanted popups. The ad in question has just shown up in the last couple of days. I'm still debating which browser to settle on for the Mac, but I know what it won't be...
Given that NetFlix has been pushing pop-under ads to my browser, I've chosen to avoid being a customer of theirs. So, as long as Wal-Mart doesn't start doing the same sort of thing, this sounds like a great idea.
I wonder if they'll have a similar "frequent renters get lower priority" scheme to what NetFlix has.
In our state, we recently had a no-call list instituted state wide. The telemarketing groups, of course, fought it tooth and nail.
What I don't understand, is how they think that they are losing business. If I sign up for the list (which I did), I am stating an unwillingness to deal with a telemarketer already - they haven't lost a potential sale, because there is no way I'd buy from one anyway, and if anything they've saved their call center a bit of time and abuse.
Even more puzzling are those who choose to ignore the state law and call anyway - like they think I maybe forgot I signed up, or that I'll be so happy to hear about the new windows or whatever they're selling that I'll change my mind.
Why do telemarketing groups fight something which keeps them from wasting time calling folks who identify themselves as "not interested"?
One of the biggest problems I've seen with EE grads, is that some of them don't have any real-world experience. Sure, they can tell you the noise characteristics for a carbon resistor, but ask them to pick a 1/2 watt carbon resistor of a given value out of a bin, and they can't recognize it. A lack of hands-on experience, in my opinion, leads to them coming up with bad designs - either unworkably over-precise, or using non-standard parts, and so on.
While understanding theory is important, it's only half of the job; if one doesn't have a way to apply it, they're only half-educated.
I think the best engineers are those who have spent some time being technicians first.
The latency would be trivial. Satellite internet feeds have latency because, the geostationary satellites are about 23,000 miles away. With the speed of light being 186,000 miles per second, this distance adds up.
Consider this - your request for a webpage originates on your desk. Goes up to the bird - there's 23,000 miles. Goes from the bird to wherever your sat ISP's switchgear is, there's another 23,000 miles (more, actually, depending on relative locations on the ground, a bunch of trig, and more math than this point warrants). Great, now your request is back on a land-based connection to the internet. You'll have the normal routing from there, to the host system.
At this point, the HTML you requested will get sent back to your ISP's gear, sent up to the bird (a third 23,000 mile trip), and down to your system (a fourth trip). We're at 92,000 miles, and all you have is the HTML, which tells your browser which objects to go fetch (graphics, style sheets, and so on). So, a single packet takes roughly 1/2 second just in space, speed of light transit time; let alone the rest of the ground and server-based waits.
Contrast this to the balloon, where it's about a mile up. Delay there will be 1/186,000ths of a second each trip.
So, yes, they both have a delay, we're talking many orders of magnitude in difference. Measureable, maybe. Noticable? Nope.
...but I repeat myself.
Sun Microsystems is using this spyware windows program to target people going to IBM's website? Is this an allegorical example fabricated for the article, or is Sun actually doing this?
I've disagreed with some of their technical decisions lately. I've certainly disagreed with some of their marketing decisions lately. But, for them to use one of the most abusive advertizing mechanisms on the Internet, is dissapointing if it's true.
What's next - "Get a B!GG3R Server - She won't believe your bandwidth" in my in-box?
I'm in a corporate environment where trying to get Linux or *BSD into the data center is an uphill battle. If the box comes from Sun, and runs Oracle, that makes that argument a whole lot easier for me. Even if it's more expensive than commodity hardware, they do have a deserved reputation for solid hardware, and I can use the logic that if Sun is willing to put their name on it, they're willing to back it up. I'm building a support system that's going to need it's own database; this box is worth looking into, for me.
Didn't Jeff Bezos {amazon.com} invent that? I'm pretty sure he holds the patent for it...
A few months back, my company underwent a security audit from one of the third-party companies who do that sort of thing. It was truly beautiful watching their analysts do things to our web-app which we had never intended people to do. They're real artists.
We're a small-ish company, these guys came in for a week, exposed some weaknesses and some stylistic quibbles, and they're fixed.
If we can bring in an expert in this sort of thing, why can't Microsoft? Is it arrogance, apathy, or ignorance, or something else?
Love 'em or hate 'em, Microsoft's popularity has helped to bring computer components down in price. So, even though I won't use their stuff unless forced to, I have benefitted indirectly from the economies of scale that the popularity of Windows has provided.
It looks like now, even that may change, and I can cleanse myself of that uneasy feeling of "yeah, well, they *have* done something positive", which had until now been causing a noticable angst. Thank you, Microsoft, for freeing me of my last shred of gratitude or respect for you!
Around here (midwestern USA), the farmers are reluctant to try even the most basic of new things (no-till farming, organics, etc). I'm having a hard time imagining any of the farmers that I know shelling out a couple of grand on a robot with a camera, to run up & down the fields.
Then again, if they can show how the cost is offset by gains in yields, then it just might get some use. Another concern is battery life - just how far is this thing going to go on a charge? 1 mile? That'll cover 4 rows...then what?
I'm not a game developer, but it seems to me that the amount of effort required to make something run for, say, Linux, may be somewhat high...but once you do that, the additional effort to also build it for the BSDs and for MacOS-X is minimal. Compilers, libraries, and all that, all the hard work is mostly done.
It'd be interesting to see if this sort of trend could be encouraged.
After my grandfather died, we discovered that he had been paying the local phone company for a "line maintenance charge" of a few bucks a month, for years and/or decades. Fine, except that he lived in a condo, where he didn't own the building or the wires.
I wonder how many other senior citizens are paying their local phone companies for a support contract on wires which are not theirs to worry about in the first place.