I see that too often unfortunately. Mostly early in projects when they are trying to find places to save money... Usually non-technical people asking questions about why the redundancy is so expensive.
What it usually boils down to for us when it comes to 'selling' proper redundancy is reducing downtime due to maintenance.
If you have a properly redundant power system you can take down the A side for maintenance or upgrades while B is up etc.
On a side note.... I take perverse pleasure in doing redundancy and blackout tests:p There is something oddly satisifying about flipping a big red switch and watch -nothing- happen but a red line on a screen and a little buzzer going nuts *cackles*
When you're 16 working at a LAN party you get somewhat motivated when an 18 year old girl wearing duct-tape clothing (skimpy at that:p) wields such a tool:p
Yep, it is one of the specific steps when we define requirements for server racks. Sadly not all the customers pay attention and then yell for us to come fix the mess when they find out years later:p
This is especially fun if the trip to the "datacenter" involves a helicopter ride to the oil rig where it is located:p
Re:Network meltdown due to hub cross-connects
on
Stupid Data Center Tricks
·
· Score: 4, Informative
Oh yes, it works quite well for sabotaging a network.
It used to be a constant issue at LAN parties where "pranksters" would do it before going to sleep... Usually we never found them but when we did we flogged them with cat5 cables stripped of insulation:p
I've used such a device. It is in use at Bergen Science Center and it was insanely easy to configure and use... The printer has 3 buttons on it and you just push one to get a code printed. The software lets you decide on the time to link to each button. Works wonderfully.
Yeah.... Those ebil hobbitses and their 4.99-9.99 euro games.... we hates them we does *grhoooolllum grhoooollum*
So damn easy to buy... and so cheap it "doesnt really matter".... Then you notice that you have to scroll your game list... even in 1080 resolution.... go back and look at the account history in your e-bank and realize you've spent more money on games in the past year than ever before.....
The problem isnt really DRM, it is badly implemented DRM that goes bonkers on a legal copy. That is my more realistic view at least...
My 'floating on the skies of digital love' type view is that DRM is a stupid idea and just hurts everyone. Drop it already.. Sadly not very realistic at this point:(
To give a real world example of the issue of DRM....
I love the Command and Conquer games. To such a degree that when the "First Decade" collectors box came out I wanted to get it even though I have all the games sitting -somewhere-. Couldnt find discs etc as I've moved several times since I bought the games... mess...
I downloaded the pirated version just to have a convenient archive of isos.
A few months later I found that my local gaming store had dropped the price by almost 30% for the pack. I didnt hesitate. I bought it and have it sitting in my collection now.....
Onwards to the issue that arrose:
I deleted the pirated versions and wanted to install completely clean versions. And I did.......
What happened? "Please insert the Red Alert 2 play disc" or somesuch.... It would not detect the disc regardless of what I did. I tried a multitude of things but ended up giving up and re-installing the cracks.
THAT is why I hate DRM. And THAT is why I will continue to wait for a crack to come out before I buy a game (steam games being an exception as they just -work-). I will not be left holding the bag on a shitty DRM scheme that breaks due to unrelated software installed on my machine. If I pay the 90 bucks for a game (which they cost here..) then I bloody well expect the fuckers to work when installed...
Meh... "it is just an excuuuuuse" and "people are cheap" are also the default comebacks used for the past 10 years. Come up with something new will you;)
I used to pirate every game I had installed. Everything that came out I downloaded and tested... Never bought anything.
Why? I couldnt fecking afford a game. I usually got a game for christmas and a game for my birthday (which happen within a month of each other..)
Now that I -do- have money I buy games. But I also 'pirate' games. Why? Because the damn DRM doesnt work. I have a stack of original games sitting in their original shrink wrap on a shelf due to it. I have all sorts of software installed on my machine. Debuggers and the likes. The DRM doesnt like that. It goes batshit insane and breaks on purpose.
Steam works though, never had a issue with it. Hell, I just moved the install folder over to my new win7x64 machine a while back and had to do a quick update but 15 min later everything just worked... WITH all the 'hacker' software installed.
Yeah, there is a high level of piracy but if you look at my above comment make one very important notice. The games I have bought but are sitting on a shelf wont be seen by anyone... the pirated installation on my machine will though. And if the app "phones home" it will be counted as a pirated version even though I have paid for the bugger.
I'm not saying this is the full picture, but it is part of it and shouldnt be ignored.
Unfortunately improving it costs money. Money which wont be spent unless something catastrophic happens...
I do like the way it is done here in Norway. A state owned and controlled company owns the main high voltage transmission lines and the various utilities, power plants etc lease/rent capacity.
Amusingly it is a heck of a lot easier to get spending approved through government budgets than to improve something deemed "good enough" by profit-hungry privae parties;)
Kollsnes Gas Processing plant in the western Norway treats and compresses 150 million s3m of gas for the european market per 24/hours.
They have 6 compressors in use... 5 are 40MW, one is at 50MW..
A few years ago they had an operator mixup and 4 compressors were set to start in parallell... The hydro-electric plant supplying power cut the transmission line supply due to the fact that they detected the load as a dead SHORT of the lines.
If you think a few windmills can screw up the electrical grid, imagine a couple of hundred thousand electric cars hopping on the grid to charge...
I sure as hell wouldnt want to be in charge of the grid *cringe* even with timed charging functionality in the cars.
Not that it is a problem yet.. most households lack the fusing to allow such large loads.. not something I expect to change fast as it requires a lot of expensive upgrades
Slashdot Mirror
Smart people are usually busted by stupid things ;)
Indeed...
Both my grandmothers have suffered from it.. When my father's mother died it was a relief to the whole family (sad as that sounds..).
On my mother's side it is just as bad :(
Most swarms have 5-10% ip6 hosts already on some trackers.
Or if you want to inflict some real damage just leave the pairs in their shielding to make a cat6-o-4+1 eviltail of pain and suffering
I see that too often unfortunately. Mostly early in projects when they are trying to find places to save money... Usually non-technical people asking questions about why the redundancy is so expensive.
What it usually boils down to for us when it comes to 'selling' proper redundancy is reducing downtime due to maintenance.
If you have a properly redundant power system you can take down the A side for maintenance or upgrades while B is up etc.
On a side note.... I take perverse pleasure in doing redundancy and blackout tests :p
There is something oddly satisifying about flipping a big red switch and watch -nothing- happen but a red line on a screen and a little buzzer going nuts *cackles*
I had supportive parents that encouraged me to do what I wanted to do with my life :p
I work with oil rig control systems and I'm happy doing that.
My life is by no means perfect but I'm fairly happy where I am at the moment ;)
When you're 16 working at a LAN party you get somewhat motivated when an 18 year old girl wearing duct-tape clothing (skimpy at that :p) wields such a tool :p
Yep, it is one of the specific steps when we define requirements for server racks. Sadly not all the customers pay attention and then yell for us to come fix the mess when they find out years later :p
This is especially fun if the trip to the "datacenter" involves a helicopter ride to the oil rig where it is located :p
Oh yes, it works quite well for sabotaging a network.
It used to be a constant issue at LAN parties where "pranksters" would do it before going to sleep... Usually we never found them but when we did we flogged them with cat5 cables stripped of insulation :p
Amusingly anyone who ever worked as tech crew at a lan party knows that this is the first thing you look for... :p
Creepy... that is the box I used :p
I've used such a device. It is in use at Bergen Science Center and it was insanely easy to configure and use... The printer has 3 buttons on it and you just push one to get a code printed.
The software lets you decide on the time to link to each button. Works wonderfully.
Yeah.... Those ebil hobbitses and their 4.99-9.99 euro games.... we hates them we does *grhoooolllum grhoooollum*
So damn easy to buy... and so cheap it "doesnt really matter".... Then you notice that you have to scroll your game list... even in 1080 resolution.... go back and look at the account history in your e-bank and realize you've spent more money on games in the past year than ever before.....
Still I love em, preeeeecious ;)
The problem isnt really DRM, it is badly implemented DRM that goes bonkers on a legal copy.
That is my more realistic view at least...
My 'floating on the skies of digital love' type view is that DRM is a stupid idea and just hurts everyone. Drop it already.. :(
Sadly not very realistic at this point
To give a real world example of the issue of DRM....
I love the Command and Conquer games. To such a degree that when the "First Decade" collectors box came out I wanted to get it even though I have all the games sitting -somewhere-. Couldnt find discs etc as I've moved several times since I bought the games... mess...
I downloaded the pirated version just to have a convenient archive of isos.
A few months later I found that my local gaming store had dropped the price by almost 30% for the pack. I didnt hesitate. I bought it and have it sitting in my collection now.....
Onwards to the issue that arrose:
I deleted the pirated versions and wanted to install completely clean versions. And I did.......
What happened? "Please insert the Red Alert 2 play disc" or somesuch.... It would not detect the disc regardless of what I did. I tried a multitude of things but ended up giving up and re-installing the cracks.
THAT is why I hate DRM. And THAT is why I will continue to wait for a crack to come out before I buy a game (steam games being an exception as they just -work-). I will not be left holding the bag on a shitty DRM scheme that breaks due to unrelated software installed on my machine. If I pay the 90 bucks for a game (which they cost here..) then I bloody well expect the fuckers to work when installed...
Meh... "it is just an excuuuuuse" and "people are cheap" are also the default comebacks used for the past 10 years. Come up with something new will you ;)
I used to pirate every game I had installed. Everything that came out I downloaded and tested... Never bought anything.
Why? I couldnt fecking afford a game. I usually got a game for christmas and a game for my birthday (which happen within a month of each other..)
Now that I -do- have money I buy games. But I also 'pirate' games. Why? Because the damn DRM doesnt work. I have a stack of original games sitting in their original shrink wrap on a shelf due to it. I have all sorts of software installed on my machine. Debuggers and the likes. The DRM doesnt like that. It goes batshit insane and breaks on purpose.
Steam works though, never had a issue with it. Hell, I just moved the install folder over to my new win7x64 machine a while back and had to do a quick update but 15 min later everything just worked... WITH all the 'hacker' software installed.
Yeah, there is a high level of piracy but if you look at my above comment make one very important notice.
The games I have bought but are sitting on a shelf wont be seen by anyone... the pirated installation on my machine will though. And if the app "phones home" it will be counted as a pirated version even though I have paid for the bugger.
I'm not saying this is the full picture, but it is part of it and shouldnt be ignored.
Sadly most of them have a pile of "default" cables that cant be removed. This usually includes the motherboard and 6-pin GPU cables.
These cables need to be long to reach "any" configuration so they tend to need space to be tied down :(
Which is a hell of a lot easier to remember than version numbers! :D
Which unfortunately would require a complete re-design of the CPU hardware ;)
Hell, your cpu doesnt even work directly on "system ram", it all goes through various buffers (L1-L3 cache etc).
For a very nice article on how the architecture works: http://lwn.net/Articles/250967/
While I have no idea if my viking ancestors went on a raid to Ireland I hate being yapped at by staff.
I know all too well how fragile the grid is :(
Unfortunately improving it costs money. Money which wont be spent unless something catastrophic happens...
I do like the way it is done here in Norway. A state owned and controlled company owns the main high voltage transmission lines and the various utilities, power plants etc lease/rent capacity.
Amusingly it is a heck of a lot easier to get spending approved through government budgets than to improve something deemed "good enough" by profit-hungry privae parties ;)
That scenario negates the big feature of the new batteries. Rapid recharge.
If rapid recharge is not required then of course it will not be a problem :p
Oh my mom was much more devious.
She would let one of us cut the pie, and the other pick the first piece....
Now imagine a 14 and 11 year old using nasa-style tools to divide a piece of pie ;)
To put it like this:
Kollsnes Gas Processing plant in the western Norway treats and compresses 150 million s3m of gas for the european market per 24/hours.
They have 6 compressors in use... 5 are 40MW, one is at 50MW..
A few years ago they had an operator mixup and 4 compressors were set to start in parallell... The hydro-electric plant supplying power cut the transmission line supply due to the fact that they detected the load as a dead SHORT of the lines.
Yeah... I dont think we want 1.3GW loads :p
Charging the suckers for one thing...
If you think a few windmills can screw up the electrical grid, imagine a couple of hundred thousand electric cars hopping on the grid to charge...
I sure as hell wouldnt want to be in charge of the grid *cringe* even with timed charging functionality in the cars.
Not that it is a problem yet.. most households lack the fusing to allow such large loads.. not something I expect to change fast as it requires a lot of expensive upgrades