I went to this PLC (Programmable Logic Controller, that's industrial control for you computer geeks). It started OK, with some drone showing off Schneider Electric's new Contactor (the TeSys U, a "smart" contactor with a LCD display, over/under load protection, short-circuit protection,.. whatever). Later on comes this guy, making some really bad jokes and then laughing himself -- the rest of us just laughed at the way he laughed, he was really loud. So, he shows some PLC basics. All was fine...
Next day he said, well, we're finished with the PLC stuff (actually we were finished with some really really bird's eye view of Ladder diagrams), now we'll see some SCADA. So the guy start showing this REALLY CRAPPY 16-bit app, and he showed ONE BY ONE every single widget (buttons, bar graphs, even some motors that changed colors to show when the output was running). And the library was H U G E. THOUSANDS of widgets. And he showed them "oh, look at how many of them there are! Just see how flexible this program is! See! We even have traffic lights! Buttons! Little trucks, big trucks, cars...".
I went outside and came back in 1 hour, and the guy was STILL SHOWING the fucking widgets and how to place and connect them. Needless to say, I didn't stay.
If we could get a way to put our project into the field on a Linux-based platform, my job would consist of reading Slashdot and answering "how-do-I?" emails, not the current daily firefighting.
If by "linux-based platform" you mean Debian, then yes. Other distros aren't even worth the try:)
Come on, it's just $150 for the Spartan-3E starter kit (xilinx.com)
Also, it seems like writing a C program, but it's not. Remember that VHDL doesn't run line-by-line, most of the time is running all the lines at once. It's a description language, not a programming language.
you need to check your facts a little. I've seen FPGAs inside HDTV sets and Cisco routers (actually some Cisco WICs but that's not the point). And considering that FPGAs can work well over 500MHz and give you 600 Billion MACs/s (multiply-and-accumulate, the basic DSP operation), that's far away from your 7400 and 4500 families.
Two words from you: INTELLIGENT DESIGN. You have "Museum of creation", you place "Warning! This hasn't been proved!" stickers on biology books talking about evolution, you have "pastors" sending out their people to kill fags (their word), and the police doesn't do anything (because being gay is a sin). So please dude, SHUT THE FUCK UP!
A rapist gets caught, is convicted, goes to jail and pays for his crime. Jail is your punishment, when you commit a crime, you pay for it with jail time. After that, you're a FREE MAN. Get it? You're FREE. What is free? You have all your constitutional, human, and legal rights, INCLUDING the right to privacy. Free is owing nothing to no one.
Rapists, on the other hand, are not free. Why? They paid their debt to society. Oh, there's a chance that they will rape again? So, why are they "free" then? Shouldn't they be on a mental hospital? I mean, come on, a schizophrenic murderer ends up in a mental hospital, a rapist doesn't. Isn't their "condition" mental?
It's cheaper to put your name on a database and "let your neighbours take care of themselves with any means they consider necessary", than put the rapist on a mental hospital long enough for doctors to see if he will rape again.
Heh, Monsanto sells you 1 bag of seeds, you plant them and get 10 bags of seeds, which you can't plant again (terminator seeds)... and did you know... they expect you to pay them royalties for the 10 bags of seeds?
CAT6a and CAT7 can work up to 10G, provided you use appropriate connectors such as Siemon's TERA, which can also be used for carrying telephone and CATV over the same wire. If you need the full 10G, you use 4 pairs. If you don't need 10G, you can use less pairs and the rest for other things (i.e: your PVR could use CATV, POTS, and still have 5Gbps for data). I know, I know, when 10G is commonplace, maybe we won't have CATV and POTS anyway.
The small price difference (it is small, not to beat an already dead horse) is worth it IMO.
It's not small, not at all. In my country, at least. The cheapest MacBook starts at USD 2000 and the top MacBook pro goes well over USD 5000, while HP's and Compaq's start at USD 700 to USD 2500 (and that USD 2500 HP has even a numeric keypad, and yes, all machines are now Core 2 Duo or something like that, so they're pretty much the same). And I laugh every time I see the USD 18000 XServe RAID 7000GB. But then again, a 5-pack of Apple DVD-Rs costs USD 50 at the same place (MacStation, the local Apple Center). And as they are the only ones who sell Apple here, then there's no competition.
I guess Apple doesn't care that much (i.e.: they don't give a shit) about the latin american market. Maybe we're too colorful for their minimalistic design?
That's a nice little sophistry. It fails to change the fact that, while Macs are more expensive than they would be if Mac clones were still in production, they remain cheaper than they would be if PCs didn't exist.
You know, the world's not black-and-white. It's not about PC-vs-Mac. You're too much of a fanboy to remember, but at the time there was the Amiga, and it was hell of a machine.
So don't go around talking like that, you know? You don't have a crystal ball, you can't speculate like that. If the IBM PC didn't exist, another machine would have taken its place. It might have been the mac. But, you know, Apple is not stupid. They would have licensed clones (yes, I remember UMAX). And clones would have made Apple a "piece of crap" as you apple fanboys refer to our computers. Or, Commodore would be the PC. It could have been anyone. But it happened to be the IBM PC, and for the sole reason that it was IBM.
We need to have a law or something, that declares everything made by apple as THE only way of doing things, and also forbid other companies from making similar products. I mean, why do they even try? Apple is by far the best and when someone else tries, they're actually wasting valuable resources (plastic, electricity, and even silicon!).
So, Microsoft, and everyone else: please, stop trying. Apple has the only music player worth anything. You have no chance.
(If you don't see the sarcasm tags, then you're probably on a Mac)
It's a proxy (Squid, so no CF there) and L2TP/IPSec endpoint. The MySQL system tables got screwed (RADIUS Backend). It was actually on a UPS, but on a cheap one, without a data cable. The outage lasted for over 15 minutes and the UPS shut down because of low battery.
At home I actually have a Solaris system with a 2TB ZFS Array:) protected with a 500VA APC BK500EI. I'm going to rack-mount everything and change the BK500 for a SURT1000XLI or a SUA1000XLI with maybe 2 additional battery packs. Supposed to last 4 or 5 hours. Power usually never goes off for more than a few minutes, but summer is coming and we actually have 42 - 45 degrees (celsius) and home air conditioners really put load on the grid.
My best uptime was about 100 days, but that's because I unplug everything when there's a storm.
The other day there was a power outage on a site I manage. All Windows boxes and one Linux router. Guess which one was corrupted after power returned? Hint: not a single one of the 24 NTFS drives, but the only one with an Ext3 "Journaling File System". It's 2007 and Linux still breaks after a bad shutdown (no, I won't take the UPS crap you're going to post, so STFU. The UPS itself can fail and still linux should be able to recover on its own).
So Linsucks is a joke too, because a power failure breaks it. Oh wait.. linux is Serious Fucking Business! That's why this post will get downmodded "Troll" while anything that makes a wise-ass joke about Windows is "Insightful". For every bug windows has, Linux jackasses and Apple Fanbois will still call it names. Even if Microsoft fixes all its bugs, these people will still call it names, so the mockery won't stop. It's no longer a matter about if it's right or wrong.
Still, the point of the GP went flying over your head, so you may have missed it, so let me clarify: keep the "Windoze" jokes to yourself and your script-kiddy friends and forums, and away from a front page submission.
And finally, if the user hates windows so much, why does he use it anyway?
what about setting up water cooled servers, with water running on a closed circuit, through a stainless steel sink at sea? no corrosion there. The coasts of my country (Argentina) face the antarctic currents of the Atlantic ocean, and keeps it COLD all year long.
maybe this will make the Network Computer dream a reality? Imagine that you have an internet connection that's faster than any drive array you can make. Then add Web 3.0 apps to it. No more formatting, upgrading, antivirus, whatever. Maybe for us geeks that would be too much, but for Common People, that would be practical. Pay-per-use computing. It would be a service just like cable TV.
Also, I'm writing this from the "third world": Argentina. Those advances you talk about take decades to get here, if ever. For example, while microwave ovens are known and cheap, it's rare to see one in a regular kitchen, let alone a dishwasher. Our cars didn't have CAN or OBD or whatever until just 4 or 5 years ago. CRT TVs and monitors still outsell LCDs by far. So I doubt I'll ever live to see most people using a DC fridge or air conditioner: a regular AC compressor will be cheaper than its DC counterpart (considering the circuitry needed to drive it). Air conditioners here still come with switches and mechanical thermostats --remote controlled ones are considered a luxury.
And of course, the mains will always be AC, that will never change.
The world is not all "electronics". There are "electrical" things all over the place, that run much better with AC, and that, I'm pretty sure, use the majority of electricity: motors. HVAC, fans, refrigerators, pumps, all those things work much better in AC than DC, especially when they're huge. Sure, the IGBT (insulated gate bipolar transistor) has helped bring the "brushless DC" motor to a scale larger than your average computer fan, but still today, a squirrel-cage 3-phase motor is the cheapest and most efficient way to make things spin. Followed by the 1-phase AC motor.
Also, it's really easy to make an AC-AC converter (a transformer!) that works with over 99% efficiency in hundreds of kilowatts, than to make a DC-DC converter that big. And, as an AC-DC converter can get 94% efficiency easily, there's no reason for changing things.
There's only one application of large scale DC nowadays and it's the HVDC transmission lines, which reduce power losses due to capacitance, among other things. But that was actually developed in the last few decades (with the help of power semiconductors and vacuum tubes), and they work in too high voltages to be practically deployed in cities.
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I went to this PLC (Programmable Logic Controller, that's industrial control for you computer geeks). It started OK, with some drone showing off Schneider Electric's new Contactor (the TeSys U, a "smart" contactor with a LCD display, over/under load protection, short-circuit protection,.. whatever). Later on comes this guy, making some really bad jokes and then laughing himself -- the rest of us just laughed at the way he laughed, he was really loud. So, he shows some PLC basics. All was fine...
Next day he said, well, we're finished with the PLC stuff (actually we were finished with some really really bird's eye view of Ladder diagrams), now we'll see some SCADA. So the guy start showing this REALLY CRAPPY 16-bit app, and he showed ONE BY ONE every single widget (buttons, bar graphs, even some motors that changed colors to show when the output was running). And the library was H U G E. THOUSANDS of widgets. And he showed them "oh, look at how many of them there are! Just see how flexible this program is! See! We even have traffic lights! Buttons! Little trucks, big trucks, cars...".
I went outside and came back in 1 hour, and the guy was STILL SHOWING the fucking widgets and how to place and connect them. Needless to say, I didn't stay.
Well, you said it in the typical "Macs are only good for design" sort of way. I was just filling in for you.
Come on, it's just $150 for the Spartan-3E starter kit (xilinx.com)
Also, it seems like writing a C program, but it's not. Remember that VHDL doesn't run line-by-line, most of the time is running all the lines at once. It's a description language, not a programming language.
you need to check your facts a little. I've seen FPGAs inside HDTV sets and Cisco routers (actually some Cisco WICs but that's not the point). And considering that FPGAs can work well over 500MHz and give you 600 Billion MACs/s (multiply-and-accumulate, the basic DSP operation), that's far away from your 7400 and 4500 families.
Two words from you: INTELLIGENT DESIGN. You have "Museum of creation", you place "Warning! This hasn't been proved!" stickers on biology books talking about evolution, you have "pastors" sending out their people to kill fags (their word), and the police doesn't do anything (because being gay is a sin). So please dude, SHUT THE FUCK UP!
Then your justice system is broken. God forgives, but your laws don't. So much for such a "Christian" country, eh?
WRONG! Think outside of it a little:
A rapist gets caught, is convicted, goes to jail and pays for his crime. Jail is your punishment, when you commit a crime, you pay for it with jail time. After that, you're a FREE MAN. Get it? You're FREE. What is free? You have all your constitutional, human, and legal rights, INCLUDING the right to privacy. Free is owing nothing to no one.
Rapists, on the other hand, are not free. Why? They paid their debt to society. Oh, there's a chance that they will rape again? So, why are they "free" then? Shouldn't they be on a mental hospital? I mean, come on, a schizophrenic murderer ends up in a mental hospital, a rapist doesn't. Isn't their "condition" mental?
It's cheaper to put your name on a database and "let your neighbours take care of themselves with any means they consider necessary", than put the rapist on a mental hospital long enough for doctors to see if he will rape again.
Think about it.
Heh, Monsanto sells you 1 bag of seeds, you plant them and get 10 bags of seeds, which you can't plant again (terminator seeds)... and did you know... they expect you to pay them royalties for the 10 bags of seeds?
CAT6a and CAT7 can work up to 10G, provided you use appropriate connectors such as Siemon's TERA, which can also be used for carrying telephone and CATV over the same wire. If you need the full 10G, you use 4 pairs. If you don't need 10G, you can use less pairs and the rest for other things (i.e: your PVR could use CATV, POTS, and still have 5Gbps for data). I know, I know, when 10G is commonplace, maybe we won't have CATV and POTS anyway.
I guess Apple doesn't care that much (i.e.: they don't give a shit) about the latin american market. Maybe we're too colorful for their minimalistic design?
You know, the world's not black-and-white. It's not about PC-vs-Mac. You're too much of a fanboy to remember, but at the time there was the Amiga, and it was hell of a machine.
So don't go around talking like that, you know? You don't have a crystal ball, you can't speculate like that. If the IBM PC didn't exist, another machine would have taken its place. It might have been the mac. But, you know, Apple is not stupid. They would have licensed clones (yes, I remember UMAX). And clones would have made Apple a "piece of crap" as you apple fanboys refer to our computers. Or, Commodore would be the PC. It could have been anyone. But it happened to be the IBM PC, and for the sole reason that it was IBM.
So, take your attitude and shove it, pal.
So you're saying, Macs are cheap?
We need to have a law or something, that declares everything made by apple as THE only way of doing things, and also forbid other companies from making similar products. I mean, why do they even try? Apple is by far the best and when someone else tries, they're actually wasting valuable resources (plastic, electricity, and even silicon!).
So, Microsoft, and everyone else: please, stop trying. Apple has the only music player worth anything. You have no chance.
(If you don't see the sarcasm tags, then you're probably on a Mac)
unless you're in a car crash and passed out just after you dialed 112. yeah, way better system.
It's a proxy (Squid, so no CF there) and L2TP/IPSec endpoint. The MySQL system tables got screwed (RADIUS Backend). It was actually on a UPS, but on a cheap one, without a data cable. The outage lasted for over 15 minutes and the UPS shut down because of low battery.
:) protected with a 500VA APC BK500EI. I'm going to rack-mount everything and change the BK500 for a SURT1000XLI or a SUA1000XLI with maybe 2 additional battery packs. Supposed to last 4 or 5 hours. Power usually never goes off for more than a few minutes, but summer is coming and we actually have 42 - 45 degrees (celsius) and home air conditioners really put load on the grid.
At home I actually have a Solaris system with a 2TB ZFS Array
My best uptime was about 100 days, but that's because I unplug everything when there's a storm.
The other day there was a power outage on a site I manage. All Windows boxes and one Linux router. Guess which one was corrupted after power returned? Hint: not a single one of the 24 NTFS drives, but the only one with an Ext3 "Journaling File System". It's 2007 and Linux still breaks after a bad shutdown (no, I won't take the UPS crap you're going to post, so STFU. The UPS itself can fail and still linux should be able to recover on its own).
So Linsucks is a joke too, because a power failure breaks it. Oh wait.. linux is Serious Fucking Business! That's why this post will get downmodded "Troll" while anything that makes a wise-ass joke about Windows is "Insightful". For every bug windows has, Linux jackasses and Apple Fanbois will still call it names. Even if Microsoft fixes all its bugs, these people will still call it names, so the mockery won't stop. It's no longer a matter about if it's right or wrong.
Still, the point of the GP went flying over your head, so you may have missed it, so let me clarify: keep the "Windoze" jokes to yourself and your script-kiddy friends and forums, and away from a front page submission.
And finally, if the user hates windows so much, why does he use it anyway?
yes. I'd like to see your hands looked after twisting sisal for so many hours. Oh, the stupid things they made us do at school with that thing...
what about setting up water cooled servers, with water running on a closed circuit, through a stainless steel sink at sea? no corrosion there. The coasts of my country (Argentina) face the antarctic currents of the Atlantic ocean, and keeps it COLD all year long.
maybe this will make the Network Computer dream a reality? Imagine that you have an internet connection that's faster than any drive array you can make. Then add Web 3.0 apps to it. No more formatting, upgrading, antivirus, whatever. Maybe for us geeks that would be too much, but for Common People, that would be practical. Pay-per-use computing. It would be a service just like cable TV.
Interesting. Could you elaborate?
Also, I'm writing this from the "third world": Argentina. Those advances you talk about take decades to get here, if ever. For example, while microwave ovens are known and cheap, it's rare to see one in a regular kitchen, let alone a dishwasher. Our cars didn't have CAN or OBD or whatever until just 4 or 5 years ago. CRT TVs and monitors still outsell LCDs by far. So I doubt I'll ever live to see most people using a DC fridge or air conditioner: a regular AC compressor will be cheaper than its DC counterpart (considering the circuitry needed to drive it). Air conditioners here still come with switches and mechanical thermostats --remote controlled ones are considered a luxury.
And of course, the mains will always be AC, that will never change.
The world is not all "electronics". There are "electrical" things all over the place, that run much better with AC, and that, I'm pretty sure, use the majority of electricity: motors. HVAC, fans, refrigerators, pumps, all those things work much better in AC than DC, especially when they're huge. Sure, the IGBT (insulated gate bipolar transistor) has helped bring the "brushless DC" motor to a scale larger than your average computer fan, but still today, a squirrel-cage 3-phase motor is the cheapest and most efficient way to make things spin. Followed by the 1-phase AC motor.
Also, it's really easy to make an AC-AC converter (a transformer!) that works with over 99% efficiency in hundreds of kilowatts, than to make a DC-DC converter that big. And, as an AC-DC converter can get 94% efficiency easily, there's no reason for changing things.
There's only one application of large scale DC nowadays and it's the HVDC transmission lines, which reduce power losses due to capacitance, among other things. But that was actually developed in the last few decades (with the help of power semiconductors and vacuum tubes), and they work in too high voltages to be practically deployed in cities.