I hate the TSA almost as much as I hate customs agents who get their jollies from being subhuman assholes.
TSA groupings, ominous security announcement loops, harassment (swabbing drinks within Airport restaurants) and backscatter x-rays are the top reasons I avoid flying. No place does "police state" and fear induced freakout / overreaction ring more true than at the airport.
Having said this I was always puzzled by the whole screening situation... Your looking for outliers.. a low probability event..yet what is the TSA to do if one is discovered? What do you expect to go down if there is not a credible state dispenser of violence on hand to "regulate"?
For example bad guy tries to smuggle bad thing thru security. Bad guy gets caught. Bad guy has no problem using force. If there is no security nearby.. as much as I hate the TSA as an organization... individual GED earning goons deserve better outcomes assuming there is statistically relevant need to defend against this situation.
I wouldn't be surprised if there was none while TSA display cases and blogs are filled with weapons of all kinds virtually all of them were innocent mistakes people forgetting to take that shit out of their bags rather than any intent to cause harm. Being a cab driver or pizza delivery "agent" is still infinitely more dangerous than being a TSA agent.
I think TSAs own admission nobody is attacking airports speaks for itself. Changing policy in response to specific incidents rather than objective determinations on how to best utilize and allocate limited resources in the long run causes more problems than it solves.
Always interesting to hear politicians make such forceful unqualified statements when they know more than half the country (Significant numbers of D's and R's) think this guy is a hero.
With any luck Feinstein and Mr "You can't have your privacy violated if you don't know your privacy is violated" will find themselves looking for work when their term is up for renewal.
Linus's stated reason for not wanting numbers to go too high is seemingly based on a feeling or personal dislike of high numbers.
Two questions.
1. What happens when there are major changes in the Linux kernel? How are they now represented in selection of version number?
2. What happens when the major digit begins to resemble Firefox / Chromes out of control version madness? How many years before Linux 19.4?
It used to be version numbers actually meant something and conveyed some useful hint of scope or amount of change between versions.
I'm not sure dumping this concept for the sake of political games and or OCD pedantry are worth opportunity cost to the user when contrasted with structured predictable scheme based on commonly agreed and understood guidelines.
Every time someone messes with time zones and clocks it causes temporary confusion and additional work for systems not field upgradable now needing to be manually screwed with.
Nothing measurably good comes of it as people adapt to underlying reality regardless of what time the clock says. Your brilliant reason why x is better than y is an illusion it does not matter. It never did.
Last time DST got moved to "save energy" **surprise** no savings had been measured.
It is akin to changing the form of 110v outlets to make them "better". Disruptive change which solves nothing is simply a waste of everyone's time.
What I don't understand is the difference between someone being ticketed after posting a YouTube videos of their speeding rampages thru town and this?
Even if you don't get caught in the act when you tell the world what you did how does this not at the very least translate into a big fat fine?
What about all of your "lookouts" complicit in enabling your activities what is their risk of being held liable by some overzealous prosecutor?
If you want to do something like this I'm reckless enough not to care... going around and talking about your exploits in my opinion is crossing the line.
Moore's "law" has nothing to do with computing power. It has to do with the number of elements on a single wafer. It's about electrical engineering, not total system power.
At its core Moore's law is simply a reflection of COST per component (transistor).
The way outside of economies of scale you make transistors cost less is get them to take up less space on die which normally has the effect of lowering power requirements.
I suspect that the number of people who really understand Moore's law around here is much less than the number of people who invoke it (badly) at the drop of a hat.
Does it matter? If a transistor costs less that means a given person can afford to purchase a component with more of them. More transistors roughly translate into more "computing power".
The core problem is not multiple batteries it is ability to replace it when yours starts to suck.
and if you go for non-replaceable batteries you can get higher battery capacity
The iphone has what a More flexibility in shape and form of the battery
They are ALL rectangles embedded within the phone. Every last one of them. Nobody is currently producing phones where the battery is contorted to fill every last ounce of internal space.
and no need for extra electronics and detachable lid for the battery
LOL extra electronics for a passive connector? Why are detachable lids bad? They tend to serve other useful purposes such as holding SIMs and SD cards.
Both of these take space that could be used for more battery otherwise.
You seem to be clinging to abstract notions of what is "possible" vs. what is "real". Only what is real actually matters.
Not to be an apologist, but I don't think Apple necessarily started it.
Who was selling cellphones without user replaceable batteries before Apple?
As far as the few phones that still have removable batterties, I fear will see an end to that as well in the next few years.
Or maybe Samsung is more than happy to continue to accept additional business coming their way from people smart enough not to settle for Nokia/HTC/Apple planned obsolescence bullshit. They certainly have lost me as a customer.
Have noted it is always high end phones that first get hit with non-replaceable batteries. Not everyone can afford a new phone every x years. Still a huge market of people having better things to spend their limited money on.
Or having to bring your phone into a service center and pay to have a battery upgrade. Any which way, it all likely comes down to pinching pennies and sqeezing blood from a stone.
As long as there is meaningful competition there shall always be market pressures in the other direction.
Have to love the weasel word games. When asked question 'x' they skillfully reply with an answer to question 'y'... Alexander has deployed this trick everywhere I have seen him speak publically.
When asked about bulk collection of metadata rather than respond to the actual question he instead proclaims reports of bulk content collection of US citizens are wrong.
When asked about tapping communications links between datacenters he says we are not directly in their servers.
Note vast differences between the questions asked and answers given.
The area around coal plants become more radioactive than nuclear power plants over time - because most coal contains small amounts of thorium which gets released into the air when the coal is burned and settles in the area around the coal plant.
Burning coal is the main reason why pregnant women can't eat most fish. It is also why a diet of just fish is bad for you rather than being the healthiest diet. Why? Because it releases tons of mercury into the ocean.
And of course, burning coal in also a huge green house gas contributor.
There is zero reason whatsoever to create new coal burning plants. Use that same money to offer then nuclear power plants. It would cost less lives and create technical jobs as opposed to creating mining jobs.
Switching gears back to planet earth which scenario do you think is a better situation?
Bank allows loan on condition proven cost effective measures to scrub out most non-CO2 pollutants including mercury.
Bank denies loan only for it to be granted by someone else who would impose no environmental restrictions of any kind?
Which is best for the environment?
The "developed" world has a duty to provide leadership and develop practical cost effective solutions. Thus far it has utterly totally failed.
What hit me like a mac truck carrying 39.5 tons of bricks all those peoples at Defcon applauding Alexander's various statements. They get paid by industry and governments to play cat and mouse games they are essentially on the same side.
It just isn't TLA overreach that is my enemy it's significant entrenched interests profiting off the sorry state of heavily used technologies while throwing wrenches or at least making no effort of any sort to correct underlying issues.
As for PRISM pitch there is nothing to discuss. NSA openly admits to collecting 100% of CDRs of all calls made within US.
When the same questions were asked in hearings where it was noted "collection" activity itself regardless of use violates statute the answer was classified... do yourself a favor and don't even bother opening your mouth to defend the indefensible. It just makes you look like more of an asshole than you already are.
The cloud guys (Amazon, Microsoft, VMware, others) employ the top talent in the world to work on this around the clock and will never stop.
Pure nonsense. All the heavy lifting in this space is done by software/hardware vendors and contractors specializing in datacenter design, AC,HVAC..etc. otherwise you don't need much talent... datacenters are full of glorified operators.
Company X selling widgets (lets say golf clubs) will just buy machines, and employ people to run the data center as efficiently as possible.
This is counterproductive. If your selling widgets just put up a storefront on Amazon and be done with it. No need to run *ANYTHING*. That's what makes "the cloud" worth doing.
Peddling virtual SQL servers and virtual machines does NOT make life easier if you assume the primary "IT" cost center is management of software environment rather than physical system.
How far do you think they will go in terms of maxing out the power efficiency of their data center to name just one metric on which individual data centers simply cannot compete.
Given cost/power requirements per transistor in modern COTS what percentage of organizations are big enough anymore to have this problem?
How do they even build the expertise in that?
Hire an AC/HVAC contractor like any of the datacenters would.
How can they afford to revamp that when progress renders their once-awesome data center obsolete in just 5 years or so?
Given the Azure price sheet my guess they can afford it plenty. Lets not forget equipment depreciation is also tax deductible.
Correct. And that's one of the other sources of cost efficiency for the cloud guys. Their data centers are humongously vast arrays of machines managed by very few humans.
If you get an Azure VM it is the same as any Windows or Linux computer you must manage and maintain the software you install on it including in most cases patching and rebooting of the OS. You don't get any software management savings by going virtual.
Spikes can happen when you don't expect them. Hardware purchases don't happen automatically as your traffic spikes. 'Elastic' can do that.
This is as silly as the Amazon example above. If you are that big you need to worry about "traffic" then it makes a lot of sense to hire an Akami and have them deal with bandwidth. Using Azure when you should be using a CDN is a costly mistake.
It's actually weird that you question these concepts and disparagingly call them memes.
This industry is full of lemmings who elect not to use their brains. I would love to see actual evidence or study by a disinterested third party where the "elastic" selling point is actually useful outside of a non-trivial minority.
A wait-and-see approach is certainly warranted.
Given the price list you got the "wait" part right.
Questions regarding portability, and trust issues with the providers are warranted.
Questioning the cost-effectiveness of cloud vs. on-premise is a little silly IMO
We're not a huge shop we have about 50 people and a few racks of servers. Most of those servers spend most of their time sending HLT instructions to the CPU. It costs us very little to maintain the physical hardware we have considering we always buy last years gear dirt cheap.
You can't seriously expect me to look at that price chart and look at what we have in house and conclude outsourcing it all to "the cloud" is cheaper. We can buy a new rack of shit every month with the money we would have to fork out in fees to Azure.
I'm sure the underlying philosophy is correct where central management of large numbers of systems can theoretically provide certain cost benefits but it sure as heck is not being reflected in any of the price lists I've seen.
Everything about this company is seedy and disgusting. Their "engineer" openly bragging on a blog about "doing the impossible" with a little IMAP MITM is breathtaking. Just about what we've come to expect from these assholes.
At this point I have to ponder who in their right mind would associate with or hire anyone still idiotic enough to keep using this "service"?
A ballast is only needed to limit current for arc-based light sources. So fluorescent lights need them and mercury- or sodium-based street lights need them, but LEDs definitely do not. An LED lamp just needs a power supply and that's about it.
Ballast, power supply.. Tomato tomato.. electronics that drive most LEDs might as well be called ballasts they are still electronic components dealing with relatively high current subject to fatigue and failure. Those gnarly heat fins built into commercial LEDs aint for the leds themselves.
Anyone out there with more specific info and/or why one color is better than another for night vision preservation?
All light u can see destroys night vision. Rods (e.g. peripheral vision) are not as sensitive to red light and take much longer than cones (e.g. center, detail, reading vision) to regain their low light sensitivity. Cones are what allows you to see with any detail..your legally blind without them and so if they are not sensitive to a frequency that frequency is not doing you much good.
The takeway is intensity rather than color is king if you need to preserve your night vision. Color games might be worth playing on a moonless night on the high seas...but they are just as likely to screw you over if the environment is unsuitable (e.g. red lights while reading maps with red warning labels don't mix)
You don't need to ask permission or pay a western "king" before competing with google or facebook you just need to execute. Who did the Chinese ask or pay before starting Baidu?
Talk is cheap, whining even cheaper. As a US resident I certainly hope the rest of the world treats NSA as a wakeup call to diversify. The more distributed services are, the more choice there is in the market the more *EVERYONE* wins. Get off your asses and compete.
Lets not forget a major part of this panic is due to old manufacturing companies starting to realize that if we can print something for 5 cents, then why would we pay $5 for it?
Except it takes 5 cents to mass produce in a factory where millions of them can rapidly be stamped out and $5 to SLOWLY print one copy of the part. 3-D "paper" is not cheap and does not grow on trees.
While we're not at that point yet, we certainly will be in 5 years. In 10-15 years, we'll be able to print iPods. Once that happens... why buy an iPod, when you can download a crowd-engineered alternative that's better and cheaper?
No such technology exists or can reasonably be predicted to exist within the specified timeframe.
On the other hand, a lot of companies want to concentrate on their actual business and leave the running of the data center to the people that are experts at it -- especially if it can be done on the cheap. Some companies start small on a
I always hear the general economies of scale and specialization meme but I don't understand what prevents the knowledge and expertise from being bottled and applicable to physical hardware?
Why can't physical hardware be easy to manage? I mean if part x in an array of z breaks just throw out the module with the red blinking light when you have time and replace it with a new one. What part of mitigation of management overhead (leveraging expertise and economies of scale) necessarily requires offloading the physical environment vs the fruits of the "dead labor" expressed in the form of easier to manage physical systems?
Besides from my experience the real costs are not the hardware.. not even close.. it is almost all software issues and management. I don't see punting virtual machines or external SQL servers moving the bar. Offloading hardware alone and leaving the remaining portions to be resolved by "IT" solves very little in the real world.
I also happen to think there are quite a number of things which individually make a lot of sense to offload as a service. For example if you don't want to deal with an email server in-house farm it out to someone else. That makes sense to me.
Single idea and are unprepared for how popular their idea or service might be and unable to scale to match demand. These are very legit reasons to turn to Azure (and competitors).
The "elastic" meme I've heard before and I am not buying it.
All problems solvable by throwing more hardware at the problem are by definition easy problems to solve. Your web site can't take the heat well then just throw up a few reverse proxies or hire Akamai to do it for you during the holiday season.
The problems in the real world people tend to have are sometimes not so simple. There is a point where systems must be **designed** to scale where you can no longer get any meaningful return by throwing hardware at the problem.. virtual or otherwise.
These "elastic" use cases smell like marketing examples more than things which actually happen with normal regularity in the real world. It is a nice option to have I'm sure.
Who in their right mind would throw down that kind of recurring cash for Azure?
Modern hardware is insanely capable, reliable and cheap. Our Internet pipes are as cheap and fat as ever... This leaves me to scratch my head on justification for this.
You still need "IT" people to manage clients and access environment even if servers are hosted elsewhere. We have four racks of Windows and Linux systems running for years with only minimal maintenance. If you don't buy complete crap shit just runs.
If people see value in this so be it good for them... Just hope there are options to "export" accounts back "on premise" once your source of limitless funding dries up.
In this case, the observer cannot detect any difference between the photons without becoming entangled with one or the other. And if there is no difference, the system appears static. In other words, time does not emerge.
This is the kind of in your face bullshit I have come to expect from a certain crowd of attention whores who regularly abuse terms like phase velocity and negative absolute temperatures to attract undue attention to their Sci-Fi ish ramblings which in reality are quite mundane.
Why yes dude you can't make a measurement without effecting what is being measured... newsflash from a century ago.
Since you can't measure something without changing it... you make the following jaw dropping assumption "And if there is no difference" to get to your assumption..
"the system appears static. In other words, time does not emerge."
"In other words" if you ASSume there is no difference time does not emerge.
I think *ALL* computers running walled garden OSs where execution must be approved by a single entity are offensively stupid.
Neither would I consider purchasing such an expensive device without a user replaceable battery. Batteries still suck and there is still enough variance during manufacturing and use it is still very much luck of the draw what you'll get.
There is no useful technical reason for locking down execution and planned obsolescence (dead battery = dead device) other than screwing over customers.
In this way I hate the new Nokia and Windows RT bullshit as much as I hate Apples ipad bullshit.
It really is quite a depressing situation... the hardware guys continue to kick ass while software guys seem to be spending all their time picking their noses, fiddling with UX and carefully apportioning value such that none dare be left on the table.
No offense, but the TSA couldn't care less how much you spend on air travel. They are government employees and get all of their power from elected officials. Voting with your wallet only works when dealing with organizations that are directly impacted by your spending, and even then some form of organized boycott is usually necessary if the change you are seeking is not directly related to the product provided.
There are segments of the US economy directly effected by lack of foreign travel to the United States to the tune of countless billions of dollars depending on who you want to believe. They have lobby groups with some power to effect law/policy change directly outside of the TSA hierarchy.
The more your policies negatively effect business interests the more there is at the very least political pressure brought against such actions.
You could argue that some congressman somewhere will get a call from an upset constituent who is losing money because some guy didn't come from Britain, but if that is your strategy then I wish you luck.
While I think this characterization misses the mark I am in no position to make a judgment whether it will ultimately help or bring any meaningful change.
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I hate the TSA almost as much as I hate customs agents who get their jollies from being subhuman assholes.
TSA groupings, ominous security announcement loops, harassment (swabbing drinks within Airport restaurants) and backscatter x-rays are the top reasons I avoid flying. No place does "police state" and fear induced freakout / overreaction ring more true than at the airport.
Having said this I was always puzzled by the whole screening situation... Your looking for outliers.. a low probability event..yet what is the TSA to do if one is discovered? What do you expect to go down if there is not a credible state dispenser of violence on hand to "regulate"?
For example bad guy tries to smuggle bad thing thru security. Bad guy gets caught. Bad guy has no problem using force. If there is no security nearby.. as much as I hate the TSA as an organization... individual GED earning goons deserve better outcomes assuming there is statistically relevant need to defend against this situation.
I wouldn't be surprised if there was none while TSA display cases and blogs are filled with weapons of all kinds virtually all of them were innocent mistakes people forgetting to take that shit out of their bags rather than any intent to cause harm. Being a cab driver or pizza delivery "agent" is still infinitely more dangerous than being a TSA agent.
I think TSAs own admission nobody is attacking airports speaks for itself. Changing policy in response to specific incidents rather than objective determinations on how to best utilize and allocate limited resources in the long run causes more problems than it solves.
Always interesting to hear politicians make such forceful unqualified statements when they know more than half the country (Significant numbers of D's and R's) think this guy is a hero.
With any luck Feinstein and Mr "You can't have your privacy violated if you don't know your privacy is violated" will find themselves looking for work when their term is up for renewal.
Linus's stated reason for not wanting numbers to go too high is seemingly based on a feeling or personal dislike of high numbers.
Two questions.
1. What happens when there are major changes in the Linux kernel? How are they now represented in selection of version number?
2. What happens when the major digit begins to resemble Firefox / Chromes out of control version madness? How many years before Linux 19.4?
It used to be version numbers actually meant something and conveyed some useful hint of scope or amount of change between versions.
I'm not sure dumping this concept for the sake of political games and or OCD pedantry are worth opportunity cost to the user when contrasted with structured predictable scheme based on commonly agreed and understood guidelines.
The good news is that there's a significant increase in battery life. The bad new is that it's still running Windows.
You can install whatever operating system you want on the "Pro" version.
Every time someone messes with time zones and clocks it causes temporary confusion and additional work for systems not field upgradable now needing to be manually screwed with.
Nothing measurably good comes of it as people adapt to underlying reality regardless of what time the clock says. Your brilliant reason why x is better than y is an illusion it does not matter. It never did.
Last time DST got moved to "save energy" **surprise** no savings had been measured.
It is akin to changing the form of 110v outlets to make them "better". Disruptive change which solves nothing is simply a waste of everyone's time.
What I don't understand is the difference between someone being ticketed after posting a YouTube videos of their speeding rampages thru town and this?
Even if you don't get caught in the act when you tell the world what you did how does this not at the very least translate into a big fat fine?
What about all of your "lookouts" complicit in enabling your activities what is their risk of being held liable by some overzealous prosecutor?
If you want to do something like this I'm reckless enough not to care... going around and talking about your exploits in my opinion is crossing the line.
Moore's "law" has nothing to do with computing power. It has to do with the number of elements on a single wafer. It's about electrical engineering, not total system power.
At its core Moore's law is simply a reflection of COST per component (transistor).
The way outside of economies of scale you make transistors cost less is get them to take up less space on die which normally has the effect of lowering power requirements.
I suspect that the number of people who really understand Moore's law around here is much less than the number of people who invoke it (badly) at the drop of a hat.
Does it matter? If a transistor costs less that means a given person can afford to purchase a component with more of them. More transistors roughly translate into more "computing power".
Because few people carry multiple batteries,
The core problem is not multiple batteries it is ability to replace it when yours starts to suck.
and if you go for non-replaceable batteries you can get higher battery capacity
The iphone has what a
More flexibility in shape and form of the battery
They are ALL rectangles embedded within the phone. Every last one of them. Nobody is currently producing phones where the battery is contorted to fill every last ounce of internal space.
and no need for extra electronics and detachable lid for the battery
LOL extra electronics for a passive connector? Why are detachable lids bad? They tend to serve other useful purposes such as holding SIMs and SD cards.
Both of these take space that could be used for more battery otherwise.
You seem to be clinging to abstract notions of what is "possible" vs. what is "real". Only what is real actually matters.
Not to be an apologist, but I don't think Apple necessarily started it.
Who was selling cellphones without user replaceable batteries before Apple?
As far as the few phones that still have removable batterties, I fear will see an end to that as well in the next few years.
Or maybe Samsung is more than happy to continue to accept additional business coming their way from people smart enough not to settle for Nokia/HTC/Apple planned obsolescence bullshit. They certainly have lost me as a customer.
Have noted it is always high end phones that first get hit with non-replaceable batteries. Not everyone can afford a new phone every x years. Still a huge market of people having better things to spend their limited money on.
Or having to bring your phone into a service center and pay to have a battery upgrade. Any which way, it all likely comes down to pinching pennies and sqeezing blood from a stone.
As long as there is meaningful competition there shall always be market pressures in the other direction.
Have to love the weasel word games. When asked question 'x' they skillfully reply with an answer to question 'y' ... Alexander has deployed this trick everywhere I have seen him speak publically.
When asked about bulk collection of metadata rather than respond to the actual question he instead proclaims reports of bulk content collection of US citizens are wrong.
When asked about tapping communications links between datacenters he says we are not directly in their servers.
Note vast differences between the questions asked and answers given.
The area around coal plants become more radioactive than nuclear power plants over time - because most coal contains small amounts of thorium which gets released into the air when the coal is burned and settles in the area around the coal plant.
Burning coal is the main reason why pregnant women can't eat most fish. It is also why a diet of just fish is bad for you rather than being the healthiest diet. Why? Because it releases tons of mercury into the ocean.
And of course, burning coal in also a huge green house gas contributor.
There is zero reason whatsoever to create new coal burning plants. Use that same money to offer then nuclear power plants. It would cost less lives and create technical jobs as opposed to creating mining jobs.
Switching gears back to planet earth which scenario do you think is a better situation?
Bank allows loan on condition proven cost effective measures to scrub out most non-CO2 pollutants including mercury.
Bank denies loan only for it to be granted by someone else who would impose no environmental restrictions of any kind?
Which is best for the environment?
The "developed" world has a duty to provide leadership and develop practical cost effective solutions. Thus far it has utterly totally failed.
But if you want one of the most likely kick-off points for World War III it is the issue of Taiwanese independence..
Strange I always thought it would be "Macedonia" that kicks off WW III
What hit me like a mac truck carrying 39.5 tons of bricks all those peoples at Defcon applauding Alexander's various statements. They get paid by industry and governments to play cat and mouse games they are essentially on the same side.
It just isn't TLA overreach that is my enemy it's significant entrenched interests profiting off the sorry state of heavily used technologies while throwing wrenches or at least making no effort of any sort to correct underlying issues.
As for PRISM pitch there is nothing to discuss. NSA openly admits to collecting 100% of CDRs of all calls made within US.
When the same questions were asked in hearings where it was noted "collection" activity itself regardless of use violates statute the answer was classified ... do yourself a favor and don't even bother opening your mouth to defend the indefensible. It just makes you look like more of an asshole than you already are.
The cloud guys (Amazon, Microsoft, VMware, others) employ the top talent in the world to work on this around the clock and will never stop.
Pure nonsense. All the heavy lifting in this space is done by software/hardware vendors and contractors specializing in datacenter design, AC,HVAC..etc. otherwise you don't need much talent... datacenters are full of glorified operators.
Company X selling widgets (lets say golf clubs) will just buy machines, and employ people to run the data center as efficiently as possible.
This is counterproductive. If your selling widgets just put up a storefront on Amazon and be done with it. No need to run *ANYTHING*. That's what makes "the cloud" worth doing.
Peddling virtual SQL servers and virtual machines does NOT make life easier if you assume the primary "IT" cost center is management of software environment rather than physical system.
How far do you think they will go in terms of maxing out the power efficiency of their data center to name just one metric on which individual data centers simply cannot compete.
Given cost/power requirements per transistor in modern COTS what percentage of organizations are big enough anymore to have this problem?
How do they even build the expertise in that?
Hire an AC/HVAC contractor like any of the datacenters would.
How can they afford to revamp that when progress renders their once-awesome data center obsolete in just 5 years or so?
Given the Azure price sheet my guess they can afford it plenty. Lets not forget equipment depreciation is also tax deductible.
Correct. And that's one of the other sources of cost efficiency for the cloud guys. Their data centers are humongously vast arrays of machines managed by very few humans.
If you get an Azure VM it is the same as any Windows or Linux computer you must manage and maintain the software you install on it including in most cases patching and rebooting of the OS. You don't get any software management savings by going virtual.
Spikes can happen when you don't expect them. Hardware purchases don't happen automatically as your traffic spikes. 'Elastic' can do that.
This is as silly as the Amazon example above. If you are that big you need to worry about "traffic" then it makes a lot of sense to hire an Akami and have them deal with bandwidth. Using Azure when you should be using a CDN is a costly mistake.
It's actually weird that you question these concepts and disparagingly call them memes.
This industry is full of lemmings who elect not to use their brains. I would love to see actual evidence or study by a disinterested third party where the "elastic" selling point is actually useful outside of a non-trivial minority.
A wait-and-see approach is certainly warranted.
Given the price list you got the "wait" part right.
Questions regarding portability, and trust issues with the providers are warranted.
Questioning the cost-effectiveness of cloud vs. on-premise is a little silly IMO
We're not a huge shop we have about 50 people and a few racks of servers. Most of those servers spend most of their time sending HLT instructions to the CPU. It costs us very little to maintain the physical hardware we have considering we always buy last years gear dirt cheap.
You can't seriously expect me to look at that price chart and look at what we have in house and conclude outsourcing it all to "the cloud" is cheaper. We can buy a new rack of shit every month with the money we would have to fork out in fees to Azure.
I'm sure the underlying philosophy is correct where central management of large numbers of systems can theoretically provide certain cost benefits but it sure as heck is not being reflected in any of the price lists I've seen.
Everything about this company is seedy and disgusting. Their "engineer" openly bragging on a blog about "doing the impossible" with a little IMAP MITM is breathtaking. Just about what we've come to expect from these assholes.
At this point I have to ponder who in their right mind would associate with or hire anyone still idiotic enough to keep using this "service"?
A ballast is only needed to limit current for arc-based light sources. So fluorescent lights need them and mercury- or sodium-based street lights need them, but LEDs definitely do not. An LED lamp just needs a power supply and that's about it.
Ballast, power supply.. Tomato tomato.. electronics that drive most LEDs might as well be called ballasts they are still electronic components dealing with relatively high current subject to fatigue and failure. Those gnarly heat fins built into commercial LEDs aint for the leds themselves.
Anyone out there with more specific info and/or why one color is better than another for night vision preservation?
All light u can see destroys night vision. Rods (e.g. peripheral vision) are not as sensitive to red light and take much longer than cones (e.g. center, detail, reading vision) to regain their low light sensitivity. Cones are what allows you to see with any detail..your legally blind without them and so if they are not sensitive to a frequency that frequency is not doing you much good.
The takeway is intensity rather than color is king if you need to preserve your night vision. Color games might be worth playing on a moonless night on the high seas...but they are just as likely to screw you over if the environment is unsuitable (e.g. red lights while reading maps with red warning labels don't mix)
You don't need to ask permission or pay a western "king" before competing with google or facebook you just need to execute. Who did the Chinese ask or pay before starting Baidu?
Talk is cheap, whining even cheaper. As a US resident I certainly hope the rest of the world treats NSA as a wakeup call to diversify. The more distributed services are, the more choice there is in the market the more *EVERYONE* wins. Get off your asses and compete.
Lets not forget a major part of this panic is due to old manufacturing companies starting to realize that if we can print something for 5 cents, then why would we pay $5 for it?
Except it takes 5 cents to mass produce in a factory where millions of them can rapidly be stamped out and $5 to SLOWLY print one copy of the part. 3-D "paper" is not cheap and does not grow on trees.
While we're not at that point yet, we certainly will be in 5 years. In 10-15 years, we'll be able to print iPods. Once that happens... why buy an iPod, when you can download a crowd-engineered alternative that's better and cheaper?
No such technology exists or can reasonably be predicted to exist within the specified timeframe.
On the other hand, a lot of companies want to concentrate on their actual business and leave the running of the data center to the people that are experts at it -- especially if it can be done on the cheap. Some companies start small on a
I always hear the general economies of scale and specialization meme but I don't understand what prevents the knowledge and expertise from being bottled and applicable to physical hardware?
Why can't physical hardware be easy to manage? I mean if part x in an array of z breaks just throw out the module with the red blinking light when you have time and replace it with a new one. What part of mitigation of management overhead (leveraging expertise and economies of scale) necessarily requires offloading the physical environment vs the fruits of the "dead labor" expressed in the form of easier to manage physical systems?
Besides from my experience the real costs are not the hardware.. not even close.. it is almost all software issues and management. I don't see punting virtual machines or external SQL servers moving the bar. Offloading hardware alone and leaving the remaining portions to be resolved by "IT" solves very little in the real world.
I also happen to think there are quite a number of things which individually make a lot of sense to offload as a service. For example if you don't want to deal with an email server in-house farm it out to someone else. That makes sense to me.
Single idea and are unprepared for how popular their idea or service might be and unable to scale to match demand. These are very legit reasons to turn to Azure (and competitors).
The "elastic" meme I've heard before and I am not buying it.
All problems solvable by throwing more hardware at the problem are by definition easy problems to solve. Your web site can't take the heat well then just throw up a few reverse proxies or hire Akamai to do it for you during the holiday season.
The problems in the real world people tend to have are sometimes not so simple. There is a point where systems must be **designed** to scale where you can no longer get any meaningful return by throwing hardware at the problem.. virtual or otherwise.
These "elastic" use cases smell like marketing examples more than things which actually happen with normal regularity in the real world. It is a nice option to have I'm sure.
Who in their right mind would throw down that kind of recurring cash for Azure?
Modern hardware is insanely capable, reliable and cheap. Our Internet pipes are as cheap and fat as ever... This leaves me to scratch my head on justification for this.
You still need "IT" people to manage clients and access environment even if servers are hosted elsewhere. We have four racks of Windows and Linux systems running for years with only minimal maintenance. If you don't buy complete crap shit just runs.
If people see value in this so be it good for them... Just hope there are options to "export" accounts back "on premise" once your source of limitless funding dries up.
Oops I'm sorry email from user@mydomain.enrichicann is not valid.
Hey that new TLD does not work in DNS cuz we are not blindly delegating * to root zones.
Don't allow icann to continue to be enriched at the cost of fucking over the Internet. ICANN does not own you or the network and systems you control.
In this case, the observer cannot detect any difference between the photons without becoming entangled with one or the other. And if there is no difference, the system appears static. In other words, time does not emerge.
This is the kind of in your face bullshit I have come to expect from a certain crowd of attention whores who regularly abuse terms like phase velocity and negative absolute temperatures to attract undue attention to their Sci-Fi ish ramblings which in reality are quite mundane.
Why yes dude you can't make a measurement without effecting what is being measured... newsflash from a century ago.
Since you can't measure something without changing it... you make the following jaw dropping assumption "And if there is no difference" to get to your assumption..
"the system appears static. In other words, time does not emerge."
"In other words" if you ASSume there is no difference time does not emerge.
I think *ALL* computers running walled garden OSs where execution must be approved by a single entity are offensively stupid.
Neither would I consider purchasing such an expensive device without a user replaceable battery. Batteries still suck and there is still enough variance during manufacturing and use it is still very much luck of the draw what you'll get.
There is no useful technical reason for locking down execution and planned obsolescence (dead battery = dead device) other than screwing over customers.
In this way I hate the new Nokia and Windows RT bullshit as much as I hate Apples ipad bullshit.
It really is quite a depressing situation... the hardware guys continue to kick ass while software guys seem to be spending all their time picking their noses, fiddling with UX and carefully apportioning value such that none dare be left on the table.
No offense, but the TSA couldn't care less how much you spend on air travel. They are government employees and get all of their power from elected officials. Voting with your wallet only works when dealing with organizations that are directly impacted by your spending, and even then some form of organized boycott is usually necessary if the change you are seeking is not directly related to the product provided.
There are segments of the US economy directly effected by lack of foreign travel to the United States to the tune of countless billions of dollars depending on who you want to believe. They have lobby groups with some power to effect law/policy change directly outside of the TSA hierarchy.
The more your policies negatively effect business interests the more there is at the very least political pressure brought against such actions.
You could argue that some congressman somewhere will get a call from an upset constituent who is losing money because some guy didn't come from Britain, but if that is your strategy then I wish you luck.
While I think this characterization misses the mark I am in no position to make a judgment whether it will ultimately help or bring any meaningful change.