Wrong, or half right, which is sometimes worse than just wrong. The main reason for using SCSI over IDE technology is simultaneous command queueing. Ever wonder why a SCSI drive makes a machine, server or workstation feel so much faster?
It's because even workstations do simultaneous read requests. SCSI has this great feature that basically when you request data from 3 different sections of the drive, it reprioritizes on the fly, picking up everything you requested along the way to the furthest request. That way, fewer strokes get you more data. It's probably a good part of the reason the MTBF is so much better.
An IDE drive deals with it's queue in a FIFO manner. Each request gets processed sequentially, so an SATA Raid is going to be basically useless in terms of performance, and host utilization is only the tip of the iceberg.
There's at least one good reason real geeks use SCSI. It's also a big part of why IDE-based Mac's 'feel' so much slower.
Diebold sells these things in huge volume, for huge amounts of money. How complicated can the hardware be? How complicated can the software be? From a purely technical perspective, none of it is complicated. Why is it then, there have been so many problems with these machines? Why is it voting doesn't have a definable, immutable audit trail like so many accounting systems do?
Answer: Because the big $$$ 'crats need to be able to steal the elections, it's important for it to stay non-auditable, mutable, and inaccurate.
Clearly, the application isn't that difficult from a hardware or software perspective.
One extra thought to add to the various comments that only came to me after a few days of seeing what a couple of micro businesses really find overwhelmingly useful about MS office:
It's all about Outlook - the one piece OO
doesn't have. The one thing that keeps OO from
being the ultimate replacement for MSO.
I myself don't use Outlook for anything, but even I, who largely dislikes MS and most of their software cannot help to appreciate why small/micro business types really appreciate the slickness of the SMTP scheduling, built in contact manager, and email interface all rolled up into a relatively intuitive package.
If OO cloned it, and made it all from scratch, opensource style, and similiar enough for non-computer people to use, load up existing outlook profiles, slap in a palm conduit, and
disable by default any potentially abusive scripting, it'd be the perfect thing.
When more end users are asked why they like MSO
so much, the majority I've heard from say Outlook!
IT people tend to be fairly independant minded, management can't manage them unless their willing.
Easy to outsource, and then they sales/marketing folks don't get their feelings hurt by 'the computer guy'. Good IT people don't reflect the saturday night live skit, but still suffer fools with agony.
Both upper management and sales/marketing really like it when they get called 'sir' every sentence like the current Dell Indian phone weenies do.
Even better yet, almost every other problem resolution is 'I'm sorry sir, that didn't work, you must put in your system restore CD's and reload the operating system!"
Sales/marketing/management types believe that the OS needs to be reloaded every time an application unexpectedly quits..
That's too bad, OS X users might actually call for application support. Most FreeBSD users won't give a crap whether or not there's a phone number to call or not. The part that's got me all excited is the idea of home and tiny businesses being willing to (not) buy it, and use Linux on the desktop without being scared.
I thought the original line was'Nobody gets fired for buying IBM';)
Clearly OO is a great piece of work, Non-profit and other organizations without any budget to speak of (very small companies) will have a huge impetus to consider OO and Shrike for the defacto desktop standard.
Especially companies with no interest in being vulnerable to the myriad of afflictions M$-based machines have, virii, trojans, major OS flaws.
They must also have no entreched application base that require windows, like some of the worse accounting packages. Love to see a port of Quickbooks and Peachtree to Linux at least, to help the masses be willing to think about it.
Enterprises fortunately aren't tied to these stupid accounting packages, and are already using distributed applications for the important stuff.
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It's because even workstations do simultaneous read requests. SCSI has this great feature that basically when you request data from 3 different sections of the drive, it reprioritizes on the fly, picking up everything you requested along the way to the furthest request. That way, fewer strokes get you more data. It's probably a good part of the reason the MTBF is so much better.
An IDE drive deals with it's queue in a FIFO manner. Each request gets processed sequentially, so an SATA Raid is going to be basically useless in terms of performance, and host utilization is only the tip of the iceberg.
There's at least one good reason real geeks use SCSI. It's also a big part of why IDE-based Mac's 'feel' so much slower.
SCSI rules.
Neeeeeeext!
Diebold sells these things in huge volume, for huge amounts of money. How complicated can the hardware be? How complicated can the software be? From a purely technical perspective, none of it is complicated. Why is it then, there have been so many problems with these machines? Why is it voting doesn't have a definable, immutable audit trail like so many accounting systems do? Answer: Because the big $$$ 'crats need to be able to steal the elections, it's important for it to stay non-auditable, mutable, and inaccurate. Clearly, the application isn't that difficult from a hardware or software perspective.
It's all about Outlook - the one piece OO doesn't have. The one thing that keeps OO from being the ultimate replacement for MSO.
I myself don't use Outlook for anything, but even I, who largely dislikes MS and most of their software cannot help to appreciate why small/micro business types really appreciate the slickness of the SMTP scheduling, built in contact manager, and email interface all rolled up into a relatively intuitive package.
If OO cloned it, and made it all from scratch, opensource style, and similiar enough for non-computer people to use, load up existing outlook profiles, slap in a palm conduit, and disable by default any potentially abusive scripting, it'd be the perfect thing.
When more end users are asked why they like MSO so much, the majority I've heard from say Outlook!
Easy to outsource, and then they sales/marketing folks don't get their feelings hurt by 'the computer guy'. Good IT people don't reflect the saturday night live skit, but still suffer fools with agony.
Both upper management and sales/marketing really like it when they get called 'sir' every sentence like the current Dell Indian phone weenies do.
Even better yet, almost every other problem resolution is 'I'm sorry sir, that didn't work, you must put in your system restore CD's and reload the operating system!"
Sales/marketing/management types believe that the OS needs to be reloaded every time an application unexpectedly quits..
That's too bad, OS X users might actually call for application support. Most FreeBSD users won't give a crap whether or not there's a phone number to call or not. The part that's got me all excited is the idea of home and tiny businesses being willing to (not) buy it, and use Linux on the desktop without being scared.
I thought the original line was'Nobody gets fired for buying IBM' ;)
Clearly OO is a great piece of work, Non-profit and other organizations without any budget to speak of (very small companies) will have a huge impetus to consider OO and Shrike for the defacto desktop standard.
Especially companies with no interest in being vulnerable to the myriad of afflictions M$-based machines have, virii, trojans, major OS flaws.
They must also have no entreched application base that require windows, like some of the worse accounting packages. Love to see a port of Quickbooks and Peachtree to Linux at least, to help the masses be willing to think about it.
Enterprises fortunately aren't tied to these stupid accounting packages, and are already using distributed applications for the important stuff.