"a mean of 3,751 correctable errors per DIMM per year."
Hey, the ECC did its job! Let's all go home.
I'm much to lazy to do the math.
I tried, based on the abstract. Wound up getting a figure of 8% of 2 gigabyte systems having 10 RAM failures per hour and the other 92% being just peachy. While a few bits going south is AFAIK the most common failure state for RAM, some of those RAM sticks must be complete no-POST duds and some are errors-up-the-wazoo massive swaths of RAM corrupted, so that throws my back of the envelope math WAY off....
In other words, big numbers make Gronk head hurt. Gronk go make fire. Gronk go make boat. Gronk go make fire-in-a-boat. Gronk no happy with fire-in-a-boat. Boat no work, and fire no work, all at same time.
Sorry, lost my thread there. So yeah, complex numbers, hard math, random assumptions that bugger our conclusions and maybe bugger theirs.
The fact that these DIMMs were "stressed" makes me wonder about the validity of the test. Heat stress, among other things, will multiply errors far beyond what you will see in normal service.
The problem with something like this is the assumption that Google world == real world.
This RAM is all running on custom Google boards that no one else has access to, with custom power supplies in custom cases in custom storage units. To the researchers' credit, they split things by platform later on, but that just means Google-custom-jobbie-1 and Google-custom-jobbie-2, not Intel board/Asus board/Gigabyte board. Without listing the platforms down to chipsets and CPU types (not gonna happen), it's hard to compare data and check methodology.
While Google is the only place you're going to find literal metric tons of RAM to play with, the common factor that it's all Google might be throwing the numbers. At least some confirmation that these numbers hold at someone else's data center would be nice.
But then, I didn't RTWholeFA, so maybe I missed something.
No, I don't believe so. They use server boards, custom made to their specs.
I suppose it depends on how you define "server board". Room for tons of ECC RAM and two CPUs is server or serious-workstation class (or maybe I-just-use-Notepad-and-my-sales-guy-is-on-commission class), but I think once you're on to custom boards that only use certain voltages of electricity, you've moved into a class by yourself.
And, I'm pretty sure that those specs include ECC memory - that is the standard for servers, after all.
Section 7: "All DIMMs were equipped with error correcting logic (ECC) to correct at least single bit errors."
...when you're trying to expose unethical behavior or deceptive practices, the phrase "a well-known online computer component shop" is hollow and flaccid.
Nonsense. A well-known online computer component reviewer, a well-known online game reviewer, and THREE well-known world leaders all told me yesterday that it was a GREAT idea!
They look like some of the flattop panheads that I've got around here. The tops of these screws are like pancakes, flat top and bottom with slightly rounded sides. They look exactly like that. I've got some in both 6-32 and 3mm.
Rather more tellingly, they look like the screws that are holding my motherboard to my case.
... and it opened the floodgates. Thousands of maps, many of them lousy but some of them brilliant.
Without Doom showing that a good game can spawn a community of people interested in expanding the game, developers wouldn't take the time to release SDKs.
Without that thriving and long-lived community of Doom developers, id would've had little reason to release source code for its engines. Why bother if no one's going to use it?
Without id commercializing TeamTNT's first release as Final Doom, the idea of a group of fans having their work go professional would still be seen as either an insane dream or "selling out".
And would any of this happened if Doom was a lousy game? Hell no! You don't attract talented and skilled people with a poor game. That's half of the problem with this new generation of user-generated games. They seem to think that if you make the tools, someone will use them. The tools are the bonus, not the core; the gift to your fans, not the main selling point for the ad copy.
In a sense, it's like fanfic. People design new stuff for games for the same reason they write fanfic - they want to continue the story, or see how it would play out if changed.
- It's five years later, and the bad guy is back - time to get your gun. It's five years later, and the antagonist has returned - how will the protagonist defeat his old enemy?
- How much harder are things if the Heavy Weapons Dude dual-wields two chainguns? Would the main characters act differently if their brother hadn't died?
- What if we changed all the monsters and the weapons and made a whole new game? What if the characters were taken out of their dark conspiracy-ridden world and dropped into a bedroom farce?
The result is also the same. Some is damn good, some is lousy. The highest amount (and thus the highest amount of quality product) tends to collect around the better series. No TV series would fly if they did half a season and expected fanfic writers to finish it for them, so I don't see how a game company can expect to excel by expecting the community to build the levels.
On the other hand, if there's a good game that just happens to be moddable....
That the student in question feels like a Luddite just because he has a problem with "new technology for the sake of new technology"
I noticed too. Like the only two options are neophile and dinosaur. Damn dangerous mindset, in my opinion. I've already seen it in action - a customer who demanded the newest i7 system with SLI video cards and eight gigs of RAM and a 64 bit OS - to check his stock ticker. That's ALL.
After some questioning, the sales guy found the customer's existing PC was something like a quad-core with 4 gigs of RAM, with no issues at all. The sales guy refused to sell the i7 to him until he made a stink about it.
Why should we want to do that ?
I know we can. But why playing poker with a guitar ? Perhaps I am getting old...
What, you've never seen those World Series of (Online) Poker matches where one guy's holding a guitar, another guy isn't wearing pants, the third keeps screaming at his wife in the audience that he's busy and will take the garbage out later, the fourth is a teenage boy but says he's really a forty-year-old housewife, the fifth keeps jumping between two seats/hands and insisting he's really two people, and the rest are robots?
Cool thing was, Christmas: $500 bonus and dinner out with open bar on $18/hr salary. The rest of my tech job history has been at corporate places and never got any type of bonus like that.
I work in a small computer store. (Service department. I've cynically pointed out that if it's part of Sales' job to talk people into buying things, it's part of Service's to talk them out of it.) My Christmas bonus was I feigned sick for the Christmas party so I could drink my own booze instead of paying a high premium to drink someone else's. And my salary? Not quite yours. Where does one get a cut of this action?
So a corporation should be able to declare me guilty to another corporation, but I shouldn't worry because they'd be gracious enough to give me a chance to prove my innocence?
Who knows, maybe they could follow Network 23's lead and make a game show out of it!
What about police, fire, EMS, taxi, truckers and public transit services?
Should we prohibit them from any type of out of car communication?
Logically we should.
Except that all those fields get additional special training above and beyond what a person needs to drive a car. And, while I can't vouch for a trucker's CB usage, my experience with the others tells me that, unlike people with cell phones, long discussions with dispatch aren't common. Information is conveyed, conversation ends.
Considering that would mean one's 'arms' are where the other's 'legs' are, and the second head is completely invisible.... Them's some kinky love birds.
Say what you want, I know a few people in the banking profession I'd like to stick a needle into over and over again until I've turned an unwanted hole into a nice compact knot of thread.
This is, quite possibly, the funniest thing I've seen posted to Slashdot in the forever that I've been reading posts, here. The gazebo reference is the part that pushed it over the line for me.
Low five digit UID? Wow, I thank you for the high praise.:)
Colorless green ideas sleep furiously. A computer would read this sentence and see nothing wrong. Any human can tell that it lacks any meaning at all.
Say what you want, I feel the sharp contrasts in one sentence symbolize the sharp contrast between mortal and divine, combined in one. Therefore, it's about Jesus. The use of "sleep" is quite a blantant reference to the fact that, in The Divine Comedy, Dante only sleeps during Purgatorio.
Therefore, I've proven that your sentence is a deep symbolic and literary reference to Jesus in Purgatory.
Being able to actually use a Windows desktop before it stops fussing and fidgeting with the hard drive light on continuously is something else. At least when I get my KDE4 desktop, which is quite soon these days, I can use it straight away.
I can do the same on my XP computer just fine. Takes about 5 to 10 seconds, and I'm including Seamonkey's boot time in that.
A lot of that delay on a Windows desktop is all the startup crap the user never sees anyway. The Google toolbar updater, the Adobe updater, the Quicktime TSR, etc. etc. etc. Dozens of programs, all quietly taking their startup times and neatly nudging it onto XP's startup time. But hey, QT comes up instantly! And since everyone uses Quicktime a dozen times every day, it's a good tradeoff, right? Right?
And the hell of it is, most people don't care. As a computer service guy, if a PC comes to me for being too slow to boot, nine times out of ten it takes more than FIVE MINUTES to be usable from when the desktop first shows. People just hit the power button and get coffee or something. Two seconds and two minutes are effectively the same for a lot of people out there.
Slashdot Mirror
Should we throw away all that usefulness in the name of "fresh" and "new" ideas? I think not.
You say that now, but wait until you hear the Kanye West mix!
it reduces the effects of universal entropy, obviously.
Sorry, you're looking for the thread two doors over, "Universe Has 100x More Entropy Than We Thought"
"a mean of 3,751 correctable errors per DIMM per year."
Hey, the ECC did its job! Let's all go home.
I'm much to lazy to do the math.
I tried, based on the abstract. Wound up getting a figure of 8% of 2 gigabyte systems having 10 RAM failures per hour and the other 92% being just peachy. While a few bits going south is AFAIK the most common failure state for RAM, some of those RAM sticks must be complete no-POST duds and some are errors-up-the-wazoo massive swaths of RAM corrupted, so that throws my back of the envelope math WAY off....
In other words, big numbers make Gronk head hurt. Gronk go make fire. Gronk go make boat. Gronk go make fire-in-a-boat. Gronk no happy with fire-in-a-boat. Boat no work, and fire no work, all at same time.
Sorry, lost my thread there. So yeah, complex numbers, hard math, random assumptions that bugger our conclusions and maybe bugger theirs.
The fact that these DIMMs were "stressed" makes me wonder about the validity of the test. Heat stress, among other things, will multiply errors far beyond what you will see in normal service.
The problem with something like this is the assumption that Google world == real world.
This RAM is all running on custom Google boards that no one else has access to, with custom power supplies in custom cases in custom storage units. To the researchers' credit, they split things by platform later on, but that just means Google-custom-jobbie-1 and Google-custom-jobbie-2, not Intel board/Asus board/Gigabyte board. Without listing the platforms down to chipsets and CPU types (not gonna happen), it's hard to compare data and check methodology.
While Google is the only place you're going to find literal metric tons of RAM to play with, the common factor that it's all Google might be throwing the numbers. At least some confirmation that these numbers hold at someone else's data center would be nice.
But then, I didn't RTWholeFA, so maybe I missed something.
No, I don't believe so. They use server boards, custom made to their specs.
I suppose it depends on how you define "server board". Room for tons of ECC RAM and two CPUs is server or serious-workstation class (or maybe I-just-use-Notepad-and-my-sales-guy-is-on-commission class), but I think once you're on to custom boards that only use certain voltages of electricity, you've moved into a class by yourself.
And, I'm pretty sure that those specs include ECC memory - that is the standard for servers, after all.
Section 7: "All DIMMs were equipped with error correcting logic (ECC) to correct at least single bit errors."
So, yes, it's ECC.
...when you're trying to expose unethical behavior or deceptive practices, the phrase "a well-known online computer component shop" is hollow and flaccid.
Nonsense. A well-known online computer component reviewer, a well-known online game reviewer, and THREE well-known world leaders all told me yesterday that it was a GREAT idea!
They look like some of the flattop panheads that I've got around here. The tops of these screws are like pancakes, flat top and bottom with slightly rounded sides. They look exactly like that. I've got some in both 6-32 and 3mm.
Rather more tellingly, they look like the screws that are holding my motherboard to my case.
Without Doom showing that a good game can spawn a community of people interested in expanding the game, developers wouldn't take the time to release SDKs.
Without that thriving and long-lived community of Doom developers, id would've had little reason to release source code for its engines. Why bother if no one's going to use it?
Without id commercializing TeamTNT's first release as Final Doom, the idea of a group of fans having their work go professional would still be seen as either an insane dream or "selling out".
And would any of this happened if Doom was a lousy game? Hell no! You don't attract talented and skilled people with a poor game. That's half of the problem with this new generation of user-generated games. They seem to think that if you make the tools, someone will use them. The tools are the bonus, not the core; the gift to your fans, not the main selling point for the ad copy.
In a sense, it's like fanfic. People design new stuff for games for the same reason they write fanfic - they want to continue the story, or see how it would play out if changed.
- It's five years later, and the bad guy is back - time to get your gun. It's five years later, and the antagonist has returned - how will the protagonist defeat his old enemy?
- How much harder are things if the Heavy Weapons Dude dual-wields two chainguns? Would the main characters act differently if their brother hadn't died?
- What if we changed all the monsters and the weapons and made a whole new game? What if the characters were taken out of their dark conspiracy-ridden world and dropped into a bedroom farce?
The result is also the same. Some is damn good, some is lousy. The highest amount (and thus the highest amount of quality product) tends to collect around the better series. No TV series would fly if they did half a season and expected fanfic writers to finish it for them, so I don't see how a game company can expect to excel by expecting the community to build the levels.
On the other hand, if there's a good game that just happens to be moddable....
"Like the only two options are neophile and dinosaur" Nice way to put it.
Nice example too.
Thanks. I find it better to point out an excluded middle by showing the extremes than by showing what's lacking.
Wait a second, a somewhat-ethical electronics salesman? What, did the guy find new work after being fired from BestBuy? :P
:) Unsurprisingly, he works in a smaller computer store, not a major chain. Good guy.
That the student in question feels like a Luddite just because he has a problem with "new technology for the sake of new technology"
I noticed too. Like the only two options are neophile and dinosaur. Damn dangerous mindset, in my opinion. I've already seen it in action - a customer who demanded the newest i7 system with SLI video cards and eight gigs of RAM and a 64 bit OS - to check his stock ticker. That's ALL.
After some questioning, the sales guy found the customer's existing PC was something like a quad-core with 4 gigs of RAM, with no issues at all. The sales guy refused to sell the i7 to him until he made a stink about it.
Why should we want to do that ? I know we can. But why playing poker with a guitar ? Perhaps I am getting old...
What, you've never seen those World Series of (Online) Poker matches where one guy's holding a guitar, another guy isn't wearing pants, the third keeps screaming at his wife in the audience that he's busy and will take the garbage out later, the fourth is a teenage boy but says he's really a forty-year-old housewife, the fifth keeps jumping between two seats/hands and insisting he's really two people, and the rest are robots?
The reader's list makes me want to bash my skull against a wall.
Probably exactly what you'd need to do to become an Objectivist Scientologist.
I moved out west 5 years ago. Heard the store was sued by some printer company for faking warranty repairs. Go figuh!
Oh, THAT explains why the wages were so good.:)
Cool thing was, Christmas: $500 bonus and dinner out with open bar on $18/hr salary. The rest of my tech job history has been at corporate places and never got any type of bonus like that.
I work in a small computer store. (Service department. I've cynically pointed out that if it's part of Sales' job to talk people into buying things, it's part of Service's to talk them out of it.) My Christmas bonus was I feigned sick for the Christmas party so I could drink my own booze instead of paying a high premium to drink someone else's. And my salary? Not quite yours. Where does one get a cut of this action?
My house is INFLAMMABLE! Muahahahahaa!
My kingdom for the point to mod this "flamebait"....
(Looks in.) Thank you, O nameless moderator.:)
So a corporation should be able to declare me guilty to another corporation, but I shouldn't worry because they'd be gracious enough to give me a chance to prove my innocence?
Who knows, maybe they could follow Network 23's lead and make a game show out of it!
Just stew on that for a while...
All these cooking puns really burn me up!
What about police, fire, EMS, taxi, truckers and public transit services? Should we prohibit them from any type of out of car communication?
Logically we should.
Except that all those fields get additional special training above and beyond what a person needs to drive a car. And, while I can't vouch for a trucker's CB usage, my experience with the others tells me that, unlike people with cell phones, long discussions with dispatch aren't common. Information is conveyed, conversation ends.
Maybe it's really a compressed set of love birds.
Considering that would mean one's 'arms' are where the other's 'legs' are, and the second head is completely invisible.... Them's some kinky love birds.
My house is INFLAMMABLE! Muahahahahaa!
My kingdom for the point to mod this "flamebait"....
Sewing for damages?
Fear the giant quilt of redress!
Say what you want, I know a few people in the banking profession I'd like to stick a needle into over and over again until I've turned an unwanted hole into a nice compact knot of thread.
This is, quite possibly, the funniest thing I've seen posted to Slashdot in the forever that I've been reading posts, here. The gazebo reference is the part that pushed it over the line for me.
Low five digit UID? Wow, I thank you for the high praise.:)
We've got Worms and Spiders, now Ants!? I'm going to have to find a new hobby; computing doesn't seem very entomophobiac-friendly.
We started with bugs years ago. It was only a matter of time before everyone else moved in.
Colorless green ideas sleep furiously. A computer would read this sentence and see nothing wrong. Any human can tell that it lacks any meaning at all.
Say what you want, I feel the sharp contrasts in one sentence symbolize the sharp contrast between mortal and divine, combined in one. Therefore, it's about Jesus. The use of "sleep" is quite a blantant reference to the fact that, in The Divine Comedy, Dante only sleeps during Purgatorio.
Therefore, I've proven that your sentence is a deep symbolic and literary reference to Jesus in Purgatory.
Being able to actually use a Windows desktop before it stops fussing and fidgeting with the hard drive light on continuously is something else. At least when I get my KDE4 desktop, which is quite soon these days, I can use it straight away.
I can do the same on my XP computer just fine. Takes about 5 to 10 seconds, and I'm including Seamonkey's boot time in that.
A lot of that delay on a Windows desktop is all the startup crap the user never sees anyway. The Google toolbar updater, the Adobe updater, the Quicktime TSR, etc. etc. etc. Dozens of programs, all quietly taking their startup times and neatly nudging it onto XP's startup time. But hey, QT comes up instantly! And since everyone uses Quicktime a dozen times every day, it's a good tradeoff, right? Right?
And the hell of it is, most people don't care. As a computer service guy, if a PC comes to me for being too slow to boot, nine times out of ten it takes more than FIVE MINUTES to be usable from when the desktop first shows. People just hit the power button and get coffee or something. Two seconds and two minutes are effectively the same for a lot of people out there.
Please note that it was not the german law-enforcement who ordered the recall, Activision did that on their own.
But would Activision have done it if not for fear of reprisal from the government, if it was merely a social taboo rather than a legal one?