This is about the third or fourth time I have posted this on Slashdot. I'm glad I copied the text of the post when I saw it. Please note, the text is not mine. I just found it brilliant, that's all.
"Yeah! Hunters don't kill the *innocent* animals - they look for the shifty-eyed ones that are probably the criminal element of their species!"
"If the're not guilty, why are they running?"
I wrote about this a while ago. Here's the text:
"If you haven't done anything wrong, what do you have to hide?"
Ever heard that one? I work in information security, so I have heard it more than my fair share. I've always hated that reasoning, because I am a little bit paranoid by nature, something which serves me very well in my profession. So my standard response to people who have asked that question near me has been "because I'm paranoid." But that doesn't usually help, since most people who would ask that question see paranoia as a bad thing to begin with. So for a long time I've been trying to come up with a valid, reasoned, and intelligent answer which shoots the holes in the flawed logic that need to be there.
And someone unknowingly provided me with just that answer today. In a conversation about hunting, somebody posted this about prey animals and hunters: "Yeah! Hunters don't kill the *innocent* animals - they look for the shifty-eyed ones that are probably the criminal element of their species!" but in a brilliant (and very funny) retort, someone else said: "If the're not guilty, why are they running?"
Suddenly it made sense, that nagging thing in the back of my head. The logical reason why a reasonable dose of paranoia is healthy. Because it's one thing to be afraid of the TRUTH. People who commit murder or otherwise deprive others of their Natural Rights are afraid of the TRUTH, because it is the light of TRUTH that will help bring them to justice.
But it's another thing entirely to be afraid of hunters. And all too often, the hunters are the ones proclaiming to be looking for TRUTH. But they are more concerned with removing any obstactles to finding the TRUTH, even when that means bulldozing over people's rights (the right to privacy, the right to anonymity) in their quest for it. And sadly, these people often cannot tell the difference between the appearance of TRUTH and TRUTH itself. And these, the ones who are so convinced they have found the TRUTH that they stop looking for it, are some of the worst oppressors of Natural Rights the world has ever known.
They are the hunters, and it is right and good for the prey to be afraid of the hunters, and to run away from them. Do not be fooled when a hunter says "why are you running from me if you have nothing to hide?" Because having something to hide is not the only reason to be hiding something.
Perhaps it a privacy concern between whomever owns the bag being scanned and other members of the public.
If that were the case, it wouldn't make sense to have redacted that section.
Another interesting redacted section talks about how governors, lt. governors, immediate family, and two staff members...all appear to be eligible for "specialized screening", which probably consists of nothing more than a "have a nice flight, sir."
Same goes for the airplane's crew; they apparently don't want us to know that they're also exempt from any screening. As are: FEMA employees, US Military, US Senators and Representatives, holders of US diplomatic passports, holders of foreign diplomatic passwports with a little "yes, they're OK" card from the US gov't, Forest fighters (wtf?), and FAA inspectors.
photographing EDS or ETD monitor screens or emitted images is not permitted. [...] Whenever possible, x-ray machine images must not be visible to the public or press. When physical constraints prevent x-ray images from being fully protected from public viewing, TSOs must ensure no member of the public or press is in a position to observe an x-ray monitor for an extended period of time. Passengers and other unauthorized individuals must not be allowed to view EDS or ETD monitors and screens.
Huh. Now...why would that be?
First guess, they don't want the "terrorists" to see how good/bad the x-ray devices are.
Second more cynical guess: Xray machines are mostly useless and the TSA doesn't want the public to realize it's a bunch of voodoo?
While this job would take over 5 days on a contemporary dual-core PC, on our cluster it takes an average of 20 minutes
Anyone interested in testing their own key would not care about it taking 5 days. During a weekday, you're not around most of the time anyway. I doubt anyone cares enough to spend $40 for something that can be done for free.
TFA is full of shit- their rubber ducky was probably friended, but put on a restrictive friend list.
I'm friends with a famous turkey (long story), but said turkey is on a restricted friend list that can see barely more than my public info. I guarantee you every kid has a restricted list of one sort or another.
Also, did they bother to track how many people friended it just enough to check it out, and then unfriended it?
My phone is smart because it runs a Linux distro that allows for root access when required. Meaning I am not restricted, tethered, limited etc...
My phone is smart because it runs software which syncs my music, podcasts, contacts, and photos with my computer. It's also jailbroken and unlocked, which means it is also not restricted, tethered, or limited, and I get root access which I never require...thank you very much.
I can also make and receive phone calls when I'm not near a WiFi point, idiot.
As for DD-WRT and the gang (not sure why you mentioned it in the first place) - I tried it on my supposedly supported router. It crashed (without recovering) about every 4 hours, and performance topped out at around 8MB/sec instead of 12MB with the original firmware (it's an N router.) I spent a couple hours over the course of a week trying to figure out what was wrong, gave up, and moved on with my life by putting the original commercial firmware back on it.
Frankly, the RAM is the easiest part of all this. All you need for that is a few dollars worth of well proven technology that gets cheaper all the time.
Except that every embedded device or phone has very constrained amounts of memory, because they're trying to get the per-unit cost down as much as possible to get per-unit pricing up as much as possible (or drop the price to compete- cell phones are a commodity item.) When's the last time you even saw RAM specs on a phone? The iPhone (non 3GS) has 128MB and is widely considered to be hobbled by it.
Hell, it's true in the desktop world, too. You can spend $2500 on a Mac Pro, and Apple will only give you 3GB of RAM.
The idea is to have your work applications and home applications all running insider their own VMs and running at the same time so you can access any app any time.
Are they including a free RAM upgrade kit? And why does this seem to be a hammer in search of non-existent nails?
The biggest problem I have right now: lack of dual SIM (or multi-line) support in almost any phone. I don't need to separate "work applications" from "home applications." I need to have a work number / data plan billed to my company, and a home number (with no data plan) billed to me.
*Checks calendar* Yup, it's 2009. VOIP still not possible on my smartphone...
More important, by this point the public was, understandably, thoroughly confused about how to get to read Salon content. It took many years for our traffic to begin to grow again. Paywalls are psychological as much as navigational, and it's a lot easier to put them up than to take them down. Once web users get it in their head that your site is 'closed' to them, if you ever change your mind and want them to come back, it's extremely difficult to get that word out.
Oh man, that's rich. So, users are just "stupid" and "hard to reach"? I think "pissed off" is more like it. Let me reword that for you, Salon:
"More important, by this point the public was, understandably, thoroughly confused and annoyed as to why they had to pay for Salon content or watch ads when they didn't have to anywhere else. It took many years for our traffic to begin to grow again after we finally realized Paywalls are like trying to charge people for air or sell refrigerators to Eskimos. Content is plentiful and none of our articles were special or unique enough to justify the cost or trouble for viewers. Once web users find your site requires them to do more than just read content, if you ever realize you were completely stupid and want them to come back, too bad, because they already found other free content they like, and you already pissed them off."
The US Armed forces have a history of loving "war games" and they're largely dog and pony shows. In more than one case, the US forces playing the "enemy" side, if they defeated the "friendly" side, had their capabilities reduced and the game re-run until the friendly side won. In one case, they finally had to strip the enemy commander of his radio communications. So he used runners- civil war technology. He still won.
The fact that the "simulator" actually had a high score leads me to strongly believe that it wasn't a real simulator. Video games have high scores. Simulators are there to provide an environment for evaluation (usually by a very experienced human, not a computer.) I suspect the game is merely designed to expose recruits to all the fun stuff (shooting the baddies) but none of the bad stuff (does the simulator include diesel smoke, deafening noise, etc?) and see how interested/driven they are. The more driven you seem to be, the less they have to grease the wheels to get you to sign up.
I happen to know for a fact that the current SCCA prosolo and solo2 national champion has played GT extensively as well.
Maybe because they enjoy car games. Playing Gran Turismo doesn't do jack shit to make you a better driver. It won't make you a better racer, either, since you're not racing against anyone else who actually knows how to drive/race, and racing isn't just about driving. It's about preparation, conditions, your competitors.
I have friends who are driving instructors for car clubs and they teach at High Performance Driver Education events. The most dreaded words out of a student's mouth are "I really like playing Gran Turismo." Even worse: "I know how to drive. I play lots of Gran Turismo." I heard a student say that, and then the next day on his very first session (in the novice run group), he spun and plonked his shiny VW coupe right into the armco on the 3rd or 4th turn. His 'reset button' was spending the rest of the day in the pits trying to repair the damage enough to drive the car the next day / drive it home.
Despite what the makers of GT say about "realistic physics", there's nothing realistic about the games. Driving at speed is all about feedback from sensations; the sensations and torque from the wheel, the sensations from your butt as you feel what the car's chassis does (you know that really awkward feeling you get the back of your car starts to slide in the snow/rain, aka oversteer?), forces of acceleration, noises from the tires.
NONE, repeat, NONE of that exists in a video game. They'll make tire noise, sure- but there's no difference in GT between humming tires (good) and squealing/screaming tires (bad). Yes, you can tell how loaded a tire is based off how bad the noise sounds.
If you want to get into racing, it's really not that hard or that expensive. The solution is as close as your nearest gokart track. Many F1 drivers started in karts, especially shifter karts. Don't laugh- a shifter kart is absurdly fast. Spend a few minutes on Youtube searching on "shifter kart". You can also take your own car to any SCCA autocross with a minimum amount of preparation and expense.
Hell, the cost of one high-performance driver education event is probably less than the cost of a game console, wheel/pedal set, and game. Hell of a lot more fun, too.
And for photos, dye-subs. Even if they don't beat inkjets on dpi, my 300dpi dyesub beats any 1200x1200 in actual results. You JUST DON'T see the millions of dots with dyesub, it's all blended together, and because there is a clear coat, no smearing of the images, even if you lick your fingers and go across the picture right after it was printed. It looks as good or better than from professional print shop.
Um, no- dye sub (wax) printers produce unbelievably fragile prints. You can scrape the wax right off the page with your fingernail, it creases easily, etc. Also, since it's a dye, and not a pigment, it fades within months.
They also suck up enormous amounts of energy and take a good 5-10 minutes (or longer) to warm up because it has to melt (and keep melted) all the damn wax and internal printer bits. Even with fairly sophisticated energy saving functions, the damn things still eat you out of house and home, and the melted wax has a smell that permeates the room. If you want to move the printer, you have to trigger a special cool-down mode and wait a good 30 minutes so that you don't spill wax inside the machine...
I actually broke my mod point to post this- do you understand how arrogant it is that you feel a)you understand the problem based on one or two sentences, b)you are qualified to give advice on the subject, and c)that it's your business to do the analysis and hand out advice? Nevermind that apparently "you spend too much time in front of the computer" somehow turned into:
"you do not buy her flowers"
she wants flowers
they do not spend enough time together
she wants to spend more time with him
she feels neglected
he doesn't do enough romantic things
he doesn't know how
men are responsible for doing all the romantic things
Half of which is a bunch of misandry. Here's a big cluebomb for you: they liked each other enough to get married. I think one or both of them has been doing something right.
Another idea behind a UPS is _a_single_point_of_failure_. Moving the power backups to the individual servers eliminates that worry.
Large-scale UPS systems are generally built with excessive amounts of redundancy.
Plus, since the servers are already redundant, you don't need the redundancy on the UPS, inverters, etc., which should save money.
You're assuming the servers are redundant, and that there is zero potential for lost data. Even with that fancy software we saw a week or two ago, it was discussed how there was still the possibility for lost transactional data.
And since it's long-term, I'm willing to wager it won't be lead-acid, but NiMH. So no real maintenance issues.
Google is using lead-acid.
. And your "what happens if..." scenarios apply equally to a battery in a megawatt UPS or a battery in a server.
Actually, they don't apply even remotely equally: location, location, location. If you have a battery fire or leak in your UPS room, it doesn't affect your servers, and the UPS room is designed through fire code / standards to tolerate all this. Plus, a battery room is vented to deal with normal off-gassing from the batteries (or fumes if a battery fails.) If a battery in a server pisses sulfuric acid, you now have a big problem on your hands- corrosive liquid and vapor. Want to guess what sulfuric acid vapor does for MTBF's for fans and hard drives? Want to guess how much of a pain in the ass it is for staff if they have to respond to a toxic waste spill, not just a server failure?
As for battery management and 'specialized' power supplies, etc.: go check out a laptop. That wheel has already been invented, and better yet, has benefitted from mass-production.
Servers don't currently have batteries, chargers, etc in them. Adding them in affects reliability of the overall component, especially if you've got a new design on your hands. Power systems for laptops are not designed anything like servers- they have big differences in requirements.
Also, you're not understanding what 'specialized' means. A power supply for a server with a battery in it might have an extra cable or connector, as an example. That's enough to make that particular power supply more expensive, if only slightly. Now figure in that you now need the chassis modified to hold a battery (and they only come in so many sizes- if you want a custom size, $$$$), you need to place a charger/power controller circuit somewhere...so the chassis is completely different. That costs money. Why? Because of the cost of the extra components, the design is 'custom', the manufacturers make them in lower volume, and they're distributed differently. Anyone who does their own car repairs knows this well- if your car uses a component few other cars do, it's going to cost more, and probably take longer to arrive.
Shall we also talk about the number of laptops that catch fire every year? Servers generally don't have much in the way of highly reactive materials in them.
This eradicates the germs, they aren't being poisoned or having their chemical processes blocked (which is what most antibiotics do), it's ripping the germs apart at the atomic level. You don't develop a resistance to that.
I'm sure similar thoughts were said about radiation, bleach, alcohol, and autoclaves. Turns out there are various critters resistant or immune to each.
However, if this manages to blow away prions (which aren't zapped by a number of things, including normal autoclaves), it'll be great news.
As a nurse I would welcome this as I have to wash and disinfect my hands several times a day.
As a nurse, I'd hope you would remember the same lecture on hand-washing I got when I started working for a hospital. Namely, that your nails are equally if not more important. What does this do for dirt under nails? Uh huh.
Don't know about you kid, but a doc sticking his hand into my insides is one of those situations where I'm willing to forego the 'benefit' of having my immune system stimulated by germs being introduced in the process and ask him to wash up.
A surgeon sticking his hand into your insides is wearing a sterile-packaged glove.
The OP has a valid concern- both because skin has bacteria on it normally which is beneficial, and because our immune systems needs exposure to baddies to keep working properly.
Fun related fact: infection control became MORE of a problem when gloves were introduced. Something about the doctor or nurse or surgeon really wanting to be clean after getting your bodily fluids all over their hands.
How long is twelve volts going to keep a server running? A UPS would guarantee that you have enough time to finish transfers and close connections before shutting down into a safe mode, even give clients a warning before shutting down.
Volts are a measure of electrical potential, not capacity. You mean watt-hours, most likely.
How long is twelve volts going to keep a server running? A UPS would guarantee that you have enough time to finish transfers and close connections before shutting down into a safe mode, even give clients a warning before shutting down.
That depends on how big the UPS is. Many large-scale datacenter UPS's are only designed to ride out the time between when the power goes out and the generator is warmed up enough to take the load (tolerances are not 'right' when the engine is cold, so damage is caused, or the engine won't provide rated output.)
The argument is that in a "cloud", none of this matters- you only need to ride out a temporary power outage, or allow the machine to shut down properly so it doesn't have to be repaired software-wise. However, for the rest of us who don't live in poofy clouds and have non-cloud things like mail servers, yeah, you're right- the capacity in a server is pretty low.
Facebook says the move will slash its power bill and save millions in capital expenses on UPS systems and PDUs.
And it'll move the complexity and unreliability to the server. The whole idea behind centralized UPS's (and by the way, you still need PDUs) is that you have reliability, serviceability, and economies of scale and efficiency. Now you have to monitor and service the batteries in thousands of pieces of equipment. And guess what happens when one of those batteries fails by getting cooked? Sulfuric acid all over the place (yes, even the "sealed" lead acid batteries can fail and leak) instead of the batteries being in, say, a battery room. God help us if they use lithium-ion, which would introduce us to a world of server fires and water damage, since a lot of datacenters are now dry-pipe to save costs. Nevermind that batteries and their associated electronics take up space, and that space has to come from somewhere.
So, now you have each server getting more expensive, more complex with both hardware and software (server now needs its own battery power management) heavier, bigger, featuring toxic materials, and now non-standard, non-commodity design which vendors will charge more for as they specialize the equipment.
I'm sure this all looks great on a powerpoint slide simplified into "if we put batteries in our servers, we can throw out our expensive UPS and save money!" This is just another hot/stupid trend; just because Google is doing it, doesn't make it brilliant. I stopped believing everything google was doing was a Best Practice around the same time gmail started going down for hours (and for some users, more than a day) at a time on a regular basis.
I tuned out of the article around the point where the guy from Facebook complains about cosmetic features interfering with airflow. Uh, guess what, bud? Dell's pretty front panel has been optional (saving you a few bucks sometimes) for years.
Stores, for example, are expected to at least talk to the local PD about traffic/crowd concerns, and engage in some common crowd control 'best practices', call the police if things look like they're getting out of control, etc. And sometimes, yeah, the cops say Pool's Closed if they think people are going to get hurt.
If the event was promoted on twitter, you're damn right it is reasonable to expect that it MIGHT be an effective communication tool. At the very least, it'll maybe stop MORE people from showing up. And if the cops said "look, there's this crazy crowd, it's going to get ugly, please help" and the guy won't- well, sorry, that's just being an asshat, and if people do get injured, I don't think an arrest and charge is out of the question. Then the DA has to decide it's worth prosecuting and the court has to decide if it's legit enough to go to trial. And then he gets a trial by jury if he wants it.
There were numerous pumping stations which didn't have pumps in them. Why? They'd been stolen and sold on the black market, or the funds siphoned off and the pumps never installed.
For decades New Orleans residents haven't given a damn about massive corruption in their city; it used to be the murder capital of the US. Funny how corruption results in stolen property (and general incompetence.) Funny how that becomes an issue when you have critical infrastructure.
Slashdot Mirror
This is about the third or fourth time I have posted this on Slashdot. I'm glad I copied the text of the post when I saw it. Please note, the text is not mine. I just found it brilliant, that's all.
Perhaps it a privacy concern between whomever owns the bag being scanned and other members of the public.
If that were the case, it wouldn't make sense to have redacted that section.
Another interesting redacted section talks about how governors, lt. governors, immediate family, and two staff members...all appear to be eligible for "specialized screening", which probably consists of nothing more than a "have a nice flight, sir."
Same goes for the airplane's crew; they apparently don't want us to know that they're also exempt from any screening. As are: FEMA employees, US Military, US Senators and Representatives, holders of US diplomatic passports, holders of foreign diplomatic passwports with a little "yes, they're OK" card from the US gov't, Forest fighters (wtf?), and FAA inspectors.
photographing EDS or ETD monitor screens or emitted images is not permitted. [...] Whenever possible, x-ray machine images must not be visible to the public or press. When physical constraints prevent x-ray images from being fully protected from public viewing, TSOs must ensure no member of the public or press is in a position to observe an x-ray monitor for an extended period of time. Passengers and other unauthorized individuals must not be allowed to view EDS or ETD monitors and screens.
Huh. Now...why would that be?
First guess, they don't want the "terrorists" to see how good/bad the x-ray devices are.
Second more cynical guess: Xray machines are mostly useless and the TSA doesn't want the public to realize it's a bunch of voodoo?
While this job would take over 5 days on a contemporary dual-core PC, on our cluster it takes an average of 20 minutes
Anyone interested in testing their own key would not care about it taking 5 days. During a weekday, you're not around most of the time anyway. I doubt anyone cares enough to spend $40 for something that can be done for free.
TFA is full of shit- their rubber ducky was probably friended, but put on a restrictive friend list.
I'm friends with a famous turkey (long story), but said turkey is on a restricted friend list that can see barely more than my public info. I guarantee you every kid has a restricted list of one sort or another.
Also, did they bother to track how many people friended it just enough to check it out, and then unfriended it?
My phone is smart because it runs a Linux distro that allows for root access when required. Meaning I am not restricted, tethered, limited etc...
My phone is smart because it runs software which syncs my music, podcasts, contacts, and photos with my computer. It's also jailbroken and unlocked, which means it is also not restricted, tethered, or limited, and I get root access which I never require...thank you very much.
I can also make and receive phone calls when I'm not near a WiFi point, idiot.
As for DD-WRT and the gang (not sure why you mentioned it in the first place) - I tried it on my supposedly supported router. It crashed (without recovering) about every 4 hours, and performance topped out at around 8MB/sec instead of 12MB with the original firmware (it's an N router.) I spent a couple hours over the course of a week trying to figure out what was wrong, gave up, and moved on with my life by putting the original commercial firmware back on it.
Frankly, the RAM is the easiest part of all this. All you need for that is a few dollars worth of well proven technology that gets cheaper all the time.
Except that every embedded device or phone has very constrained amounts of memory, because they're trying to get the per-unit cost down as much as possible to get per-unit pricing up as much as possible (or drop the price to compete- cell phones are a commodity item.) When's the last time you even saw RAM specs on a phone? The iPhone (non 3GS) has 128MB and is widely considered to be hobbled by it.
Hell, it's true in the desktop world, too. You can spend $2500 on a Mac Pro, and Apple will only give you 3GB of RAM.
The idea is to have your work applications and home applications all running insider their own VMs and running at the same time so you can access any app any time.
Are they including a free RAM upgrade kit? And why does this seem to be a hammer in search of non-existent nails?
The biggest problem I have right now: lack of dual SIM (or multi-line) support in almost any phone. I don't need to separate "work applications" from "home applications." I need to have a work number / data plan billed to my company, and a home number (with no data plan) billed to me.
*Checks calendar* Yup, it's 2009. VOIP still not possible on my smartphone...
Does your wife happen to teach English? Maybe she can give you some pointers.
More important, by this point the public was, understandably, thoroughly confused about how to get to read Salon content. It took many years for our traffic to begin to grow again. Paywalls are psychological as much as navigational, and it's a lot easier to put them up than to take them down. Once web users get it in their head that your site is 'closed' to them, if you ever change your mind and want them to come back, it's extremely difficult to get that word out.
Oh man, that's rich. So, users are just "stupid" and "hard to reach"? I think "pissed off" is more like it. Let me reword that for you, Salon:
"More important, by this point the public was, understandably, thoroughly confused and annoyed as to why they had to pay for Salon content or watch ads when they didn't have to anywhere else. It took many years for our traffic to begin to grow again after we finally realized Paywalls are like trying to charge people for air or sell refrigerators to Eskimos. Content is plentiful and none of our articles were special or unique enough to justify the cost or trouble for viewers. Once web users find your site requires them to do more than just read content, if you ever realize you were completely stupid and want them to come back, too bad, because they already found other free content they like, and you already pissed them off."
The US Armed forces have a history of loving "war games" and they're largely dog and pony shows. In more than one case, the US forces playing the "enemy" side, if they defeated the "friendly" side, had their capabilities reduced and the game re-run until the friendly side won. In one case, they finally had to strip the enemy commander of his radio communications. So he used runners- civil war technology. He still won.
The fact that the "simulator" actually had a high score leads me to strongly believe that it wasn't a real simulator. Video games have high scores. Simulators are there to provide an environment for evaluation (usually by a very experienced human, not a computer.) I suspect the game is merely designed to expose recruits to all the fun stuff (shooting the baddies) but none of the bad stuff (does the simulator include diesel smoke, deafening noise, etc?) and see how interested/driven they are. The more driven you seem to be, the less they have to grease the wheels to get you to sign up.
I happen to know for a fact that the current SCCA prosolo and solo2 national champion has played GT extensively as well.
Maybe because they enjoy car games. Playing Gran Turismo doesn't do jack shit to make you a better driver. It won't make you a better racer, either, since you're not racing against anyone else who actually knows how to drive/race, and racing isn't just about driving. It's about preparation, conditions, your competitors.
I have friends who are driving instructors for car clubs and they teach at High Performance Driver Education events. The most dreaded words out of a student's mouth are "I really like playing Gran Turismo." Even worse: "I know how to drive. I play lots of Gran Turismo." I heard a student say that, and then the next day on his very first session (in the novice run group), he spun and plonked his shiny VW coupe right into the armco on the 3rd or 4th turn. His 'reset button' was spending the rest of the day in the pits trying to repair the damage enough to drive the car the next day / drive it home.
Despite what the makers of GT say about "realistic physics", there's nothing realistic about the games. Driving at speed is all about feedback from sensations; the sensations and torque from the wheel, the sensations from your butt as you feel what the car's chassis does (you know that really awkward feeling you get the back of your car starts to slide in the snow/rain, aka oversteer?), forces of acceleration, noises from the tires.
NONE, repeat, NONE of that exists in a video game. They'll make tire noise, sure- but there's no difference in GT between humming tires (good) and squealing/screaming tires (bad). Yes, you can tell how loaded a tire is based off how bad the noise sounds.
If you want to get into racing, it's really not that hard or that expensive. The solution is as close as your nearest gokart track. Many F1 drivers started in karts, especially shifter karts. Don't laugh- a shifter kart is absurdly fast. Spend a few minutes on Youtube searching on "shifter kart". You can also take your own car to any SCCA autocross with a minimum amount of preparation and expense.
Hell, the cost of one high-performance driver education event is probably less than the cost of a game console, wheel/pedal set, and game. Hell of a lot more fun, too.
And for photos, dye-subs. Even if they don't beat inkjets on dpi, my 300dpi dyesub beats any 1200x1200 in actual results. You JUST DON'T see the millions of dots with dyesub, it's all blended together, and because there is a clear coat, no smearing of the images, even if you lick your fingers and go across the picture right after it was printed. It looks as good or better than from professional print shop.
Um, no- dye sub (wax) printers produce unbelievably fragile prints. You can scrape the wax right off the page with your fingernail, it creases easily, etc. Also, since it's a dye, and not a pigment, it fades within months.
They also suck up enormous amounts of energy and take a good 5-10 minutes (or longer) to warm up because it has to melt (and keep melted) all the damn wax and internal printer bits. Even with fairly sophisticated energy saving functions, the damn things still eat you out of house and home, and the melted wax has a smell that permeates the room. If you want to move the printer, you have to trigger a special cool-down mode and wait a good 30 minutes so that you don't spill wax inside the machine...
*sighs*
Right back at you.
I actually broke my mod point to post this- do you understand how arrogant it is that you feel a)you understand the problem based on one or two sentences, b)you are qualified to give advice on the subject, and c)that it's your business to do the analysis and hand out advice? Nevermind that apparently "you spend too much time in front of the computer" somehow turned into:
Half of which is a bunch of misandry. Here's a big cluebomb for you: they liked each other enough to get married. I think one or both of them has been doing something right.
Seriously- Whisky, Tango, Foxtrot.
Another idea behind a UPS is _a_single_point_of_failure_. Moving the power backups to the individual servers eliminates that worry.
Large-scale UPS systems are generally built with excessive amounts of redundancy.
Plus, since the servers are already redundant, you don't need the redundancy on the UPS, inverters, etc., which should save money.
You're assuming the servers are redundant, and that there is zero potential for lost data. Even with that fancy software we saw a week or two ago, it was discussed how there was still the possibility for lost transactional data.
And since it's long-term, I'm willing to wager it won't be lead-acid, but NiMH. So no real maintenance issues.
Google is using lead-acid.
. And your "what happens if..." scenarios apply equally to a battery in a megawatt UPS or a battery in a server.
Actually, they don't apply even remotely equally: location, location, location. If you have a battery fire or leak in your UPS room, it doesn't affect your servers, and the UPS room is designed through fire code / standards to tolerate all this. Plus, a battery room is vented to deal with normal off-gassing from the batteries (or fumes if a battery fails.) If a battery in a server pisses sulfuric acid, you now have a big problem on your hands- corrosive liquid and vapor. Want to guess what sulfuric acid vapor does for MTBF's for fans and hard drives? Want to guess how much of a pain in the ass it is for staff if they have to respond to a toxic waste spill, not just a server failure?
As for battery management and 'specialized' power supplies, etc.: go check out a laptop. That wheel has already been invented, and better yet, has benefitted from mass-production.
Servers don't currently have batteries, chargers, etc in them. Adding them in affects reliability of the overall component, especially if you've got a new design on your hands. Power systems for laptops are not designed anything like servers- they have big differences in requirements.
Also, you're not understanding what 'specialized' means. A power supply for a server with a battery in it might have an extra cable or connector, as an example. That's enough to make that particular power supply more expensive, if only slightly. Now figure in that you now need the chassis modified to hold a battery (and they only come in so many sizes- if you want a custom size, $$$$), you need to place a charger/power controller circuit somewhere...so the chassis is completely different. That costs money. Why? Because of the cost of the extra components, the design is 'custom', the manufacturers make them in lower volume, and they're distributed differently. Anyone who does their own car repairs knows this well- if your car uses a component few other cars do, it's going to cost more, and probably take longer to arrive.
Shall we also talk about the number of laptops that catch fire every year? Servers generally don't have much in the way of highly reactive materials in them.
This eradicates the germs, they aren't being poisoned or having their chemical processes blocked (which is what most antibiotics do), it's ripping the germs apart at the atomic level. You don't develop a resistance to that.
I'm sure similar thoughts were said about radiation, bleach, alcohol, and autoclaves. Turns out there are various critters resistant or immune to each.
However, if this manages to blow away prions (which aren't zapped by a number of things, including normal autoclaves), it'll be great news.
As a nurse I would welcome this as I have to wash and disinfect my hands several times a day.
As a nurse, I'd hope you would remember the same lecture on hand-washing I got when I started working for a hospital. Namely, that your nails are equally if not more important. What does this do for dirt under nails? Uh huh.
Don't know about you kid, but a doc sticking his hand into my insides is one of those situations where I'm willing to forego the 'benefit' of having my immune system stimulated by germs being introduced in the process and ask him to wash up.
A surgeon sticking his hand into your insides is wearing a sterile-packaged glove.
The OP has a valid concern- both because skin has bacteria on it normally which is beneficial, and because our immune systems needs exposure to baddies to keep working properly.
Fun related fact: infection control became MORE of a problem when gloves were introduced. Something about the doctor or nurse or surgeon really wanting to be clean after getting your bodily fluids all over their hands.
How long is twelve volts going to keep a server running? A UPS would guarantee that you have enough time to finish transfers and close connections before shutting down into a safe mode, even give clients a warning before shutting down.
Volts are a measure of electrical potential, not capacity. You mean watt-hours, most likely.
How long is twelve volts going to keep a server running? A UPS would guarantee that you have enough time to finish transfers and close connections before shutting down into a safe mode, even give clients a warning before shutting down.
That depends on how big the UPS is. Many large-scale datacenter UPS's are only designed to ride out the time between when the power goes out and the generator is warmed up enough to take the load (tolerances are not 'right' when the engine is cold, so damage is caused, or the engine won't provide rated output.)
The argument is that in a "cloud", none of this matters- you only need to ride out a temporary power outage, or allow the machine to shut down properly so it doesn't have to be repaired software-wise. However, for the rest of us who don't live in poofy clouds and have non-cloud things like mail servers, yeah, you're right- the capacity in a server is pretty low.
Facebook says the move will slash its power bill and save millions in capital expenses on UPS systems and PDUs.
And it'll move the complexity and unreliability to the server. The whole idea behind centralized UPS's (and by the way, you still need PDUs) is that you have reliability, serviceability, and economies of scale and efficiency. Now you have to monitor and service the batteries in thousands of pieces of equipment. And guess what happens when one of those batteries fails by getting cooked? Sulfuric acid all over the place (yes, even the "sealed" lead acid batteries can fail and leak) instead of the batteries being in, say, a battery room. God help us if they use lithium-ion, which would introduce us to a world of server fires and water damage, since a lot of datacenters are now dry-pipe to save costs. Nevermind that batteries and their associated electronics take up space, and that space has to come from somewhere.
So, now you have each server getting more expensive, more complex with both hardware and software (server now needs its own battery power management) heavier, bigger, featuring toxic materials, and now non-standard, non-commodity design which vendors will charge more for as they specialize the equipment.
I'm sure this all looks great on a powerpoint slide simplified into "if we put batteries in our servers, we can throw out our expensive UPS and save money!" This is just another hot/stupid trend; just because Google is doing it, doesn't make it brilliant. I stopped believing everything google was doing was a Best Practice around the same time gmail started going down for hours (and for some users, more than a day) at a time on a regular basis.
I tuned out of the article around the point where the guy from Facebook complains about cosmetic features interfering with airflow. Uh, guess what, bud? Dell's pretty front panel has been optional (saving you a few bucks sometimes) for years.
...I couldn't help but think of this scene from Red Dwarf.
If the event was promoted on twitter, you're damn right it is reasonable to expect that it MIGHT be an effective communication tool. At the very least, it'll maybe stop MORE people from showing up. And if the cops said "look, there's this crazy crowd, it's going to get ugly, please help" and the guy won't- well, sorry, that's just being an asshat, and if people do get injured, I don't think an arrest and charge is out of the question. Then the DA has to decide it's worth prosecuting and the court has to decide if it's legit enough to go to trial. And then he gets a trial by jury if he wants it.
Seriously, you haven't posted in 4-5 years, and you jump out to post now? Let me guess, you work in his lab...
Mac laptops don't have "power plugs" attached to their mainboard-- they all use MagSafe adapters which suffer extremely little wear and tear.
Right, except for the magsafe pin springs breaking, the magsafe cord fraying/breaking off the connector because of cheap strain relief (since fixed).
I find it funny that everyone is making a big hooplah between 1-in-4 and 1-in-5 failure rate differences. Either way, folks, those stats SUCK.
For decades New Orleans residents haven't given a damn about massive corruption in their city; it used to be the murder capital of the US. Funny how corruption results in stolen property (and general incompetence.) Funny how that becomes an issue when you have critical infrastructure.
You reap what you sow.