By that, I mean everything is rated at 240V (even the wires I happened to use).
Since the current is the limiting factor in the components, going to 240 vs 120 would let you run with twice at power.
I used a similar PIC chip and the little I2C ethernet controller for a similar design to control my outside xmas lights.
It was a little bigger than a business card - but was able to dim 32 channels of AC power for my lighting strands. I Used 2 of these board to control all the lights.
All the lighting commands were pumpted to via. UDP packets from my Linux server - it was a pretty impressive display!
Unfortunately, they were probably too rare and obscure to make it into the list, by the BIOS error screens on the old PS/2's should get some sort of an "honorable mention".
For those who don't know/remember/weren't born - In IBM's infinite wisdom, I guess they decided to draw pictures in some sort of crappy BIOS low-res graphics to describe the error messages - probibly because anyone dumb enough to buy a PS/2 were to stupid to know how to read.
For example - I was working as an intern my freshman year of college, and had to set up a bunch of machines (or somehting) including PS/2's.
Now I mind you, I was actually quite computer litterate - so imagine my surprise when I turned on one system and got a picture which I could only describe as late-20th-century hieroglyphics. It had a person - with horizontal dotted lines coming out of its head, going through a rectangle or square or something - then a bunch of numbers.
WTF?!
I probably spent 10 minutes trying my best to decipher. The best I could come up with, was that it wanted me to elevate the monitor to be level with my head - probibly to avoid some sort of repetitive-strain-injury or something.
Was there some sort of water-leveling device running between the computer and monitor through the VGA cable or something?! How did it know this?! Even I knew this was stupid - but was desparate to try something. No - that wasn't it!
Eventually, I figured out the message: "Look up this error code in the manual".
If they just said that, I would have done that! If that hadn't showed anything but an error number, I would have done that!
History Channel Special & Their "Comuiting Gri
on
LHC Success!
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
The history channel ran a special on the LHC last night - I highly recommend everyone watch it!
I've always known this project was enormous, but I really didn't get it until I watched this special. They'd spend 5 minutes or show showing this massive facility with 30 foot high equipment - and this would be just like a little instrumentation room - just one of many. Truly amazing.
Working in "technology" - all the same-'old same-'ol computers we see day-in and day-out look like stupid adding machines next to the scale and complexity of the stuff there.
Speaking of which - it also went over their "computing grid". Their data storage farm was enormous. They also had ten thousand nodes to crunch the data!
BTW - What kind of machines did they have you ask? Some slick IBM 1u rackmount chassis? No - just a bunch of cheap, off-white, off-brand tower PCs sitting on rows and rows of shelves.
I'm sure they (did the smart thing) and did what Google did. High-end machines? No. Support Contracts? No.
But to their/his credit, from the Wikipedia entry on the "Haxe" language:
he name haXe was chosen because it is short, easy, cool, and "has an X inside", which the author claims is necessary to make any new technology a success./quote
2. I am/was suspecting that this was not computer generated.
I was waiting for the end of the movie, when it showed some 50 year-old [insert random ethnicity] guy doing the (non) "motion-capture" for the video - and his 500 lb. neighbor doing the voice-over. That would be followed by a couple of screen-shots of the "Emily" model on the designers CAD screen, being designed and tweaked.
I've always thought this this was a kind of proof that people from outer space do not roam amongst us a-la Star Trek.
My belief is that this mechanism would make it very very very difficult for a super-intelligent race to "fool" us into thinking one of their own in disguise was one of us.
You could perhaps argue that if they were that intelligent that they could pull it off - but I doubt that to be the case - because it seems that these type of biological traits - be they reflexes, implules, etc. - are so refined in the structure of biology - that almost no amount of "intelligence" could overcome them. Furthermore, with something as complicated as the subtlties in not just look, but smell, sound and especially behavior - it would be an impossible task to pull off.
Obviously - you could argue that they could with enough sophistication, etc. - but this is just my $0.02.
Very very interesting! I never knew (or heard) of this before.
However, I saw one of the "Final Fantasy" movies - and have always said that the graphics were so good - and the humans were done so well - that my mind started gravitating to the very very subtle things that didn't look right - like the skin looked "too dry" or something extrodinarly slight. This became a tremendous tremendous distraction.
On the complete polar opposite - I find nothing wrong whatsoever with the animation in "South Park"!
I concluded that as the mind was convinced that someone was "real" - the more it would discriminate. This made a whole lot of sense. Take for example why young kids (or adults) are so flipped out by people with disfigurements. This was obviously a generic thing given to us.
I was kind of shocked and surprise to find out that this is a "known" thing.
I have never had TiVo refuse to record a program, or delete one without my consent.
But by the same token - I don't decide when my grass gets cut - or how low - my landscapers do.
I don't decide what cleanser my toilet gets cleaned with, my cleaning people do
When any of these become unsatisfactory, I'll get rid of them for something else.
MythTV may be good for some people - but I was tired of sitting down on the couch in front of the TV after a long day of work, to debug why something wasn't working right.
Love it or hate it, TiVo is always there. Always on. Always working. Anything I need a a second or two away from happening. And I've never had to put an ounce of thought into it.
Don't get me wrong, I wanted to love MythTV - I still do! I envisioned spending time tying it into my house lights, alarm and sprinkler, etc. etc. etc. and having all sorts of fun. It just turned out to be so much work that I never got around to the "fun" - I never got it all working correctly - (OpenGL issues, driver issues, remote control issues).
When I had it my (then) 2-3 year old son loved penguins. The KnoppMyth windows desktop (which would display in the background when the Myth front end would crash/close/disappear) show Tux sitting on a couch watching TV. My son loved seeing this! But it kind of became a joke - whenever we'd go to watch something, it would be "Oh, oh - Penguin watching T.V. again!"
(Funnyness aside) - so then what - I get a call about if from my Wife, and have to SSH in from work to re-launch the Myth front-end? It was really cool that I could do this - but quite unfortunate that I had to.
I had a Tivo - and have since moved to Windows Media Center,then to Tivo, then to a Comcast HD-PVR box, then to the Comacst HD-PVR box running Tivo firmware.
My recommendation? Tivo. Hands down! It doesn't have all the features and flexibility as the other units, but it's fast and responsive - from a usability perspective. And I can even download my shows to my PC.
Windows MCE was pretty nice - but after about a month, my filesystem got corruped, and I lost everything - including the 300 CDs I had ripped (manually) to the unit! The UI was a little slow.
Then came Myth. A royal pain to get running. The features and flexibility were very nice. The worst thing about it however was the music portion of it. (MythMusic). That was horible beyond believe - especialy in-contrast to the Windows MCE, which was very very nice. MythTV's UI was kind of slow and klunky as well. I do not miss it.
Then came the Comcast HD PVR. That was too great - limited functionality and channel guides were a pain. No music, no download capability. We only went through 2 or 3 of these boxes (due to dying) during our month we owned them - when we found out Tivo firmware was available.
The Comcast HD-DVR with Tivo firmware was the worst. We went through about 3 trips to the Comcast office, dead units, 3 or 4 technician house-calls. Lost show, etc. They eventually came out with a version of firmware which at least stablized the box. It's not too bad now - but a bit clunky - not as fast and responsive. The firmware is still kind of screwed-up - gives you the wrong sounds when clicking through things - shows disappear sometimes - a few unit freezes, etc. No music - at least not our - just the crappy Comcast music channels. Oh yea, and whatever you do - don't hit the "on-demand" button - 'cause that'll just ruin your whole evening.
So for the few things we watch in HD, we use the Comcast HD-PVR with Tivo - reluctantly.
For everything else - all the reruns, and bulk of stuff we record - and music - It's all still the Tivo Series-2. It works. It's fast. It's reliable. It's responsive. It does what I want it to when I hit a button. We've never lost a show. We're on our original unit after many many years. It's simple and streightforward. I don't want to do "development" at night - I just want to press a button and watch TV. Tivo does that, and well.
The only realy upside to MythTV was that it was free...but not anymore!
I guy has a bunch of chemicals, some of which may be toxic, dangerous, etc. stored in a very unsafe manner.
If he had leaking 55 gallon drums of radioactive sludge in is front yard, and the zoning people drove by and saw it - would they be powerless to do anything about that?
I don't know that they are necessarily saying that he can't have the items - maybe they are. There are zoning laws that state substances you can/cannot have - how they must be stored - how the environment must be safeguarded against them - what precautions must be need for fire prevention - and to alert any responders to the residences of the potential dangers in there. I don't think any of these were follows.
Ya' know that little emblum on trucks/buildings that says how "flammable/corrosive/poisonous" something is? Did he have those?
Gas stations, factories, labs and other places that have quantities of hazardous chemicals are required to have fire suppression, catch-basins, safe-storage, first-aid measures and other stuff. There are rules and zoning requirements involved.
The issue here is not necessarily whether or not he was allowed to posses those substances, but whither or not he was possessing them in a way which was safe and lawful - as defined by the zoning laws and fire codes.
The did not need a warrant because the stuff was "in plain sight" when the first-responders went into the home.
This is such a colossal issue, and, well, most of the stuff even posted here is wrong or misdirected.
There are a billion parts of the system in which data could be lost:
Applications write to disks, even the apps could do some caching, or could partially write files - corrupting them if they leave files half-written. This could be corrected if apps always did "safe-writing" for proper recovery, but some do, some don't.
A kernel or OS will usually implement some buffering of caching of data. This could be bypassed, but at the severe expense of performance.
Filesystems control the writing of data blocks, and filesystem metadata to the disks. Often times, if one piece of this gets written, but another doesn't, corruption could occur. Things like journaling exist, must most of the time (for example) ext3 jounraling prevents the filesystem metadata from getting corrupted, not the file data.
RAID controllers often have battery backed caches. Often, these batteries are dead, and you may not even know. As someone who has worked extensivly in this area, I can assure you there is no way of knowing the health of the battery without completely draining it, recharging it, and looking at it charge/discharge capactity. Trust me, your RAID controller does not do this. If it did, you'd be completely vulnerable to data loss while this test was in-progress and the battery was depleated. Does your RAID controller have two batteries? I didn't think so.
Your raid controller sucks. You might feel all warm and fuzzy that you have a RAID-5 array from a name-brand vendor, but until you've pushed that card, and tested it in all the potential edge conditions, you don't know how many blaring issues it really has. Really, I'm serious.
So here's the issue: Power outage is only one of several (billion) things that could go wrong rendering the system inoperable, and causing data loss. Correcting the issue means understanding the problems at all of these layers and fixing them. The chain is only as strong as it's weakest link.
Are there implementations that go the whole nine years and do all this? Yes:
Databases (at the application layer) tend to be anal about how the write to the disk/filesystem, journaling, safe-writing, etc. These are sometimes even mirrored at this level (mysql cluster) to prevent problems.
Filesystems (like ext3) can journal actual data (not just metadata) at the severe expense of performance. This is so bad, you probably want to handle things at the application layer above.
High-end systems can use (typically external) active-active RAID controllers with mirrored caches. Pricey.
You put it all together - and you're talking a system which is well integrated, purpose-built, and very, very, very well tested at the extremes of any edge conditions. This is what separates very expensive high-end solutions from cheap things thrown together with mix-and-matched commodity hardware. Not to say "commodity" hardware isn't okay - but you have to really know what its doing - and how the pieces interact.
So to the topic - having a UPS is like pissing in a dark blue suit - it makes you feel all warm and comefy, but no one really see that you're really just covered in piss.
It will product against one issue. If your serious about protection, you need more.
So like everything in life, everything comes at a cost. No, your $200 UPS is not the magic bullet to protect your data that is sooo critical to you.
So now how important is that data really to you? How much you got to spend?;-)
>> I'm pretty sure I paid more in taxes out of one paycheck a month than you've collected in 4 years at $200/year.
I'm sure you do. Irrelevant.
>> Again, FF's fault how?
Its not - it has to do with root CAs...like the title of my post implies (let me clarify) [Firefox is] "Not the first one..." [Google Checkout does this too]
>> It's not like it's impossible to accept a self-signed cert, and for all the "scripting" you've done, why don't you mention a quick blurb about FF3's advanced certificate security and validation mechanisms and how a user might go about accepting your self-signed cert.
I agree. Not impossible. It's a source of confusion for those who don't understand, and a just pain in the ass for those who do. And 99% of the time, your not securing financial transactions, your encrypting pages on the bug tracking database at work, or something mundane.
>>The fact you only make $200/year should give you a clue.
...a clue that some shareware I wrote 5 years ago and sell for $3 a pop is still making money after
Thanks for the business advise. I'll triple the price of my product to cover the SSL certificate, and I'm sure that'll work out well. It's not worth it though, considering I stopped developing the product 4 years ago and am just collecing cash at this point off of it.
all this time, yes.
I (read careful) **DO NOT HANDLE** any sensitive data or money - PayPal does all this.
Google wants a $100 certificate just to ping be back and tell me "Joe sent you $3".
Oh - they do pay through Google (or PayPal's) site.
The API is just something by which Google tells me they paid (by running a CGI on my site). I still never know/see the credit card numbers or anything, I just want to know they sent payment so I can send out their registration numbers. It also lets me request other data fields, and pass those back to me. (Like a units PIN number, or whatever - could be a tee-shirt size.)
So if its just this, then why is an SSL certificate even necessary? All they are telling me is "fatso@blow.com" sent you "$3.95" and wears an "XXXL" T-Shirt. Your arguing "So they don't reveal this info to the wrong person". Well, #1 this info has no financial data, #2 they could get it several ways (by sniffing email), #3 What do they need a $100 Verisign Certificate, as opposed to one I generated myself??
And NO I don't want to hear crap about "Well, MyCrappyISP offers SSL certificates for $7 a year" - Google Checkout does not accept these - And Firefox doesn't unless you set up an "exception" - which in which the warning message with will confuse 40% of the users, and make another 40% think that "hackers are breaking into their computer".
PayPal does this without requiring the certificate.
I don't think anyone really wants "Open" CA authorities. "Open" and "Secure" are generally contradictory in this context (not everywhere).
I think the optimum solution would be a cheap root CA who is also highly trusted.
I don't know who this would be - maybe someone like a traditional brick-and-morter "bank" which could vogue for an SSL certificate being validated in the same way that are able to link a bank account to a person, company, SSN, etc.
I was going to say also someone like Google.
The point is, if a CA-signed cert was $5, no one would be complaining, but if any 'ol shmucks signed certs were automatically accepted by your browser, the whole system wouldn't mean anything.
I have been using PayPal for many years for automatic payment processing on my web site for shareware I sell.
When Google Checkout came along, I figured I'd accept that too - so I started doing scripts on my web site to take Google Checkout payments.
This came to a screeching halt when I realized that Google Checkout payments (or at least automated CGI processing of them) would only be done through web sites with SSL certificates signed by one of the "Major Authorities".
I wasn't willing to shell out $100 (about half my yearly profit!) for the stupid certificate.
This FF3 problem is even worse - if you use SSL, your web browser would be screaming to your end-users that you're probably dealing with some hokey-untrusted individual!
Let's just say that in any respect, I won't be having any little buttons on my site recommending that people use Firefox...
Slashdot Mirror
You were actually serious!
http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1149.html
Isn't this the same exact kinda thing that Steve Fossett et-al were building (completed?) - as covered previously on Slashdot?
By that, I mean everything is rated at 240V (even the wires I happened to use). Since the current is the limiting factor in the components, going to 240 vs 120 would let you run with twice at power.
Haven't only because my my initial rev. had a couple bugs (which required wires) and those changes haven't been made into the schematic.
It was a little bigger than a business card - but was able to dim 32 channels of AC power for my lighting strands. I Used 2 of these board to control all the lights.
All the lighting commands were pumpted to via. UDP packets from my Linux server - it was a pretty impressive display!
Check it out at: http://www.bradgoodman.com/dimwatt
For those who don't know/remember/weren't born - In IBM's infinite wisdom, I guess they decided to draw pictures in some sort of crappy BIOS low-res graphics to describe the error messages - probibly because anyone dumb enough to buy a PS/2 were to stupid to know how to read.
For example - I was working as an intern my freshman year of college, and had to set up a bunch of machines (or somehting) including PS/2's.
Now I mind you, I was actually quite computer litterate - so imagine my surprise when I turned on one system and got a picture which I could only describe as late-20th-century hieroglyphics. It had a person - with horizontal dotted lines coming out of its head, going through a rectangle or square or something - then a bunch of numbers.
WTF?!
I probably spent 10 minutes trying my best to decipher. The best I could come up with, was that it wanted me to elevate the monitor to be level with my head - probibly to avoid some sort of repetitive-strain-injury or something.
Was there some sort of water-leveling device running between the computer and monitor through the VGA cable or something?! How did it know this?! Even I knew this was stupid - but was desparate to try something. No - that wasn't it!
Eventually, I figured out the message: "Look up this error code in the manual".
If they just said that, I would have done that! If that hadn't showed anything but an error number, I would have done that!
$50 for a 4x20 Text LCD is not cheap!
I've always known this project was enormous, but I really didn't get it until I watched this special. They'd spend 5 minutes or show showing this massive facility with 30 foot high equipment - and this would be just like a little instrumentation room - just one of many. Truly amazing.
Working in "technology" - all the same-'old same-'ol computers we see day-in and day-out look like stupid adding machines next to the scale and complexity of the stuff there.
Speaking of which - it also went over their "computing grid". Their data storage farm was enormous. They also had ten thousand nodes to crunch the data!
BTW - What kind of machines did they have you ask? Some slick IBM 1u rackmount chassis? No - just a bunch of cheap, off-white, off-brand tower PCs sitting on rows and rows of shelves.
I'm sure they (did the smart thing) and did what Google did. High-end machines? No. Support Contracts? No.
If it dies? Pitch it and get a new one.
Do that, and it's no longer a "one-time" pad!
"C++0x" - it just rolls off the tounge!
But to their/his credit, from the Wikipedia entry on the "Haxe" language:
he name haXe was chosen because it is short, easy, cool, and "has an X inside", which the author claims is necessary to make any new technology a success. /quote
-Apu, Trying to act like he's not an alien (From India).
2. I am/was suspecting that this was not computer generated.
I was waiting for the end of the movie, when it showed some 50 year-old [insert random ethnicity] guy doing the (non) "motion-capture" for the video - and his 500 lb. neighbor doing the voice-over. That would be followed by a couple of screen-shots of the "Emily" model on the designers CAD screen, being designed and tweaked.
But no - I believe that Emiliy was just...Emily.
My belief is that this mechanism would make it very very very difficult for a super-intelligent race to "fool" us into thinking one of their own in disguise was one of us.
You could perhaps argue that if they were that intelligent that they could pull it off - but I doubt that to be the case - because it seems that these type of biological traits - be they reflexes, implules, etc. - are so refined in the structure of biology - that almost no amount of "intelligence" could overcome them. Furthermore, with something as complicated as the subtlties in not just look, but smell, sound and especially behavior - it would be an impossible task to pull off.
Obviously - you could argue that they could with enough sophistication, etc. - but this is just my $0.02.
However, I saw one of the "Final Fantasy" movies - and have always said that the graphics were so good - and the humans were done so well - that my mind started gravitating to the very very subtle things that didn't look right - like the skin looked "too dry" or something extrodinarly slight. This became a tremendous tremendous distraction.
On the complete polar opposite - I find nothing wrong whatsoever with the animation in "South Park"!
I concluded that as the mind was convinced that someone was "real" - the more it would discriminate. This made a whole lot of sense. Take for example why young kids (or adults) are so flipped out by people with disfigurements. This was obviously a generic thing given to us.
I was kind of shocked and surprise to find out that this is a "known" thing.
But by the same token - I don't decide when my grass gets cut - or how low - my landscapers do.
I don't decide what cleanser my toilet gets cleaned with, my cleaning people do
When any of these become unsatisfactory, I'll get rid of them for something else.
MythTV may be good for some people - but I was tired of sitting down on the couch in front of the TV after a long day of work, to debug why something wasn't working right.
Love it or hate it, TiVo is always there. Always on. Always working. Anything I need a a second or two away from happening. And I've never had to put an ounce of thought into it.
Don't get me wrong, I wanted to love MythTV - I still do! I envisioned spending time tying it into my house lights, alarm and sprinkler, etc. etc. etc. and having all sorts of fun. It just turned out to be so much work that I never got around to the "fun" - I never got it all working correctly - (OpenGL issues, driver issues, remote control issues).
When I had it my (then) 2-3 year old son loved penguins. The KnoppMyth windows desktop (which would display in the background when the Myth front end would crash/close/disappear) show Tux sitting on a couch watching TV. My son loved seeing this! But it kind of became a joke - whenever we'd go to watch something, it would be "Oh, oh - Penguin watching T.V. again!"
(Funnyness aside) - so then what - I get a call about if from my Wife, and have to SSH in from work to re-launch the Myth front-end? It was really cool that I could do this - but quite unfortunate that I had to.
My recommendation? Tivo. Hands down! It doesn't have all the features and flexibility as the other units, but it's fast and responsive - from a usability perspective. And I can even download my shows to my PC.
Windows MCE was pretty nice - but after about a month, my filesystem got corruped, and I lost everything - including the 300 CDs I had ripped (manually) to the unit! The UI was a little slow.
Then came Myth. A royal pain to get running. The features and flexibility were very nice. The worst thing about it however was the music portion of it. (MythMusic). That was horible beyond believe - especialy in-contrast to the Windows MCE, which was very very nice. MythTV's UI was kind of slow and klunky as well. I do not miss it.
Then came the Comcast HD PVR. That was too great - limited functionality and channel guides were a pain. No music, no download capability. We only went through 2 or 3 of these boxes (due to dying) during our month we owned them - when we found out Tivo firmware was available.
The Comcast HD-DVR with Tivo firmware was the worst. We went through about 3 trips to the Comcast office, dead units, 3 or 4 technician house-calls. Lost show, etc. They eventually came out with a version of firmware which at least stablized the box. It's not too bad now - but a bit clunky - not as fast and responsive. The firmware is still kind of screwed-up - gives you the wrong sounds when clicking through things - shows disappear sometimes - a few unit freezes, etc. No music - at least not our - just the crappy Comcast music channels. Oh yea, and whatever you do - don't hit the "on-demand" button - 'cause that'll just ruin your whole evening.
So for the few things we watch in HD, we use the Comcast HD-PVR with Tivo - reluctantly.
For everything else - all the reruns, and bulk of stuff we record - and music - It's all still the Tivo Series-2. It works. It's fast. It's reliable. It's responsive. It does what I want it to when I hit a button. We've never lost a show. We're on our original unit after many many years. It's simple and streightforward. I don't want to do "development" at night - I just want to press a button and watch TV. Tivo does that, and well.
The only realy upside to MythTV was that it was free...but not anymore!
If he had leaking 55 gallon drums of radioactive sludge in is front yard, and the zoning people drove by and saw it - would they be powerless to do anything about that?
I don't know that they are necessarily saying that he can't have the items - maybe they are. There are zoning laws that state substances you can/cannot have - how they must be stored - how the environment must be safeguarded against them - what precautions must be need for fire prevention - and to alert any responders to the residences of the potential dangers in there. I don't think any of these were follows.
Ya' know that little emblum on trucks/buildings that says how "flammable/corrosive/poisonous" something is? Did he have those?
Gas stations, factories, labs and other places that have quantities of hazardous chemicals are required to have fire suppression, catch-basins, safe-storage, first-aid measures and other stuff. There are rules and zoning requirements involved.
The issue here is not necessarily whether or not he was allowed to posses those substances, but whither or not he was possessing them in a way which was safe and lawful - as defined by the zoning laws and fire codes.
The did not need a warrant because the stuff was "in plain sight" when the first-responders went into the home.
No warrant needed. The firefighters were there fighting the fire, and the chemicals were "In plain sight".
There are a billion parts of the system in which data could be lost:
Applications write to disks, even the apps could do some caching, or could partially write files - corrupting them if they leave files half-written. This could be corrected if apps always did "safe-writing" for proper recovery, but some do, some don't.
A kernel or OS will usually implement some buffering of caching of data. This could be bypassed, but at the severe expense of performance.
Filesystems control the writing of data blocks, and filesystem metadata to the disks. Often times, if one piece of this gets written, but another doesn't, corruption could occur. Things like journaling exist, must most of the time (for example) ext3 jounraling prevents the filesystem metadata from getting corrupted, not the file data.
RAID controllers often have battery backed caches. Often, these batteries are dead, and you may not even know. As someone who has worked extensivly in this area, I can assure you there is no way of knowing the health of the battery without completely draining it, recharging it, and looking at it charge/discharge capactity. Trust me, your RAID controller does not do this. If it did, you'd be completely vulnerable to data loss while this test was in-progress and the battery was depleated. Does your RAID controller have two batteries? I didn't think so.
Your raid controller sucks. You might feel all warm and fuzzy that you have a RAID-5 array from a name-brand vendor, but until you've pushed that card, and tested it in all the potential edge conditions, you don't know how many blaring issues it really has. Really, I'm serious.
So here's the issue: Power outage is only one of several (billion) things that could go wrong rendering the system inoperable, and causing data loss. Correcting the issue means understanding the problems at all of these layers and fixing them. The chain is only as strong as it's weakest link.
Are there implementations that go the whole nine years and do all this? Yes:
Databases (at the application layer) tend to be anal about how the write to the disk/filesystem, journaling, safe-writing, etc. These are sometimes even mirrored at this level (mysql cluster) to prevent problems.
Filesystems (like ext3) can journal actual data (not just metadata) at the severe expense of performance. This is so bad, you probably want to handle things at the application layer above.
High-end systems can use (typically external) active-active RAID controllers with mirrored caches. Pricey. You put it all together - and you're talking a system which is well integrated, purpose-built, and very, very, very well tested at the extremes of any edge conditions. This is what separates very expensive high-end solutions from cheap things thrown together with mix-and-matched commodity hardware. Not to say "commodity" hardware isn't okay - but you have to really know what its doing - and how the pieces interact.
So to the topic - having a UPS is like pissing in a dark blue suit - it makes you feel all warm and comefy, but no one really see that you're really just covered in piss.
It will product against one issue. If your serious about protection, you need more.
So like everything in life, everything comes at a cost. No, your $200 UPS is not the magic bullet to protect your data that is sooo critical to you.
So now how important is that data really to you? How much you got to spend? ;-)
I'm sure you do. Irrelevant.
>> Again, FF's fault how?
Its not - it has to do with root CAs...like the title of my post implies (let me clarify) [Firefox is] "Not the first one..." [Google Checkout does this too]
>> It's not like it's impossible to accept a self-signed cert, and for all the "scripting" you've done, why don't you mention a quick blurb about FF3's advanced certificate security and validation mechanisms and how a user might go about accepting your self-signed cert.
I agree. Not impossible. It's a source of confusion for those who don't understand, and a just pain in the ass for those who do. And 99% of the time, your not securing financial transactions, your encrypting pages on the bug tracking database at work, or something mundane.
Thanks for the business advise. I'll triple the price of my product to cover the SSL certificate, and I'm sure that'll work out well. It's not worth it though, considering I stopped developing the product 4 years ago and am just collecing cash at this point off of it.
all this time, yes.
I (read careful) **DO NOT HANDLE** any sensitive data or money - PayPal does all this.
Google wants a $100 certificate just to ping be back and tell me "Joe sent you $3".
PayPal does this without any SSL certs.
The API is just something by which Google tells me they paid (by running a CGI on my site). I still never know/see the credit card numbers or anything, I just want to know they sent payment so I can send out their registration numbers. It also lets me request other data fields, and pass those back to me. (Like a units PIN number, or whatever - could be a tee-shirt size.)
So if its just this, then why is an SSL certificate even necessary? All they are telling me is "fatso@blow.com" sent you "$3.95" and wears an "XXXL" T-Shirt. Your arguing "So they don't reveal this info to the wrong person". Well, #1 this info has no financial data, #2 they could get it several ways (by sniffing email), #3 What do they need a $100 Verisign Certificate, as opposed to one I generated myself??
And NO I don't want to hear crap about "Well, MyCrappyISP offers SSL certificates for $7 a year" - Google Checkout does not accept these - And Firefox doesn't unless you set up an "exception" - which in which the warning message with will confuse 40% of the users, and make another 40% think that "hackers are breaking into their computer".
PayPal does this without requiring the certificate.
I think the optimum solution would be a cheap root CA who is also highly trusted.
I don't know who this would be - maybe someone like a traditional brick-and-morter "bank" which could vogue for an SSL certificate being validated in the same way that are able to link a bank account to a person, company, SSN, etc.
I was going to say also someone like Google.
The point is, if a CA-signed cert was $5, no one would be complaining, but if any 'ol shmucks signed certs were automatically accepted by your browser, the whole system wouldn't mean anything.
When Google Checkout came along, I figured I'd accept that too - so I started doing scripts on my web site to take Google Checkout payments.
This came to a screeching halt when I realized that Google Checkout payments (or at least automated CGI processing of them) would only be done through web sites with SSL certificates signed by one of the "Major Authorities".
I wasn't willing to shell out $100 (about half my yearly profit!) for the stupid certificate.
This FF3 problem is even worse - if you use SSL, your web browser would be screaming to your end-users that you're probably dealing with some hokey-untrusted individual!
Let's just say that in any respect, I won't be having any little buttons on my site recommending that people use Firefox...
Did they specify a mailing address?