I would guess that the update manager sends some information like machine name which when coupled with the IP address and some information like version of kernel update requested can track quite accurately the number of installed Ubuntu.
As for the snapshot comment well the machine name probably doesn't change and can be seen as a dupe when analyzing logs. Same thing for the virtual mac address which most users don't change.
Analyzing server logs could determine unique IPs that request data from security.ubuntu.com and if you harvest that data you know how many different Ubuntu systems are live within a period of time.
Update Manager seems to retrieve a list of update servers at least once and that data is a good indicator of the number of installations, that's a good starting number then add some statistics on corporate usage where updates have been centralized, support contracts and you are starting to get a figure.
Downloads are probably too decentralized to get an accurate number, it would be like counting Windoze shipped sitting on store shelves, meh I guess they count those anyway.
Actually in the first year updates always required that you connect a controller with a cable in order to perform a firmware upgrade. My guess is that all the radios and networking were disabled with the firmware update boot loader, after all have you tried ever performing a windows, Linux or even OSX installation from scratch with a bluetooth keyboard? My guess is that it just won't work with a reduced OS.
Over the life of both PS3 (original and slim), updates have never caused any issue. So far the only reformating I ever did was when I have upgraded the HDD, yearly for the launch model and once for the slim, they did not break, I just wanted more space. Sony really need to reconsider removing the Other OS feature because otherwise firmware updates over the last 3+ years just built new features.
I have tried rebel with both Leopoard and Snow Leopard under VMWare Server 2.0 and unfortunately it does not work.
It is unfortunate because it would open MAC OS to the enterprise market which it currectly does not possess.
I am sure an army of web dev would love to test their site under OSX in their corporate environment without having to justify the cost of 'specialized' Apple hardware.
I just got an email back from Psystar support, unfortunately they don't answer my question on USB CD and their Wiki does not cover the subject either:
Hello,
The RebelEFI Hardware Compatibility List (HCL) can be found at http://wiki.psystar.com/ . Here you will be able to find information regarding your hardware. If your device/computer is not listed please send a complete report of what is not working to support@psystar.com. Please include: Computer Model, Motherboard, CPU, Video Card and Order Number if you have already purchased. You may also download a trail copy at http://cdn.psystar.com/rebelefi_latest.iso . Updates to RebelEFI including change log will be posted both on http://wiki.psystar.com/ and http://community.psystar.com./ Hardware still not working? Don't get discouraged. Psystar is actively adding more hardware support to RebelEFI.
The funny part is that she appears to have studied the law, unfortunately she is using http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Undue_influence to try to coerce journalists into giving up good stories like this, a blatant use of corporate lawyers bashing on free speech.
I am pretty sure if you check it out the price on average for a dedicated high speed connection over the last 8 years in Canada has stayed the same, the speed has increased a bit but not by leaps and bounds but compared to many other countries Canada is starting to lag behind. There is no widespread ADSL 2nd generation here, no fiber to the home, no TV over ADSL or other such 'newer' services...
There are already fewer ISPs in Canada then there were 10 years ago when you would have dozens of choice in any major city. Now only a few are left and they don't compete on price anymore. Long gone are the days of unlimited internet for 20 bucks of the modem yesteryear, now everything is metered or limited in some way and nothing you could call high speed is under 30$
The problem is the current big ADSL ISP's(Bell and Telus) have a monopoly on their markets(It might be an Oligopoly, I don't know if Bell and Telus compete in the same geographic areas.)
You got that right, all the telcos and cable companies have very specific geographic areas, quite often the only real choice is either ADSL or cable, and in many locations you don't even have such a choice.
If the prices will go too much up, I'm sure customers will be unhappy and there will be new ISP's taking place.
Have you taught about the price to enter such a market? It is not possible for any new player to come in and create its own infrastructure and try to compete with the Bell, Telus, Rogers & Videotron of the Canadian market which all have huge market share. So yes the CRTC has to come in and legislate and force the market to open up especially since all Telcos have been subsidized over the years by the Canadians.
I have heard that Stanford has had some PS3s folding 24-7 since the introduction of the PS3 folding client... I'd be curious to know if they've had any YLODs.
Check out the folding forums and you will see there are a few mentions of dead PS3s...
If you would care to read about the YLOD, you would know better. My launch PS3 DID have a YLOD that was fixed with reflowing, so although I cannot confirm everyone in NA will be affected at one point, I do confirm the NA launch models have been affected.
Remember Sony is publicly acknowledging 0.5% failure rate. Several third parties are fixing PS3 affected by the YLOD in NA. Blame it on hot weather this summer if you will or because ice cream sales are good.
The funny part is that a quick search on google.ca turns up 6500 hits for YLOD while on google.co.uk turns up 7600 hits. Considering Canada is half the population of the UK one could assume some Canadians seem interested by this subject.
The Slim is fine, but then again the YLOD issues seems to be affecting launch consoles after 18-24 months. So maybe the Slim will be affected too in 24 months.
The solder is not the heart of the issue but more the usage of cheap thermal paste that was not applied evenly, in order to get solder issues you first need a heat problem, one that would be caused by improper thermal dissipation through the heatsink and fan.
Most third parties that reflow the console will gladly use artic silver or other quality thermal paste for a better heat transfer and dissipation and thus might fix the problem for good, unfortunately if the console has been damaged by heat before the YLOD there is no way to know when it will fail for good but the clock is ticking.
If only Sony had acknowledged the problem before and offered to reapply quality thermal paste for less than their current repair flat fee of 150$ USD then maybe customers would not cry foul.
It should only be fair to note that Sony might not be handling most YLOD repairs since they charge more than many third parties that reflow the PS3 and also Sony will only provide refurbished console which will force the customer to redownload most content (because of the strong DRM that is used).
So even if 0.5% is quite small, that number is what Sony actually gets to repair/refurb, so it should be viewed as a sample of the actual problem.
It would seem that the oldest launch PS3 is most affected by the problem, yet since its price was very high at the time (notwithstanding its actual manufacturing costs) it only seems unfair to customers that Microsoft would extent its warranty and yet Sony would claim it's such a small problem that it's a customer issue not a manufacturing problem and thus not act on it and show some good will.
A 10 year lifespan on current gen consoles is quickly becoming a farce in light (yellow?) of this...
I can confirm personally that the North American launch model is also affected by the YLOD issue, as I had my PS3 reflowed a month ago to cure its YLOD.
Unfortunately as any victim can tell you with Sony's DRM you cannot switch models (to a slim for example) and restore a backup easily.
Most savegames will transfer to a slim after a restore, all the downloadable content has to be fully redownloaded and anything related to Singstar needs a call placed to Sony's customer service in order to allow redownload to a new console.
It's the Walnut Creek with 2 CDs from 95, before that Yggdrasil and SLS were other popular choices. But the first memories I have of linux were of kernel compiles, trying to optimize every BogoMips out of a Cyrix 486DLC system. That was back in 1993 when the kernels ran in the 0.99
Some other fun memories were modifying the assembly code to support a Bocaboard IO AT/66 because I could support 6 external modems with this baby and migrate my BBS from Deskview to linux. Ah the pain trying to allocate 6 IRQs for all my serial needs.
German Board games are notorious for balancing everything because they usually give each players the exact same cards or bonuses, what is left is either picked randomly or chosen by the player.
The order of cards play, or the response to any given action will determine the winner. The goal is quite often to optimize a pool of resources and again the skill and|or luck will determine the winner.
Here's a game that from the start of the game tries to balance things: you can pick a skin but your character will not be any faster or stronger than any other. Same thing goes for the weapon, the only differences are the map layout and the different team objectives, these are asymetric. And the skill levels of each player will give you an edge after each winning round thus promoting the best/luckiest players.
A game could be balanced, like some Quake III maps where each side is a mirror image of the other side and if you play these deathmatch on a 1 on 1 then it is fairly balanced. But who plays Quake 3 these days?
Hi, for up to 10000 users per day one windows server can easily handle the load. If you need higher availlability then you can use Windows Network Load Balancing service which is available in the standard edition of windows. You still have to replicate all your data manually, but since each server has a local copy of pages and data then even when you patch your windows server (once a month on patch tuesday) or just reboot then the second node will take over the shared IP address and your visitors will see minimal disruption of service. The only problems you will have to deal with will be user uploads and database sync if you want each of your server to have a local copy. Otherwise you can also use a third server if you need database service, but that server would not be redundant.
The only way to make an MS SQL server redundant would be with the clustering service that comes with windows Enterprise and SQL 2005 Standard, but watch out for the licensing costs. Ah and you need also a SAN for your database storage.
So in essence:
2 web servers with windows network load balancing = cheap
2 MS SQL servers with cluster service = very expensive
My recommendation:
Buy decent hardware with good support (any of the big three: IBM, Dell, HP) because when hardware fails you need that motherboard, power supply, hdd or memory ASAP
Use RAID 1 or RAID 5 for ALL storage, you want high availlability after all, I prefer Hot Plug drives, you don't want downtime because you swap a HDD and HDDs are like consumables these days
Use windows network load balancing if you can afford it to maintain web site availability.
Learn Linux if you want a cheaper licensing.
Consider all the costs associated with database clustering, it can easily run you into a 100 000$ solution for an MS SQL solution
Slashdot Mirror
Another project that was doomed before release, even though it promised instant-on, ultra lightweight and long battery life...
I would guess that the update manager sends some information like machine name which when coupled with the IP address and some information like version of kernel update requested can track quite accurately the number of installed Ubuntu.
As for the snapshot comment well the machine name probably doesn't change and can be seen as a dupe when analyzing logs. Same thing for the virtual mac address which most users don't change.
Analyzing server logs could determine unique IPs that request data from security.ubuntu.com and if you harvest that data you know how many different Ubuntu systems are live within a period of time.
Update Manager seems to retrieve a list of update servers at least once and that data is a good indicator of the number of installations, that's a good starting number then add some statistics on corporate usage where updates have been centralized, support contracts and you are starting to get a figure.
Downloads are probably too decentralized to get an accurate number, it would be like counting Windoze shipped sitting on store shelves, meh I guess they count those anyway.
Actually in the first year updates always required that you connect a controller with a cable in order to perform a firmware upgrade. My guess is that all the radios and networking were disabled with the firmware update boot loader, after all have you tried ever performing a windows, Linux or even OSX installation from scratch with a bluetooth keyboard? My guess is that it just won't work with a reduced OS.
Over the life of both PS3 (original and slim), updates have never caused any issue. So far the only reformating I ever did was when I have upgraded the HDD, yearly for the launch model and once for the slim, they did not break, I just wanted more space. Sony really need to reconsider removing the Other OS feature because otherwise firmware updates over the last 3+ years just built new features.
I do hope they will enjoy it later on, it could have been Muzak after all.
Actually your comment reminded me of the Bigfoot drives... Now that was genuine crap by any standards. They even had the (CY) CrappY model.
I have tried rebel with both Leopoard and Snow Leopard under VMWare Server 2.0 and unfortunately it does not work.
It is unfortunate because it would open MAC OS to the enterprise market which it currectly does not possess.
I am sure an army of web dev would love to test their site under OSX in their corporate environment without having to justify the cost of 'specialized' Apple hardware.
I just got an email back from Psystar support, unfortunately they don't answer my question on USB CD and their Wiki does not cover the subject either:
Hello,
The RebelEFI Hardware Compatibility List (HCL) can be found at http://wiki.psystar.com/ . Here you will be able to find information regarding your hardware. If your device/computer is not listed please send a complete report of what is not working to support@psystar.com. Please include: Computer Model, Motherboard, CPU, Video Card and Order Number if you have already purchased. You may also download a trail copy at http://cdn.psystar.com/rebelefi_latest.iso . Updates to RebelEFI including change log will be posted both on http://wiki.psystar.com/ and http://community.psystar.com./ Hardware still not working? Don't get discouraged. Psystar is actively adding more hardware support to RebelEFI.
I have just tried the Rebel EFI boot CD and so far not luck in booting from a USB DVD Burner on a Core 2 Duo.
My guess and from some reading it seems to require a standard SATA (is IDE supported ?) DVD drive...
Roxanne Elings signed that letter, her profile can be viewed here:
http://www.gtlaw.com/People/GRoxanneElings
The funny part is that she appears to have studied the law, unfortunately she is using http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Undue_influence to try to coerce journalists into giving up good stories like this, a blatant use of corporate lawyers bashing on free speech.
I am pretty sure if you check it out the price on average for a dedicated high speed connection over the last 8 years in Canada has stayed the same, the speed has increased a bit but not by leaps and bounds but compared to many other countries Canada is starting to lag behind. There is no widespread ADSL 2nd generation here, no fiber to the home, no TV over ADSL or other such 'newer' services...
There are already fewer ISPs in Canada then there were 10 years ago when you would have dozens of choice in any major city. Now only a few are left and they don't compete on price anymore. Long gone are the days of unlimited internet for 20 bucks of the modem yesteryear, now everything is metered or limited in some way and nothing you could call high speed is under 30$
The problem is the current big ADSL ISP's(Bell and Telus) have a monopoly on their markets(It might be an Oligopoly, I don't know if Bell and Telus compete in the same geographic areas.)
You got that right, all the telcos and cable companies have very specific geographic areas, quite often the only real choice is either ADSL or cable, and in many locations you don't even have such a choice.
If the prices will go too much up, I'm sure customers will be unhappy and there will be new ISP's taking place.
Have you taught about the price to enter such a market? It is not possible for any new player to come in and create its own infrastructure and try to compete with the Bell, Telus, Rogers & Videotron of the Canadian market which all have huge market share. So yes the CRTC has to come in and legislate and force the market to open up especially since all Telcos have been subsidized over the years by the Canadians.
I have heard that Stanford has had some PS3s folding 24-7 since the introduction of the PS3 folding client... I'd be curious to know if they've had any YLODs.
Check out the folding forums and you will see there are a few mentions of dead PS3s...
http://foldingforum.org/viewforum.php?f=3&start=0
No really besides running it for folding @ home on hot summer days and then 14 hours gaming marathons I really don't see your point ;-)
Liquid nitrogen cooling for the next gen!
If you would care to read about the YLOD, you would know better. My launch PS3 DID have a YLOD that was fixed with reflowing, so although I cannot confirm everyone in NA will be affected at one point, I do confirm the NA launch models have been affected.
Remember Sony is publicly acknowledging 0.5% failure rate. Several third parties are fixing PS3 affected by the YLOD in NA. Blame it on hot weather this summer if you will or because ice cream sales are good.
The funny part is that a quick search on google.ca turns up 6500 hits for YLOD while on google.co.uk turns up 7600 hits. Considering Canada is half the population of the UK one could assume some Canadians seem interested by this subject.
Oh and yes if you care, Squaretrade has a recent study and found PS3 to have 10% failure rates after 2 years, read the PDF here:
http://www.squaretrade.com/pages/xbox360-ps3-wii-reliability-08-2009
The XBOX gets 23.7% defects after 2 years.
The Slim is fine, but then again the YLOD issues seems to be affecting launch consoles after 18-24 months. So maybe the Slim will be affected too in 24 months.
The solder is not the heart of the issue but more the usage of cheap thermal paste that was not applied evenly, in order to get solder issues you first need a heat problem, one that would be caused by improper thermal dissipation through the heatsink and fan.
Most third parties that reflow the console will gladly use artic silver or other quality thermal paste for a better heat transfer and dissipation and thus might fix the problem for good, unfortunately if the console has been damaged by heat before the YLOD there is no way to know when it will fail for good but the clock is ticking.
If only Sony had acknowledged the problem before and offered to reapply quality thermal paste for less than their current repair flat fee of 150$ USD then maybe customers would not cry foul.
It should only be fair to note that Sony might not be handling most YLOD repairs since they charge more than many third parties that reflow the PS3 and also Sony will only provide refurbished console which will force the customer to redownload most content (because of the strong DRM that is used).
So even if 0.5% is quite small, that number is what Sony actually gets to repair/refurb, so it should be viewed as a sample of the actual problem.
It would seem that the oldest launch PS3 is most affected by the problem, yet since its price was very high at the time (notwithstanding its actual manufacturing costs) it only seems unfair to customers that Microsoft would extent its warranty and yet Sony would claim it's such a small problem that it's a customer issue not a manufacturing problem and thus not act on it and show some good will.
A 10 year lifespan on current gen consoles is quickly becoming a farce in light (yellow?) of this...
I can confirm personally that the North American launch model is also affected by the YLOD issue, as I had my PS3 reflowed a month ago to cure its YLOD.
Unfortunately as any victim can tell you with Sony's DRM you cannot switch models (to a slim for example) and restore a backup easily.
Most savegames will transfer to a slim after a restore, all the downloadable content has to be fully redownloaded and anything related to Singstar needs a call placed to Sony's customer service in order to allow redownload to a new console.
It's the Walnut Creek with 2 CDs from 95, before that Yggdrasil and SLS were other popular choices. But the first memories I have of linux were of kernel compiles, trying to optimize every BogoMips out of a Cyrix 486DLC system. That was back in 1993 when the kernels ran in the 0.99
Some other fun memories were modifying the assembly code to support a Bocaboard IO AT/66 because I could support 6 external modems with this baby and migrate my BBS from Deskview to linux. Ah the pain trying to allocate 6 IRQs for all my serial needs.
German Board games are notorious for balancing everything because they usually give each players the exact same cards or bonuses, what is left is either picked randomly or chosen by the player.
The order of cards play, or the response to any given action will determine the winner. The goal is quite often to optimize a pool of resources and again the skill and|or luck will determine the winner.
Here's a game that from the start of the game tries to balance things: you can pick a skin but your character will not be any faster or stronger than any other. Same thing goes for the weapon, the only differences are the map layout and the different team objectives, these are asymetric. And the skill levels of each player will give you an edge after each winning round thus promoting the best/luckiest players.
A game could be balanced, like some Quake III maps where each side is a mirror image of the other side and if you play these deathmatch on a 1 on 1 then it is fairly balanced. But who plays Quake 3 these days?
Hi, for up to 10000 users per day one windows server can easily handle the load. If you need higher availlability then you can use Windows Network Load Balancing service which is available in the standard edition of windows. You still have to replicate all your data manually, but since each server has a local copy of pages and data then even when you patch your windows server (once a month on patch tuesday) or just reboot then the second node will take over the shared IP address and your visitors will see minimal disruption of service. The only problems you will have to deal with will be user uploads and database sync if you want each of your server to have a local copy. Otherwise you can also use a third server if you need database service, but that server would not be redundant. The only way to make an MS SQL server redundant would be with the clustering service that comes with windows Enterprise and SQL 2005 Standard, but watch out for the licensing costs. Ah and you need also a SAN for your database storage. So in essence: 2 web servers with windows network load balancing = cheap 2 MS SQL servers with cluster service = very expensive My recommendation: Buy decent hardware with good support (any of the big three: IBM, Dell, HP) because when hardware fails you need that motherboard, power supply, hdd or memory ASAP Use RAID 1 or RAID 5 for ALL storage, you want high availlability after all, I prefer Hot Plug drives, you don't want downtime because you swap a HDD and HDDs are like consumables these days Use windows network load balancing if you can afford it to maintain web site availability. Learn Linux if you want a cheaper licensing. Consider all the costs associated with database clustering, it can easily run you into a 100 000$ solution for an MS SQL solution