They went back to a monolithic windows to getaway from the compatibility issues. This approach will just add to market fragmentation and destroy the one thing MS still has left on the PC. I think you are going to start seeing real push-back. In a mature market, products shouldn't go obsolete in two years. Hardware should go 3-4 years (power users), and an OS should double that. There just isn't business logic to need to update things that often. Same goes for home; most people's needs just don't change that often/quickly.
The alternative to a SCADA system is basically a bunch of stand-alone PLCs. They are heavily used for sub-process control (black-box control), and also for validating the proper operation of the SCADA system. But, to think you can do everything a modern SCADA system does with hard-wired PLCs is disingenuous. The controls become the network.
It all comes down to economics. You can make a system extremely robust, but you have to start from the smallest component which increases cost by an order of magnitude. How do you protect against a rogue wireless modem in the system? You can fairly easily limit what systems the modem could impact by compartmentalizing dumb serial links that it could attach to without being detected by network equipment, but if it can spoof the right IO there is a good chance it can impact system functionality. Things like modbus just never were designed for security; even some of the more "secure" protocols aren't a dramatic improvement, and they are often not available for all equipment.
Gross receipts taxes are great for hitting some industries-- advertising and entertainment are two that pop into my mind-- but they are a real pain for businesses with low margins. For low margin businesses, the tax is disproportionate to profit, but for industries that are famous for cooking the books to declare a loss it seems to make sense.
Yes and no; if you do it even slightly wrong, the IRS will really nail you. But, if each of the of the independent businesses can function without goofy paper transactions then you are pretty well set. The minimum cost of operating a corporation though is about $1,000 per year average, so you have to be offsetting at least that much in taxes to make it worthwhile. Also, "professional services corporations" can't actually dodge that much tax.
I pay a shit load of taxes. I personally only go for a few marginal items (such as a separate corporation for my wife's business), which is mainly done to help fund a 401k for herself. It might only reflect 10% of my total tax liability, but it makes sense.
The "taxation is immoral theft" crowd is a little crazy in my book, but if the government is going to cost me $2,000+ to do my taxes, I will make sure that I recover that money from reduced taxes.
Last week I had to VNC into my desktop to edit a word file, PDF, and email out... from my iPad. As obtuse, slow, and cumbersome as that solution was, it was the easiest approach to do it without a file-compatible solution native to the iPad. The other approach is to "email your secretary the changes and have them send it out." For small levels of input (and full feature compatibility), a tablet version works quite well and makes a lot of sense. Once you limit what features you can access though, it is no longer the same and loses a lot of the functionality-- hence my lack of Apple's offerings.
The cellular connection is never the only link; many police cars have wifi repeaters from the radio links, as well as voice communication over the radio...
You have no idea how fragile safety-critical systems really are. They function solely on the basis that disruption is generally localized and real-time disruption is less of a problem than a 2-3 minute window or 1-2 hour window depending on the function. Older radios were more robust than current generations, but still far from bulletproof. Current generation equipment much less so... but there are more channels to get information out which often offsets the liability. (Radio + cell via two completely different infrastructures is a simple example.)
I was quite content without it, until Google tweaked some things in their finance pages where graphs wouldn't allow static graphs anymore. I grudgingly re-installed yesterday after nearly three years without. It's out again... I will just skip using Google Finance.
Government agencies adopt private organization standards as local code, which becomes binding through a law. With the National Electrical Code as an example, it is written by members of the National Fire Protection Association. Each US state adopts the code with whatever amendments they feel appropriate, and then the localities adopt the state version with any of their local amendments. This gives the code (and any referenced UL standards) force of law.
Power cord lengths are regulated in the US as well-- forget if it is 2m or 6ft. You can only use 15ft cords in "information technology equipment rooms." Of course in the US it is regulated by UL/NFPA, and not a government agency.
I am we'll aware of the hazards the batteries play, especially when they are in places that aren't designed for them. Li-Ion poses different hazards than other types-- less in some areas and much more in others. Statistically it is troubling that there have been two battery events on the 787 in a span of roughly 500-1,000 flight hours, and it is important to find out why the failure rate is so much higher than expected. It is also important to make sure the electrolyte spill poses no threat to flight safety, and to ensure smoke does not move from the electronics bays into the cabin or cockpit.
However, these three things do not appear to pose a threat to flight safety currently, with minor procedure changes/clarifications. The second incident should have apparently turned off recirculation fans and purged air from the electronics bay. By the time the plane was on the ground the battery had apparently completely combusted and posed no further risk. The electrolyte spill and charring around where the battery sat apparently needed to be cleaned up but it wasn't anything that was expected to impact flight electronics or the structure.
Apparently the LiFePO4 wasn't an option when they were certifying the plane. Hopefully they will switch to a more stable chemistry as a performance improvement, but one of the batteries needs to start the Auxiliary Power Unit, so it has a pretty high inrush current.
More importantly, the SpaceX design is for batteries that are actually used, and not a backup-on-backup. Tesla/SpaceX has an interesting design (series connection of highly parallel set of cells, with active heating/cooling), but it isn't what Boeing actually seems to need. I wish more details about the Boeing (Thales/GS Yuasa/Securaplane) design does for its battery management system were available. I would have thought that the system does very frequent sweeps of cell impedance across a range of frequencies to proactively detect a failing cell and isolate the battery, but that doesn't seem to be the case.
Honestly though, the 787's battery problems look fairly overstated. The ANA problem on the ground seems to indicate that some level of monitoring and active ventilation is required when the plane is not pressurized, and the JAL incident seems to be a failed battery and a mild over-reaction by the pilot given the ANA incident. There are a few system improvements that should be made to containment and venting from what I can tell... but nothing too major.
The internet isn't a flat ocean of content that you pay for a little pipe full of, placement matters bigtime when it comes to overall throughput and latency.
Problem is that is what the ISPs have been selling. It screwed up the peering model already, and next it will impact the ISPs.
The issue here is that any ISP would rather be able to keep charging the same rate for the same service (or increasing the price each year), rather than get the same fee for providing ever-increasing bandwidth. As the infrastructure is paid off, the providers should either reinvest or drop rates; they prefer to do neither.
Spot on... you pay for competence. The catch is Linux is a hell of a lot easier than it was 10 or 15 years ago, so there aren't really the same guarantees that there were.
You are actually best doing both-- Have one person on staff that can do 80% of the work, and contract out the remaining 20%. If the person on staff is good enough to be able to run day-to-day operations and understand strategic objectives and needs then they can save you far more than what you need to spend on the contract work. If you need to spend more with the consultant because he is making it possible to grow your core business, all the better!
I enjoy doing things myself... but I am quite happy to be able to call up a contractor to do a new server install and sort out the details any day. He's about 50% faster than me on most things anyway, so it is a win-win. I want to be replaceable!!!
There was an article on/. maybe 6 or 8 years about about building a house with fiber-reinforced concrete in "printed" format, long before I had ever heard of 3d printing. I think the only site preparation was a flat slab. All kinds of fundamental problems, but an interesting novelty at the time.
As for the pace of change in the construction industry... Yes, it is slow but there have been a number of interesting changes from insulated concrete forms to various prefabrication concepts over the past decade.
Eventually, configuration changes and updates are required. You would need a complete duplicate plant to really test the proposed updates; that generally isn't possible like it would be for a web server or even a banking system. Sure, you can test input and output, but you cannot see all of the complex interactions of the overall process. You cannot tune the process to real-world conditions either.
As for the GP's comment on no remote access, what exactly do you suggest for non-manned sites? Smoke signals? You can argue that there shouldn't be unmanned sites... But 24x7x365 staffing? Do you need two people so one can go on their breaks/lunch/etc? Suddenly you have gone from something that easily fits into an existing employee's role to a $600k/year cost... Just to eliminate non-local access. There are some things where this is a drop in the bucket, but there are a whole lot of facilities that just barely make that much profit in a year.
To do it right, you would need one machine that you load the USB stick into, another machine scans that stick and copies selected file to the network. Very few guarantees in this situation though that you would be able to scan for all vulnerabilities or potentially damaging configurations.
About the only thing you can do is have a second supervisory network watching the first, and taking over (with reduced functionality) when an abnormality is detected. If course that system needs to running different hardware (JACE need not apply), supported by a different vendor, etc. It gets very expensive, but is often done when you can't trust your controls. (Haven't seen a new system like this implemented in a long time though...)
Good luck with those projections... doesn't seem to hold water where I am (arguably the exact opposite). The Note seems to be a complete failure in the US, although there is a market for a phone with really big letters for older people.
If Apple had previously ordered 65MM 4" screens their total iPhone sales would be about 50MM iPhone 5's, 20MM 4/4S (plus 10MM iPod touch units). Quite frankly, that is impossible territory there for the December quarter, but filling the channel and a subsequent draw-down as they move more to a 6-month update cycle could possibly explain a "50% drop in screen orders."
Quite frankly, crap like this makes me want to get out of the stock market altogether. (Which is exactly what it is intended to do.)
Yeah... Refineries aren't the best neighbors. Within a mile, you get a a grease build up on everything, even out of the prevailing wind. The particulate emissions (I think it is the particulate at least) cause all kinds of respiratory joy.
I moved from about 3/4 mile to ~1.1 miles from our local refinery, and the number of sick days and doctor's visits I had to take have dramatically dropped. (And people pay millions of dollars to live in the neighborhood...)
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They went back to a monolithic windows to getaway from the compatibility issues. This approach will just add to market fragmentation and destroy the one thing MS still has left on the PC. I think you are going to start seeing real push-back. In a mature market, products shouldn't go obsolete in two years. Hardware should go 3-4 years (power users), and an OS should double that. There just isn't business logic to need to update things that often. Same goes for home; most people's needs just don't change that often/quickly.
The alternative to a SCADA system is basically a bunch of stand-alone PLCs. They are heavily used for sub-process control (black-box control), and also for validating the proper operation of the SCADA system. But, to think you can do everything a modern SCADA system does with hard-wired PLCs is disingenuous. The controls become the network.
It all comes down to economics. You can make a system extremely robust, but you have to start from the smallest component which increases cost by an order of magnitude. How do you protect against a rogue wireless modem in the system? You can fairly easily limit what systems the modem could impact by compartmentalizing dumb serial links that it could attach to without being detected by network equipment, but if it can spoof the right IO there is a good chance it can impact system functionality. Things like modbus just never were designed for security; even some of the more "secure" protocols aren't a dramatic improvement, and they are often not available for all equipment.
Gross receipts taxes are great for hitting some industries-- advertising and entertainment are two that pop into my mind-- but they are a real pain for businesses with low margins. For low margin businesses, the tax is disproportionate to profit, but for industries that are famous for cooking the books to declare a loss it seems to make sense.
Yes and no; if you do it even slightly wrong, the IRS will really nail you. But, if each of the of the independent businesses can function without goofy paper transactions then you are pretty well set. The minimum cost of operating a corporation though is about $1,000 per year average, so you have to be offsetting at least that much in taxes to make it worthwhile. Also, "professional services corporations" can't actually dodge that much tax.
I pay a shit load of taxes. I personally only go for a few marginal items (such as a separate corporation for my wife's business), which is mainly done to help fund a 401k for herself. It might only reflect 10% of my total tax liability, but it makes sense.
The "taxation is immoral theft" crowd is a little crazy in my book, but if the government is going to cost me $2,000+ to do my taxes, I will make sure that I recover that money from reduced taxes.
Last week I had to VNC into my desktop to edit a word file, PDF, and email out... from my iPad. As obtuse, slow, and cumbersome as that solution was, it was the easiest approach to do it without a file-compatible solution native to the iPad. The other approach is to "email your secretary the changes and have them send it out." For small levels of input (and full feature compatibility), a tablet version works quite well and makes a lot of sense. Once you limit what features you can access though, it is no longer the same and loses a lot of the functionality-- hence my lack of Apple's offerings.
The cellular connection is never the only link; many police cars have wifi repeaters from the radio links, as well as voice communication over the radio...
You have no idea how fragile safety-critical systems really are. They function solely on the basis that disruption is generally localized and real-time disruption is less of a problem than a 2-3 minute window or 1-2 hour window depending on the function. Older radios were more robust than current generations, but still far from bulletproof. Current generation equipment much less so... but there are more channels to get information out which often offsets the liability. (Radio + cell via two completely different infrastructures is a simple example.)
I was quite content without it, until Google tweaked some things in their finance pages where graphs wouldn't allow static graphs anymore. I grudgingly re-installed yesterday after nearly three years without. It's out again... I will just skip using Google Finance.
Government agencies adopt private organization standards as local code, which becomes binding through a law. With the National Electrical Code as an example, it is written by members of the National Fire Protection Association. Each US state adopts the code with whatever amendments they feel appropriate, and then the localities adopt the state version with any of their local amendments. This gives the code (and any referenced UL standards) force of law.
Power cord lengths are regulated in the US as well-- forget if it is 2m or 6ft. You can only use 15ft cords in "information technology equipment rooms." Of course in the US it is regulated by UL/NFPA, and not a government agency.
I am we'll aware of the hazards the batteries play, especially when they are in places that aren't designed for them. Li-Ion poses different hazards than other types-- less in some areas and much more in others. Statistically it is troubling that there have been two battery events on the 787 in a span of roughly 500-1,000 flight hours, and it is important to find out why the failure rate is so much higher than expected. It is also important to make sure the electrolyte spill poses no threat to flight safety, and to ensure smoke does not move from the electronics bays into the cabin or cockpit.
However, these three things do not appear to pose a threat to flight safety currently, with minor procedure changes/clarifications. The second incident should have apparently turned off recirculation fans and purged air from the electronics bay. By the time the plane was on the ground the battery had apparently completely combusted and posed no further risk. The electrolyte spill and charring around where the battery sat apparently needed to be cleaned up but it wasn't anything that was expected to impact flight electronics or the structure.
Apparently the LiFePO4 wasn't an option when they were certifying the plane. Hopefully they will switch to a more stable chemistry as a performance improvement, but one of the batteries needs to start the Auxiliary Power Unit, so it has a pretty high inrush current.
More importantly, the SpaceX design is for batteries that are actually used, and not a backup-on-backup. Tesla/SpaceX has an interesting design (series connection of highly parallel set of cells, with active heating/cooling), but it isn't what Boeing actually seems to need. I wish more details about the Boeing (Thales/GS Yuasa/Securaplane) design does for its battery management system were available. I would have thought that the system does very frequent sweeps of cell impedance across a range of frequencies to proactively detect a failing cell and isolate the battery, but that doesn't seem to be the case.
Honestly though, the 787's battery problems look fairly overstated. The ANA problem on the ground seems to indicate that some level of monitoring and active ventilation is required when the plane is not pressurized, and the JAL incident seems to be a failed battery and a mild over-reaction by the pilot given the ANA incident. There are a few system improvements that should be made to containment and venting from what I can tell... but nothing too major.
Personally a fan of the Ruggeduino. It is a little harder for a less... detail-oriented person like myself to fry.
Problem is that is what the ISPs have been selling. It screwed up the peering model already, and next it will impact the ISPs.
The issue here is that any ISP would rather be able to keep charging the same rate for the same service (or increasing the price each year), rather than get the same fee for providing ever-increasing bandwidth. As the infrastructure is paid off, the providers should either reinvest or drop rates; they prefer to do neither.
Spot on... you pay for competence. The catch is Linux is a hell of a lot easier than it was 10 or 15 years ago, so there aren't really the same guarantees that there were.
You are actually best doing both-- Have one person on staff that can do 80% of the work, and contract out the remaining 20%. If the person on staff is good enough to be able to run day-to-day operations and understand strategic objectives and needs then they can save you far more than what you need to spend on the contract work. If you need to spend more with the consultant because he is making it possible to grow your core business, all the better!
I enjoy doing things myself... but I am quite happy to be able to call up a contractor to do a new server install and sort out the details any day. He's about 50% faster than me on most things anyway, so it is a win-win. I want to be replaceable!!!
Much more effective to impose a gross receipts tax on all advertising revenue.
There was an article on /. maybe 6 or 8 years about about building a house with fiber-reinforced concrete in "printed" format, long before I had ever heard of 3d printing. I think the only site preparation was a flat slab. All kinds of fundamental problems, but an interesting novelty at the time.
As for the pace of change in the construction industry... Yes, it is slow but there have been a number of interesting changes from insulated concrete forms to various prefabrication concepts over the past decade.
Eventually, configuration changes and updates are required. You would need a complete duplicate plant to really test the proposed updates; that generally isn't possible like it would be for a web server or even a banking system. Sure, you can test input and output, but you cannot see all of the complex interactions of the overall process. You cannot tune the process to real-world conditions either.
As for the GP's comment on no remote access, what exactly do you suggest for non-manned sites? Smoke signals? You can argue that there shouldn't be unmanned sites... But 24x7x365 staffing? Do you need two people so one can go on their breaks/lunch/etc? Suddenly you have gone from something that easily fits into an existing employee's role to a $600k/year cost... Just to eliminate non-local access. There are some things where this is a drop in the bucket, but there are a whole lot of facilities that just barely make that much profit in a year.
To do it right, you would need one machine that you load the USB stick into, another machine scans that stick and copies selected file to the network. Very few guarantees in this situation though that you would be able to scan for all vulnerabilities or potentially damaging configurations.
About the only thing you can do is have a second supervisory network watching the first, and taking over (with reduced functionality) when an abnormality is detected. If course that system needs to running different hardware (JACE need not apply), supported by a different vendor, etc. It gets very expensive, but is often done when you can't trust your controls. (Haven't seen a new system like this implemented in a long time though...)
We have posted 6-figure engineering positions on Craigslist in the past... Better results than Monster...
Good luck with those projections... doesn't seem to hold water where I am (arguably the exact opposite). The Note seems to be a complete failure in the US, although there is a market for a phone with really big letters for older people.
If Apple had previously ordered 65MM 4" screens their total iPhone sales would be about 50MM iPhone 5's, 20MM 4/4S (plus 10MM iPod touch units). Quite frankly, that is impossible territory there for the December quarter, but filling the channel and a subsequent draw-down as they move more to a 6-month update cycle could possibly explain a "50% drop in screen orders."
Quite frankly, crap like this makes me want to get out of the stock market altogether. (Which is exactly what it is intended to do.)
Yeah... Refineries aren't the best neighbors. Within a mile, you get a a grease build up on everything, even out of the prevailing wind. The particulate emissions (I think it is the particulate at least) cause all kinds of respiratory joy.
I moved from about 3/4 mile to ~1.1 miles from our local refinery, and the number of sick days and doctor's visits I had to take have dramatically dropped. (And people pay millions of dollars to live in the neighborhood...)