I used to work on Stratus servers, and I think the company was purchased by IBM in the late 90s.
For each running component in the system, there are three physical instances. They use a voting system to drop any disagreement in RAM or the outcome of an instruction. In the 3 years I dealt with them, I never saw a system failure, and the only outages were caused by planned system upgrades. OS stuff. All of the hardware was hit swapped.
These were multimillion dollar machines that basically had the CPU performance of a couple of 68000 CPUs.
I personally witnessed a take out of a Novell 2.x file server which had a 16 year uptime. This was for a school system, and they had forgotten where the file server was. Stuffed in the back of a janitorial closet, and dust covered. That wasn't any sort of fancy hardware.m, but an old microchannel PC.
If you don't need to patch them, computers run for a long time.
I've always heard that it was possible due to mechanical tolerances. Everyone has always heard that...
But...have you ever read a first party account of someone actually recovering usable data? Or done it yourself?
That's the idea that this chap is proposing. What he is offering is ludicrous.
There *IS* a need to work this thing out, however. I, myself had a problem with an end user who overwrote a filesystem. (Not an fsck, but a full rewrite. Very similar to this test.)
I tried a couple of data recovery companies who claimed the data was lost. Then followed a day's worth of meetings explaining that the data was lost....because everyone knows that if you pay a data recovery specialist, they can get the data off an erased HD...
With Stephenson, usually the story starts 2/3 in...
Seriously. He is more obsessed with describing the setting and world that in a particular story. He's not particularly good with the whole character thing, either....or perhaps the story is buried in the setting. There are hints of James Burke Connections kinds of things going on in some of his stuff. (Especially in Cryptonomicon.)
I adore his stuff. I've had the book on preorder for months. That video is making me regret my choice...
The article asserts in a couple of places some very amusing things:
1. Apple SAYS that it integrates cleanly in Active Directory environments. (In our experience, it doesnn't).
2. "That Apple Enterprise support doesn't exist is a popular myth." (We actually paid for Apple Enterprise support and work in a major metropolitan area. We and our VAR could actually never manage to locate Apple Enterprise support. I'm calling myth.)
Admittedly, I'm writing this on my Macbook Pro with an Iphone in my pocket. Supporting a handful of macs is easy. Supporting hundreds is a major pain.
We use Readerware for our catalog. The nice thing is that they also have a client/server version which is what sold me, as I have a Linux server upstairs that can run the server code.
For Readerware, I also maintain my boardgame collection. This is a much larger problem, as it takes up a room with about 22 bookshelves with games on both sides. (about 3000 games)
The real trick is that each shelf has an identity---In our case we use bookshelf letter/shelves from the bottom/Left or right side. So N3R is Bookshelf N, 3 shelves up, Right side.
Games get a label on the outside with their assigned shelf. (I'd use bookplates on a book collection, with the shelf assignment written on the bookplate. Without this, it is a pain to reshelve books/games.
The nice thing about PC ports is that you don't need a PC. This puppy only costs $400, and is...close.....to a high-end gaming PC. It lacks just a bit in memory bandwidth, but has tons of MIPS.
It is the first console EVER that compares reasonably well to a high-end gaming desktop system. But at console prices.
I'm a Mac user, and don't already have the nice gaming PC. I've plaed a bit with Call of Duty 2 on both systems, and they are pretty much identical. The framerate was rather more stable on the 360.
The big downside is keyboard/mouse support for FPS's. I bet that will support will be there in later games, but none we see this year.
The other thing is that Xbox Live is remarkable, even in the current incarnation. The tools that are in the system to support play matching are impressive. Optimatch is such an obvious system that you just wonder why it wasn't the standard for FPS. (The actual players are a different issue.....)
I hate Microsoft's core OS and apps with a passion, but I am quite the fan of the stuff that has been coming out of the console group.
Actually, this is how I learned logic fundamentals. The game itself teaches the basics of digital design including the core gates, AND, OR, flip-flops, as well as timing and delay issues.
The game is pretty hard considering the intended audience, with some of the final puzzles requiring having three robots zipping around a room, sending signals to each other to keep their moves in sync.
Best educational game ever.
I am actually quite enamored with the Xbox and really happy with the technical aspects of Xbox Live. When a multi-platform game comes out, the Xbox one is the one to get. And Jade Empire is a treat.
I do have the problem with Xbox Live that you do. I love Halo2 and Burnout3, but the crowd there is really annoying. Enough that I'd love to find a geezer clan for Halo2. (I'm 37. Geezer by videogame standards at least.)
My short saga is a bit interesting:
I only use my xbox for games. Proper licensed ones. The drive was a Thompson, and had been progressively giving me more and more disc read errors until it flat out refused to read most games. This was 14 months after purchase.
I called Microsoft, got the $130 price for repair that it was out of warranty, told them I was upset. During the dialogue, I gave them my work address. And was planning to buy a new Xbox.
I work for a major metropolitan newspaper, however.
I received a call back from Microsoft in about 90 minutes. I believe it was the same CS rep with a second person sitting nearby. She would stop and whisper to him occasionally.
The dialogue went something like:
"We understand that you have a problem, and since the box is so near the warranty expiration, we can replace the system at a reduced price. $50 and you cover shipping."
Whisper. "Actually we can do as a customer appeciation replacement if you just cover shipping."
Whisper. "It appears that your Xbox is still under warranty, so we can just go ahead and replace it. I'll send you a prepaid shipping box to your address."
It was the most amazing backpedal I've ever encountered from a company.
Moo,
Frank
There are really three sane ways to go: I've done two of them so far, and REALLY like the idea of the third.
1. Sell to a publisher. You almost have to know someone who knows someone. The money is tiny, TINY, the big plus is that there just isn't much work involved. The danger is of course that they might screw up the design or production.
2. Print 1000-2000. Delano and Quebecor are both reputable companies. Jolly Roger uses Altenberger in Germany which has produced great stuff for my games. The price in Germany used to be GREAT, but the dollar and euro exchange rate has mostly screwed that up. The problem here is that you have to work out how to sell that many copies BEFORE you start producing the game. Attend GAMA. Call distributors, repeatedly pester online retailers. Even 1000-2000 copies will take you 2 years to sell through unless you get very very lucky.
3. Make about 100 copies by hand. I've seen some very impressive ways to do this. db spiele in Germany hand makes their games from foam bits, hand laminated and colored cardstock, and lots of time.
Yungames may have the best model. He gets generic black boxes, laser prints rules and color labels on the boxes. Then he uses wooden tiles with laser printed labels for EVERYTHING. The end result is nice, heavy games that look nice. All of the wood makes them a bit pricey, but not that bad.
And, you can use weirder bits in your games. I wrote an article about some of my game prototypes here:
http://www.thegamesjournal.com/articles/GroovyProt otypes.shtml
Slashdot Mirror
I used to work on Stratus servers, and I think the company was purchased by IBM in the late 90s.
For each running component in the system, there are three physical instances. They use a voting system to drop any disagreement in RAM or the outcome of an instruction. In the 3 years I dealt with them, I never saw a system failure, and the only outages were caused by planned system upgrades. OS stuff. All of the hardware was hit swapped.
These were multimillion dollar machines that basically had the CPU performance of a couple of 68000 CPUs.
I personally witnessed a take out of a Novell 2.x file server which had a 16 year uptime. This was for a school system, and they had forgotten where the file server was. Stuffed in the back of a janitorial closet, and dust covered. That wasn't any sort of fancy hardware.m, but an old microchannel PC.
If you don't need to patch them, computers run for a long time.
Using static as a blame is not exactly a new thing. Sun blamed its infamous 3000/4000 series non-ECC memory and backplane bug on "cosmic rays".
That actually took hold enough as an urban legend that some folks can still blame a computer crash on cosmic rays and others will nod sagely.
Agreed. I still cannot tell if it is ad-supported, or paid subscription, or pay per song.
But more importantly, why can this streaming business model work, and yet Pandora is bleeding from legal fees?
I've always heard that it was possible due to mechanical tolerances. Everyone has always heard that...
But...have you ever read a first party account of someone actually recovering usable data? Or done it yourself?
That's the idea that this chap is proposing. What he is offering is ludicrous.
There *IS* a need to work this thing out, however. I, myself had a problem with an end user who overwrote a filesystem. (Not an fsck, but a full rewrite. Very similar to this test.)
I tried a couple of data recovery companies who claimed the data was lost. Then followed a day's worth of meetings explaining that the data was lost. ...because everyone knows that if you pay a data recovery specialist, they can get the data off an erased HD...
With Stephenson, usually the story starts 2/3 in...
Seriously. ...or perhaps the story is buried in the setting. There are hints of James Burke Connections kinds of things going on in some of his stuff. (Especially in Cryptonomicon.)
He is more obsessed with describing the setting and world that in a particular story. He's not particularly good with the whole character thing, either.
I adore his stuff. I've had the book on preorder for months. That video is making me regret my choice...
The article asserts in a couple of places some very amusing things: 1. Apple SAYS that it integrates cleanly in Active Directory environments. (In our experience, it doesnn't). 2. "That Apple Enterprise support doesn't exist is a popular myth." (We actually paid for Apple Enterprise support and work in a major metropolitan area. We and our VAR could actually never manage to locate Apple Enterprise support. I'm calling myth.) Admittedly, I'm writing this on my Macbook Pro with an Iphone in my pocket. Supporting a handful of macs is easy. Supporting hundreds is a major pain.
We use Readerware for our catalog. The nice thing is that they also have a client/server version which is what sold me, as I have a Linux server upstairs that can run the server code. For Readerware, I also maintain my boardgame collection. This is a much larger problem, as it takes up a room with about 22 bookshelves with games on both sides. (about 3000 games) The real trick is that each shelf has an identity---In our case we use bookshelf letter/shelves from the bottom/Left or right side. So N3R is Bookshelf N, 3 shelves up, Right side. Games get a label on the outside with their assigned shelf. (I'd use bookplates on a book collection, with the shelf assignment written on the bookplate. Without this, it is a pain to reshelve books/games.
The nice thing about PC ports is that you don't need a PC. This puppy only costs $400, and is...close.....to a high-end gaming PC. It lacks just a bit in memory bandwidth, but has tons of MIPS.
It is the first console EVER that compares reasonably well to a high-end gaming desktop system. But at console prices.
I'm a Mac user, and don't already have the nice gaming PC. I've plaed a bit with Call of Duty 2 on both systems, and they are pretty much identical. The framerate was rather more stable on the 360.
The big downside is keyboard/mouse support for FPS's. I bet that will support will be there in later games, but none we see this year.
The other thing is that Xbox Live is remarkable, even in the current incarnation. The tools that are in the system to support play matching are impressive. Optimatch is such an obvious system that you just wonder why it wasn't the standard for FPS. (The actual players are a different issue.....)
I hate Microsoft's core OS and apps with a passion, but I am quite the fan of the stuff that has been coming out of the console group.
Actually, this is how I learned logic fundamentals. The game itself teaches the basics of digital design including the core gates, AND, OR, flip-flops, as well as timing and delay issues. The game is pretty hard considering the intended audience, with some of the final puzzles requiring having three robots zipping around a room, sending signals to each other to keep their moves in sync. Best educational game ever.
I'll buy one, and mod my current Xbox.
I am actually quite enamored with the Xbox and really happy with the technical aspects of Xbox Live. When a multi-platform game comes out, the Xbox one is the one to get. And Jade Empire is a treat.
I do have the problem with Xbox Live that you do. I love Halo2 and Burnout3, but the crowd there is really annoying. Enough that I'd love to find a geezer clan for Halo2. (I'm 37. Geezer by videogame standards at least.)
My short saga is a bit interesting: I only use my xbox for games. Proper licensed ones. The drive was a Thompson, and had been progressively giving me more and more disc read errors until it flat out refused to read most games. This was 14 months after purchase. I called Microsoft, got the $130 price for repair that it was out of warranty, told them I was upset. During the dialogue, I gave them my work address. And was planning to buy a new Xbox. I work for a major metropolitan newspaper, however. I received a call back from Microsoft in about 90 minutes. I believe it was the same CS rep with a second person sitting nearby. She would stop and whisper to him occasionally. The dialogue went something like: "We understand that you have a problem, and since the box is so near the warranty expiration, we can replace the system at a reduced price. $50 and you cover shipping." Whisper. "Actually we can do as a customer appeciation replacement if you just cover shipping." Whisper. "It appears that your Xbox is still under warranty, so we can just go ahead and replace it. I'll send you a prepaid shipping box to your address." It was the most amazing backpedal I've ever encountered from a company. Moo, Frank
There are really three sane ways to go: I've done two of them so far, and REALLY like the idea of the third. 1. Sell to a publisher. You almost have to know someone who knows someone. The money is tiny, TINY, the big plus is that there just isn't much work involved. The danger is of course that they might screw up the design or production. 2. Print 1000-2000. Delano and Quebecor are both reputable companies. Jolly Roger uses Altenberger in Germany which has produced great stuff for my games. The price in Germany used to be GREAT, but the dollar and euro exchange rate has mostly screwed that up. The problem here is that you have to work out how to sell that many copies BEFORE you start producing the game. Attend GAMA. Call distributors, repeatedly pester online retailers. Even 1000-2000 copies will take you 2 years to sell through unless you get very very lucky. 3. Make about 100 copies by hand. I've seen some very impressive ways to do this. db spiele in Germany hand makes their games from foam bits, hand laminated and colored cardstock, and lots of time. Yungames may have the best model. He gets generic black boxes, laser prints rules and color labels on the boxes. Then he uses wooden tiles with laser printed labels for EVERYTHING. The end result is nice, heavy games that look nice. All of the wood makes them a bit pricey, but not that bad. And, you can use weirder bits in your games. I wrote an article about some of my game prototypes here: http://www.thegamesjournal.com/articles/GroovyProt otypes.shtml