Really, in these "highly distributed" systems, the price of redundancy is much lower than custom hardware.
A while ago I had to put together this server: http://i.imgur.com/iII52.jpg That's an IBM x3450 or 3650, I don't remember. The specs are pretty much "meh". It's a 20kg box with a HUGE motherboard in an oversized case, with 3 120mm fans (with the ability to add 3 more in "stand by"). It has a socketed CPU, and to the left of it you can see a black cap - that's where the secondary CPU plugs in a special daughterboard (!) The rest is PCI Express, RAM ("only" 8 slots), 5 gigabit eth interfaces, 2 power supplies, etc.
When putting it together I figured: this server is not about raw performance. It's about reliability. It's the "good ol" IBM kind, the kind you'll stick in a closet and it will keep on working 20 years from now, like those 486 BSD mailservers still on the wild. This is the complete opposite to facebook: the eternal search of high performance, low cost, where power costs alone justify replacement of thousands of servers every couple of years.
The price? "Modest" configuration on top of the base system (16GB RAM, 2 300G SAS drives and 1 extra dual gigabit ethernet interface), nearly $4000 (this is Argentina price which is a bit higher). For $4K you could build at least 5 similar systems that won't give you the simplicity and reliability of this box, but will surely outperform it.
When you scale this to the thousands, and have own programmers developing "grid" architectures for it, the savings of "off the shelf" hardware become much more evident. Google doesn't use off the shelf motherboards anymore. But they use their own system, which replaces the PSU with a single 12V channel and an onboard lead-acid battery. The rest is pretty much a standard ATX board.
who gives a fuck? seriously. it's a stupid standard. why would I want to swap the CPU for another architecture? Why would I want ARM in a high performance server? Why would I want "easy" replacement of a CPU for another kind, when the rest of the motherboard isn't able to interface with it?
Why should I care for a "standard" connection where pins will be outdated 2 years from now? Why are "high performance, low cost" servers socketed, instead of processors soldered to a motherboard? What dies is the motherboard, not the CPU. When the motherboard dies, the CPU is so outdated it doesn't even make sense to keep it. Why are we talking about socketed CPUs when a soldered-on will do just fine?
Why do we keep insisting in this new, useless, "proprietary open" standard that NO ONE will use (BTX anyone? wasn't it supposed to be the next great thing and solve everything? Why not focus, say, in a "heatsink landing" standard so i can fit ANY motherboard in a case (1U rackmount cases where the lid almost touches the processor) and have it touch the heatsink. Even make it easier to watercool if you want.
Still trying to figure out what's the deal with all this. Still trying to figure out why racks are limited to 42U or so, instead of less dense but "taller" racks (pretty sure a custom-made datacenter like google's or facebook's could get away with it. WAIT. Google already does!)
Really, let facebook fuck off and die already. It'll probably be dead by the time this "standard" hits the streets.
As a side note, in my country (Argentina), this is why we have what's called "Constitutional Warranties" (or "rights"). The reasoning behind these is that the state, as you mentioned, has infinite resources to prosecute an individual, while he, of course, doesn't. This puts him in a situation of inequality against the law. Constitutional rights are "habeas corpus" in particular, and many others. It's my understanding that some of these rights are currently suppressed in the US right now (especially when you're flagged as a "terrorist").
I'm sure the US has equivalent provisions in their law (you have the right to an attorney, if you cannot afford one, the court will assign one for you).
Sadly, constitutional warranties are exploited here and it's common for lawyers and judges to "bend" the meaning of those rights and have rapists and murderers walk free while they await trial, and years of their punishment are subtracted from these. Then, for "good behavior" they get early release so basically, if you have a good lawyer-judge combination and a long trial, you could even skip prison completely.
We don't have juries here, nor sentences are dictated by single judges. "Criminal" has to be unanimous by 3 judges. (Criminal=penal, civil is the same word).
As an extra curiosity: our supreme court has ruled that aggravation of charges by re-offense (recidivism) is unconstitutional, because it goes against the idea that the jail system is for the "rehabilitation" and later " social reinsertion" of criminals. The court basically (and dangerously) ruled that if a criminal commits the same offense, it was the system's fault for not rehabilitating him properly. Which leads to a question: why is a life sentence legal, then?
It sounds all nice but then you hear the "pirates" discussing on forums "I don't like to pay for stuff, i never will, and i will pirate for as long as i can". Truth is: people like free stuff. There will ALWAYS be a justification to not to pay for something.
hehe well there were some funny emoticons actually. i had one, shortcut 1313 and it was a face with eyebrows going up and down 1414 was a more dirty look 1515 was a dirty wink and a kiss. those were hilarious. and kids actually used those numbers in real life. like saying "whoaaaa thirteen thirteen!!!"
That either sucked or was good. I didn't mind colorful nickmanes (you had to install "Plus" to see them properly), but it really annoyed me that some people added leading spaces to their nicknames. Never got why they did that.
I hated people who added the retard bat emoticon to their nicks so it kept flapping its wings. That one was annoying as hell.
But then again, there should be some sort of middle ground. Facebook is dead boring, it insists so much in people having all the same looks. No color, no customizations of some sort. Nothing. Myspace proved that it's a really bad idea (never used it myself but i do remember seeing screenshots of how awful it looked when girls added "glitter" to it). But FB is just boring and horrible. I want to use just my name (not first name last name), I don't care about the blue color scheme but some people do and I wouldn't mind if you could change that.
FB is really as totalitarian and communist as it can get (except it's blue and not red).
While this is mostly irrelevant for north american users, MSN messenger, later Windows Live Messenger, was a big part of spanish-speaking internet users lives. Oh, the memories of using it to pick up girls;) back then when you could add anyone and they wouldn't freak out because "they don't know you", like people do in facebook. Late night chats with groups of people, those annnoying emoticons, pink fonts, useless "winks"... it's all in the past now. Oh yes, and girls showing their boobs on cam as well. Friendships, fights, contact blocks...
To be fair, Facebook chat killed Messenger. It's convenient, simple to use and it works well in small screens like netbook machines.
Microsoft screwed up in their last incarnation of messenger. Demanding real names instead of a nickname, moving the legendary hotmail to "outlook", and making that huge resource hog that messenger 2011 was, with integration to "social" bullshit. So heavy that people couldn't even use their machines if messenger was running.
To date there's no match for messenger's "share photos", which let you drag and drop pictures to the chat window and have them automatically resized and compressed to something more decent, and shown "big" in the chat window. With the option, of course, to download full size and keep (I think yahoo messenger has that but it's irrelevant in spanish-speaking land). This isn't an option on facebook and not even drag-and-drop to send a photo works there (MSN was great: Print-Screen, Ctrl-V to instantly send a screen capture).
I did support for small ISPs over the past decade and it was THE biggest problem if messenger didn't work. People didn't mind that their web browsing didn't work as long as messenger worked.
Skype is in no way a replacement for MSN. Skype was designed to make calls, and that's what it insists in doing. Skype chat is horrible. It doesn't seem to actually "close" if you close it (you have to log out, and then it won't automatically log back in in next boot). And no photo share for skype.
I, for one, will be missing "MSN" as people called it here. Most people won't since they have moved to FB chat long ago.
I use their cameras. The cameras are OK (not awesome), but the management software just plain SUCKS. You can't schedule it to auto-delete old recordings! So you can't have a "set it and forget it" thing.
But, their linux support is fantastic. I can't believe "apt-get install airvision airvision-nvr" JUST WORKED. Impressive.
Oh, and their 900Mhz APs.. man, that is awesome. I have two locations 1 km apart with a couple 8-10 stories tall buildings right in the path, and I get a steady signal. At only 6mbit, it sucks, but that's impossible to do in other bands. And for less than $100 each!
Better analogy: i put a shotgun and wire it to the door. If someone opens the door the shotgun is programmed to shot him in the face. Guess who's liable for that.
Even easier analogy: electric fence. There have been cases where a thief has sucesfully sued a home owner for getting shocked with one of those.
Right, but these rules have to be applied uniformly. You can't change the laws based on the people involved. You can say, "no loud noise after 8PM". You can't say, "no anti-government protests after 8PM". You can say "no parking this side of street". You can't say "no parking for homosexuals this side of street".
Oh, we're playing nitpicking? I'll play too. no anti-government protests after 8PM. no parking for homosexuals this side of street.
He's saying that the parents of murdered children should "just ignore" the WBC idiots at the kids funeral... that is, in my opinion, a severe lack of empathy. I read in another comment that you are a father. I'm pretty sure you wouldn't be able to "just ignore" a bunch of idiots like the WBC should a thing like that happen to you.
I... Oh. My. God... is this? Is this really? Oh boy, it is!
An emotional response from a slashdot reader! And it's empathic to actually PEOPLE and not just an OS war!
My hats off to you sir. I wasn't expecting to find people with blood running through their veins in this hole of sociopaths. I see the word "autistic" strikes a nerve in you, but, since I have free speech, I'll copypasta a quote from wikipedia, which will try to explain my choice of words:
The empathizing–systemizing theory postulates that autistic individuals can systemize—that is, they can develop internal rules of operation to handle events inside the brain—but are less effective at empathizing by handling events generated by other agents.
in other words, like most comments in this thread, autists are able to "think with a cold head" even in extremely emotional situations like these. Focus on the conversation subject and forget the emotional surroundings.
People who aren't able to think, debate, question and are just goody taxpayers and law-abiders, like yourself, don't belong in our society.
You live in a fucking country founded by revolutionaries who did something illegal (raise against the crown) and founded their own country. You are a shame to your own country.
The idiots here are programmer types. In their little world, law is a set of rules. "Punishment" comes from a predetermine set of rules ("the law") and the judge is just an interface between the law and real life.
But the problem is, real life is FAR more complicated. And judges, *gasp*, judge! They don't just "rule". They don't just "serve a veredict". Judges take many factors into consideration, and yes, sometimes, factors OUTSIDE THE SCOPE OF LAW. Judges apply that little thing called "common sense" all the time. Not just "the law".
You are damn right, these Westboro nuts will certainly harm the victims' families - but the alternative is letting other people decide what is and isn't acceptable speech.
We leave lawmakers to decide what is and isn't acceptable behavior all the time.
If everything was regulated like slashdotters think "speech" is, then we would be walking around naked, raping children and killing women just because that would be an excercise of freedom.
"oh but it's different, because killing is one thing and free speech is another"
if you blackmail a person and he commits suicide, you are going to jail. (by slashdot's definition of free speech, that should be unconstitutional)
I hope your child gets murdered and WBC goes and picket his funeral.
Since you are a mature, cold-headed person you can just ignore me and WBC. That doesn't change the fact that your child is dead and you will never, ever forget that, in the most tragic moment of your life, you were glad that your constitutional liberties were defended and people saying GOD HATES FAGS were waving their flags and yelling at you that your child's death is GOD'S JUSTICE and it's punishment for YOUR mistakes.
Fucking autistic slashdotters.
(For the record: I don't hope your child gets murdered).
Slashdot Mirror
Who needs hotswap when you have a GRID!
Really, in these "highly distributed" systems, the price of redundancy is much lower than custom hardware.
A while ago I had to put together this server: http://i.imgur.com/iII52.jpg
That's an IBM x3450 or 3650, I don't remember. The specs are pretty much "meh". It's a 20kg box with a HUGE motherboard in an oversized case, with 3 120mm fans (with the ability to add 3 more in "stand by"). It has a socketed CPU, and to the left of it you can see a black cap - that's where the secondary CPU plugs in a special daughterboard (!) The rest is PCI Express, RAM ("only" 8 slots), 5 gigabit eth interfaces, 2 power supplies, etc.
When putting it together I figured: this server is not about raw performance. It's about reliability. It's the "good ol" IBM kind, the kind you'll stick in a closet and it will keep on working 20 years from now, like those 486 BSD mailservers still on the wild. This is the complete opposite to facebook: the eternal search of high performance, low cost, where power costs alone justify replacement of thousands of servers every couple of years.
The price? "Modest" configuration on top of the base system (16GB RAM, 2 300G SAS drives and 1 extra dual gigabit ethernet interface), nearly $4000 (this is Argentina price which is a bit higher). For $4K you could build at least 5 similar systems that won't give you the simplicity and reliability of this box, but will surely outperform it.
When you scale this to the thousands, and have own programmers developing "grid" architectures for it, the savings of "off the shelf" hardware become much more evident. Google doesn't use off the shelf motherboards anymore. But they use their own system, which replaces the PSU with a single 12V channel and an onboard lead-acid battery. The rest is pretty much a standard ATX board.
who gives a fuck?
seriously. it's a stupid standard. why would I want to swap the CPU for another architecture? Why would I want ARM in a high performance server? Why would I want "easy" replacement of a CPU for another kind, when the rest of the motherboard isn't able to interface with it?
Why should I care for a "standard" connection where pins will be outdated 2 years from now?
Why are "high performance, low cost" servers socketed, instead of processors soldered to a motherboard? What dies is the motherboard, not the CPU. When the motherboard dies, the CPU is so outdated it doesn't even make sense to keep it. Why are we talking about socketed CPUs when a soldered-on will do just fine?
Why do we keep insisting in this new, useless, "proprietary open" standard that NO ONE will use (BTX anyone? wasn't it supposed to be the next great thing and solve everything? Why not focus, say, in a "heatsink landing" standard so i can fit ANY motherboard in a case (1U rackmount cases where the lid almost touches the processor) and have it touch the heatsink. Even make it easier to watercool if you want.
Still trying to figure out what's the deal with all this. Still trying to figure out why racks are limited to 42U or so, instead of less dense but "taller" racks (pretty sure a custom-made datacenter like google's or facebook's could get away with it. WAIT. Google already does!)
Really, let facebook fuck off and die already. It'll probably be dead by the time this "standard" hits the streets.
And that's The Truth.
As a side note, in my country (Argentina), this is why we have what's called "Constitutional Warranties" (or "rights"). The reasoning behind these is that the state, as you mentioned, has infinite resources to prosecute an individual, while he, of course, doesn't. This puts him in a situation of inequality against the law. Constitutional rights are "habeas corpus" in particular, and many others. It's my understanding that some of these rights are currently suppressed in the US right now (especially when you're flagged as a "terrorist").
I'm sure the US has equivalent provisions in their law (you have the right to an attorney, if you cannot afford one, the court will assign one for you).
Sadly, constitutional warranties are exploited here and it's common for lawyers and judges to "bend" the meaning of those rights and have rapists and murderers walk free while they await trial, and years of their punishment are subtracted from these. Then, for "good behavior" they get early release so basically, if you have a good lawyer-judge combination and a long trial, you could even skip prison completely.
We don't have juries here, nor sentences are dictated by single judges. "Criminal" has to be unanimous by 3 judges. (Criminal=penal, civil is the same word).
As an extra curiosity: our supreme court has ruled that aggravation of charges by re-offense (recidivism) is unconstitutional, because it goes against the idea that the jail system is for the "rehabilitation" and later " social reinsertion" of criminals. The court basically (and dangerously) ruled that if a criminal commits the same offense, it was the system's fault for not rehabilitating him properly. Which leads to a question: why is a life sentence legal, then?
It sounds all nice but then you hear the "pirates" discussing on forums "I don't like to pay for stuff, i never will, and i will pirate for as long as i can".
Truth is: people like free stuff. There will ALWAYS be a justification to not to pay for something.
Mine? Netflix doesn't have the stuff I want.
No seas gato nadie usa gtalk. sabes quien usa gtalk? los ñoños que usan google+ jaja
hehe well there were some funny emoticons actually. i had one, shortcut 1313 and it was a face with eyebrows going up and down
1414 was a more dirty look
1515 was a dirty wink and a kiss. those were hilarious. and kids actually used those numbers in real life. like saying "whoaaaa thirteen thirteen!!!"
http://s600.beta.photobucket.com/user/moon20_album/media/emoticons/1313.gif.html (weirdly accelerated, it should be slower)
"123:" was a funny "hmmm..." look. people still type 123: and 1313 in facebook chat.
That either sucked or was good. I didn't mind colorful nickmanes (you had to install "Plus" to see them properly), but it really annoyed me that some people added leading spaces to their nicknames. Never got why they did that.
I hated people who added the retard bat emoticon to their nicks so it kept flapping its wings. That one was annoying as hell.
But then again, there should be some sort of middle ground. Facebook is dead boring, it insists so much in people having all the same looks. No color, no customizations of some sort. Nothing. Myspace proved that it's a really bad idea (never used it myself but i do remember seeing screenshots of how awful it looked when girls added "glitter" to it). But FB is just boring and horrible. I want to use just my name (not first name last name), I don't care about the blue color scheme but some people do and I wouldn't mind if you could change that.
FB is really as totalitarian and communist as it can get (except it's blue and not red).
msn actually let you set a custom nickname in a contact-per-contact basis. or you could set it up to display only mail addresses.
i had a friend, a guy in his 20s, who kept changing his nickname to "i miss you so much" or other faggotries. I just set a custom name for him.
While this is mostly irrelevant for north american users, MSN messenger, later Windows Live Messenger, was a big part of spanish-speaking internet users lives. Oh, the memories of using it to pick up girls ;) back then when you could add anyone and they wouldn't freak out because "they don't know you", like people do in facebook. Late night chats with groups of people, those annnoying emoticons, pink fonts, useless "winks"... it's all in the past now. Oh yes, and girls showing their boobs on cam as well. Friendships, fights, contact blocks...
To be fair, Facebook chat killed Messenger. It's convenient, simple to use and it works well in small screens like netbook machines.
Microsoft screwed up in their last incarnation of messenger. Demanding real names instead of a nickname, moving the legendary hotmail to "outlook", and making that huge resource hog that messenger 2011 was, with integration to "social" bullshit. So heavy that people couldn't even use their machines if messenger was running.
To date there's no match for messenger's "share photos", which let you drag and drop pictures to the chat window and have them automatically resized and compressed to something more decent, and shown "big" in the chat window. With the option, of course, to download full size and keep (I think yahoo messenger has that but it's irrelevant in spanish-speaking land). This isn't an option on facebook and not even drag-and-drop to send a photo works there (MSN was great: Print-Screen, Ctrl-V to instantly send a screen capture).
I did support for small ISPs over the past decade and it was THE biggest problem if messenger didn't work. People didn't mind that their web browsing didn't work as long as messenger worked.
Skype is in no way a replacement for MSN. Skype was designed to make calls, and that's what it insists in doing. Skype chat is horrible. It doesn't seem to actually "close" if you close it (you have to log out, and then it won't automatically log back in in next boot). And no photo share for skype.
I, for one, will be missing "MSN" as people called it here. Most people won't since they have moved to FB chat long ago.
How do you go to school when you have malaria?
That is, use your brain, think before you speak, etc.
their software is actually zoneminder with a pretty skin
I use their cameras. The cameras are OK (not awesome), but the management software just plain SUCKS. You can't schedule it to auto-delete old recordings! So you can't have a "set it and forget it" thing.
But, their linux support is fantastic. I can't believe "apt-get install airvision airvision-nvr" JUST WORKED. Impressive.
Oh, and their 900Mhz APs.. man, that is awesome. I have two locations 1 km apart with a couple 8-10 stories tall buildings right in the path, and I get a steady signal. At only 6mbit, it sucks, but that's impossible to do in other bands. And for less than $100 each!
I wouldn't hire anyone using the word "Windoze".
You know, professionalism, yadda yadda.
maybe that's cause if you drop the price too much, you get a bunch of cheapskates who aren't going to get any popcorn anyway.
Better analogy: i put a shotgun and wire it to the door. If someone opens the door the shotgun is programmed to shot him in the face. Guess who's liable for that.
Even easier analogy: electric fence. There have been cases where a thief has sucesfully sued a home owner for getting shocked with one of those.
Oh, we're playing nitpicking? I'll play too.
no anti-government protests after 8PM.
no parking for homosexuals this side of street.
See? I can.
He's saying that the parents of murdered children should "just ignore" the WBC idiots at the kids funeral... that is, in my opinion, a severe lack of empathy. I read in another comment that you are a father. I'm pretty sure you wouldn't be able to "just ignore" a bunch of idiots like the WBC should a thing like that happen to you.
I... Oh. My. God... is this? Is this really? Oh boy, it is!
An emotional response from a slashdot reader!
And it's empathic to actually PEOPLE and not just an OS war!
My hats off to you sir. I wasn't expecting to find people with blood running through their veins in this hole of sociopaths. I see the word "autistic" strikes a nerve in you, but, since I have free speech, I'll copypasta a quote from wikipedia, which will try to explain my choice of words:
in other words, like most comments in this thread, autists are able to "think with a cold head" even in extremely emotional situations like these. Focus on the conversation subject and forget the emotional surroundings.
Lack of empathy is common in many forms of autism.
People who aren't able to think, debate, question and are just goody taxpayers and law-abiders, like yourself, don't belong in our society.
You live in a fucking country founded by revolutionaries who did something illegal (raise against the crown) and founded their own country. You are a shame to your own country.
Thank you.
The idiots here are programmer types. In their little world, law is a set of rules. "Punishment" comes from a predetermine set of rules ("the law") and the judge is just an interface between the law and real life.
But the problem is, real life is FAR more complicated. And judges, *gasp*, judge! They don't just "rule". They don't just "serve a veredict". Judges take many factors into consideration, and yes, sometimes, factors OUTSIDE THE SCOPE OF LAW. Judges apply that little thing called "common sense" all the time. Not just "the law".
We leave lawmakers to decide what is and isn't acceptable behavior all the time.
If everything was regulated like slashdotters think "speech" is, then we would be walking around naked, raping children and killing women just because that would be an excercise of freedom.
"oh but it's different, because killing is one thing and free speech is another"
if you blackmail a person and he commits suicide, you are going to jail. (by slashdot's definition of free speech, that should be unconstitutional)
I hope your child gets murdered and WBC goes and picket his funeral.
Since you are a mature, cold-headed person you can just ignore me and WBC. That doesn't change the fact that your child is dead and you will never, ever forget that, in the most tragic moment of your life, you were glad that your constitutional liberties were defended and people saying GOD HATES FAGS were waving their flags and yelling at you that your child's death is GOD'S JUSTICE and it's punishment for YOUR mistakes.
Fucking autistic slashdotters.
(For the record: I don't hope your child gets murdered).
Why does it always come down to the "it's free, deal with it" attitude? As if paid services never get shut down...