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September 15, 2002
Prices could vary with location
The Contra Contra Times reports that an emission trading program
that allows industries to earn credits for reducing emissions has increased
local pollution level in Contra Costa County.
If Contra Costa County is overly burdened, the trading program
could either:
1) cap the number of credits per year allowed to be be use in
Contra Costa Co.
2) decrease the relative value of permits in Contra Costa Co,
eg a permit that generally permits 1 tonne of emissions
would if used in Contra Costa Co. allow only 0.5 tonnes of
emissions.
At one time, the Bay Area air district adjusted how many
credits a company needed based on where the credits came
from. If a Contra Costa company wanted to expand its power
plant or refinery, it would need more credits if they came
from San Jose, and fewer credits if they came from a
neighboring industry.
Mike Taugher covers the environment and energy. Reach him at
925-943-8257 or mtaugher@cctimes.com
Posted by dc at 01:45 PM | Comments (0)
So Good, So Bad Amtrak
1. Things are going well, we have success,
and we need to support a successful system.
2. Things are going poorly, and need help,
and we need to support a needy, insufficient system.
These are the two faces of Amtrak.
Posted by dc at 01:34 PM | Comments (2)
0911 requiem
Simon Schama, professor of history and art history at
Columbia University, New York writes in The Guardian on the
questions Americans should be asking on the anniversary
of September 11.
Posted by dc at 12:21 PM | Comments (3)
Meaningful messages
Considering the sample schedule below and the message below,
would you conclude:
a) Ticket sales after train #06 will continue.
b) Since trains #02 and #04 are before train #06, there are
no ticket salesbefore trains #02 or #04 either.
c) None of the above
| Train No | Time |
| #04 | 4 pm |
| #05 | 5 pm |
| #06 | 6 pm |
FREMONT TICKET SALES
Due to an amended contract with our ticket vendor in Fremont, ticket sales
before #06's arrival have been suspended at that station. The change went
into effect on September 01, but we wanted to make one more announcement to
avoid any confusion. For further information, please contact the ACE
Ticketing Department at (209) 468-5660.
It's better to tell your customers how you can help them than
how you can't:
You can buy a ticket any time between 5:30 AM and 6:00 PM,
before or after any of trains #01, #02, #03, #04, or #05.
Refs: message and actual schedule.
Posted by dc at 12:15 PM | Comments (0)
September 14, 2002
privacy, economics of design and beauty: books to read
Virginia Postrel talks with David Womack about her new book,
The Age of Look and Feel, a follow-up to the excellent
The Future and Its Enemies: The Growing Conflict over Creativity,
Enterprise and Progress.
Gong Szeto interviews Michael Benedikt, author of For an Architecture of Reality,
Deconstructing the Kimbell, Cyberspace: First Steps, and the
forthcoming, A General Theory of Value.
Translucent Database by Peter Wayner.
A translucent database uses cryptographic methods like hash functions
and public key cryptography to mathematically protect information so that it
cannot be wrongly divulged -- not even to a crooked database administrator.
Translucent databases provide for unparalleled protection of sensitive
information, be that information personal, corporate, or academic.
Posted by dc at 10:39 AM | Comments (0)
September 13, 2002
Autocross season finale
Posted by dc at 04:18 PM | Comments (0)
Bugs, trade magazines.
Posted a bug in slashcode.
If enduser selects too many 'Customize Slashboxes' entries, they get an error
message saying too many entries selected. The max number of options is not
presented to the user.
Trade magazines are running rather light fluffy pieces on information
architecture. IA is typically more about finding organizing concepts
than about finding Ten hot tips and tricks for better PowerPoint Flash,
so dumbing down the content when writing for a general audience is common.
Progress Paralysis: Eight steps to get your Web site moving again
by Peter Merholz in New Architect.
The Culture of Usability: How to spend less and get more from your usability-testing program
by Janice Fraser in New Architect.
Information architecture: carrying out a classification situation analysis by Gerry McGovern.
Classification Workshops by Gerry McGovern.
Pickle Jar Theory, by [IMG] (sic) at alistapart.
Better articles were the more substantive Taking A Content Inventory
by Janice Crotty Frase, also in New Architect; and the pithy and on target
Web classification is essential by Gerry McGovern.
Posted by dc at 04:14 PM | Comments (0)
September 12, 2002
How to argue when facts and logic are against you.
How to argue when facts and logic are against you,
another installment in the series.
When presented with authoritative evidence, backed up by
references and citations, ask,
Do you always let other people do the thinking for you?
Also of note:
Phil Agre's tale of discovering talking points:
The arguments were, in common parlance, rhetorical "ammo".
The metaphor is apt: ammo doesn't have to make sense; it just
has to disable or kill.
Public relations reading list.
Posted by dc at 07:54 PM | Comments (1)
web golf
web golf, noun.
The aspiration to minimize the number of links (clicks) to
get from here to there.
See perl golf, programming contests to find the shortest
program capable of executing a specified task.
Posted by dc at 04:36 PM | Comments (0)
September 10, 2002
Reality: bus spotting
Posted by dc at 08:47 AM | Comments (0)
September 09, 2002
Business ethics
Doing things you don't like, or doing things you oppose:
which is more unethical ?
Metropolis' designer's ethics scale.
Posted by dc at 09:09 PM | Comments (0)
Anderson gets interesting.
Most company re-brandings from English names to nonsense words,
eg, from Western Electric to Lucent and Avaya
struck me as silly ways to through away decades of good will.
But one lucky company, Anderson Consulting had the fortune
to rename itself to Accenture before the meltdown
of its like-named accounting firm.
Accenture's branding campaign is still silly though. For example,
one print ad states:
Chinese to be the number one Internet language by the
year 2007; now it gets interesting.
The implication is that Accenture has the vision and unique capabilities
that are essential to this exciting, yet demanding, future.
Update: 2003 Jan 23
For print ads from this campaign, see back issues of from year 2002 of
The Economist, or Harvard Business Review.
Posted by dc at 09:00 PM | Comments (10)
blog spam: splog or blam ?
blam, noun.
The new phenomena of jamming gratuitous links to a blog
into the comments of other blogs.
synonyms: splog.
Posted by dc at 08:52 PM | Comments (0)
September 08, 2002
Pave the world, Santa Clara Division
There needs to be a balance in funding for both road and
transit projects, and a 100 percent allocation of this money
to highways will achieve that.
-- Don Gage, Chairman, Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors
[The Measure B (California's Santa Clara County, 2002 Nov.) would
commit all discretionary state and federal transportation funds
over the next 30 years to roads and highways.]
Meanwhile, Proposition 51 (California, statewide, 2002 Nov.)
aka Traffic Congestion Relief and Safe School Bus Act
provides $7 million for a new museum of technology in the
downtown Sacramento railyard, with $1 million each year
to staff and maintain it.
Proposition 51 would take car sales taxes that normally help pay for
prisons, parks, health care and other government services and use them
to finance dozens of projects, including a rail line with stops at an
Indian casino, golf cart paths for a gated retirement community,
fuel-efficient boats for Lake Tahoe and a railroad museum addition.
Eddy Moore, transportation director for Planning and Conservation
League which drafted the proposition, explains:
While the connection to traffic may not seem obvious for some of
the projects, such as the railroad museum, part of the underlying
theme is to make cities more livable places. Making cities nicer
will lessen the tendency of people to move to the suburbs and
increase traffic congestion.
Posted by dc at 08:32 PM | Comments (9)
actualized
Professionalism, as a lifetime aspiration, is a rather limited goal.
Milton Glazer piece in Metropolis or This is what I have learned [.PDF] by Milton Glaser.
Posted by dc at 05:31 PM | Comments (0)
Walk now
Surface Transportation Policy Project danger index misrepresents actual danger.
The incident rate is defined as the number of injuries and deaths
among pedestrians divided by the area's population and multiplied by
100,000, giving a standard measure of risk.
Incidence rates that are "different for different ages, genders and
races, which is the case with pedestrian incidents, need to be
adjusted for these factors so that valid comparisons between
populations with different mixes of age, race and gender can be made,"
Kirby D. Cooper, a statistician at the Travis Air Force Base campus of
Chapman University, wrote in his rebuttal. "This was not done in the report, so the
basic measure of risk for pedestrian incidents is flawed."
Posted by dc at 02:25 AM | Comments (0)
September 07, 2002
top: busy Mac
Is my mac busy ? Here's what top shows:
Processes: 60 total, 6 running, 54 sleeping... 201 threads 00:42:06
Load Avg: 5.47, 4.92, 4.68 CPU usage: 82.0% user, 18.0% sys, 0.0% idle
SharedLibs: num = 109, resident = 11.4M code, 300K data, 444K LinkEdit
MemRegions: num = 13359, resident = 347M + 3.39M private, 85.9M shared
PhysMem: 52.4M wired, 302M active, 150M inactive, 505M used, 7.08M free
VM: 4.37G + 47.6M 260002(19) pageins, 378381(0) pageouts
PID COMMAND %CPU TIME #TH #PRTS #MREGS RPRVT RSHRD RSIZE VSIZE 1752 top 3.8% 0:03.19 1 14 16 352K 268K 608K 1.70M 1751 ftp 0.0% 0:00.04 1 13 18 116K 280K 344K 1.64M 1743 ssh 0.0% 0:00.35 1 16 15 0K 320K 156K 1.49M 1742 sh 0.0% 0:00.02 1 13 13 0K 224K 68K 1.69M 1741 ssh 0.0% 0:02.76 1 13 18 228K 320K 400K 1.69M 736 tcsh 0.0% 0:00.31 1 24 15 452K 476K 640K 5.72M 732 iTunes 21.4% 27:33:57 9 138 208 3.91M 5.66M 7.42M 79.1M 719 tcsh 0.0% 0:00.35 1 24 15 448K 476K 592K 5.72M 673 Sherlock 0.0% 1:12.61 2 67 113 224K 1.99M 1024K 67.1M 652 Navigator 11.6% 26:49:02 24 349 1301 160M 18.5M 175M 501M 651 Opera 5.0 3.0% 7:45:46 6 120 739 15.4M 9.69M 20.5M 155M 585 Help Viewe 0.0% 0:07.28 2 57 114 0K 1.88M 512K 68.6M 584 Image Capt 0.0% 0:16.91 1 47 37 64K 352K 212K 34.2M 583 iPhoto 0.0% 1:21.89 2 94 178 0K 2.09M 632K 88.7M 572 tcsh 0.0% 0:00.65 1 24 15 0K 476K 244K 5.72M 570 ssh 0.0% 0:55.12 1 13 18 108K 320K 252K 1.69M 564 tcsh 0.0% 0:00.15 1 24 15 0K 476K 48K 5.72M 558 tcsh 0.0% 0:00.17 1 24 15 0K 476K 240K 5.72M 557 setiathome 2.8% 33:37:12 1 13 82 13.6M+ 320K 13.7M+ 17.5M+ 552 tcsh 0.0% 0:00.13 1 24 15 0K 476K 48K 5.72M 551 Terminal 8.9% 63:29.52 10 122 968 3.81M 12.9M 15.5M 84.0M 418 TruBlueEnv 0.0% 50:03.78 17 209 264 200K 572K 476K 1.06G 371 Preview 0.0% 0:41.87 3 90 151 24K 2.83M+ 832K 82.6M 369 QuickTime 0.0% 9:00.66 6 111 220 12K 2.15M+ 324K 89.4M 368 Snapz Pro 0.5% 35:54.10 4 109 141 152K 2.42M 868K 73.7M 326 Internet E 20.7% 11:10:05 10 128 712 36.8M 23.3M+ 47.0M 186M 325 Fire 15.1% 28:29:32 5 136 457 7.44M 7.13M 13.1M 118M 323 Mozilla 7.9% 20:40:15 8 125 4545 93.5M 17.6M 108M 462M 290 hdid 0.0% 0:03.45 1 11 50 28K 240K 108K 2.12M 284 Transport 0.0% 0:01.46 2 96 86 4K 944K 112K 56.1M 283 Palm Deskt 0.5% 39:36.69 1 50 64 112K 1.09M 364K 55.7M 282 iTunesHelp 0.0% 0:01.20 1 46 43 4K 764K 92K 38.2M 281 SystemUISe 0.1% 37:55.25 3 117 139 784K 2.13M 1.50M 64.2M 280 Dock 0.0% 1:52.94 3 125 117 624K 2.84M 1.86M 61.2M 278 Finder 0.0% 3:19.97 2 97 530 3.89M 5.64M 6.22M 99.8M 272 pbs 0.0% 0:03.46 1 31 27 0K 272K 112K 18.7M 263 loginwindo 0.0% 0:35.87 7 144 244 588K 1.95M 1.13M 61.1M 259 cron 0.0% 0:04.03 1 9 15 20K 244K 104K 1.52M
Posted by dc at 10:44 PM | Comments (0)
logos go home
Is a logo on a web page a link to 'home' ?
1) Do users expect logos to be linked to the home page rather than just
being a graphical logo?
2) Can a linked logo replace another link labeled "home"?
3) Does placement of the logo matter (e.g. is top-left better)?
4) If a logo is a link, where would users expect it to go?
Here are my assumptions when designing or reviewing sites:
a) A purely graphical logo is great, but a linked logo provides some
additional functionality at little cost.
b) *I think* most users, *when seeing that a logo is a link*, will
expect it to go to the site's home page - there are few other logical
places for it to go. (related to question 4)
c) I've seen some users click on logos, but most will choose a "home"
link first when looking to go "home." (related to questions 1 & 2)
Therefore...
d) You need to have an explicit "home" link - a logo isn't explicit
enough. (related to question 2)
e) Placement always matters - but if you think of the logo-link as a
supplementary link to the "home" link, then it's not that critical from
a navigation point of view - it's likely more important from a branding
and context point of view. (related to question 3)
Research into this would be great, but frankly I don't *need* research
on this issue. In my opinion, there's almost no risk in making a logo
a link - risk enters the equation when people try to eliminate a "home"
link (in main navigation) which I think is patently a Bad Idea. Logos
don't look like main/global navigation -- they look like branding. Use
them for navigation too as a "bonus" -- Good Idea.
Some related research:
Wichita (If you agree that most site's put their logo top-left, then you can
draw the conclusion that most users expect logos to be links home.)
More discussion at ASIA's sigia-l.
Posted by dc at 10:30 PM | Comments (9)
Transit station design: best practice
What makes a good transit station ?
This question is important because the system is being
expanded from Fremont south to to Silicon Valley,
and new stations are being planned now.
1. Buses loop through the paid area,
so passengers can efficiently transfer between bus and
train. Much better than walking across a busy
parking lot, and paying a fare twice.
2. The entranceway should be conspicuous and labeled. Compare
's anonymous Union Station or Mowry entrance to the
Fremont station to a typical London Tube station.
3. An infrared data port on the platform pushes new schedules and daily specials.
4. Designated motocycle parking, fiting five motorcyles in the space
of one car, and the motorcycle exit defended by bollards so as to
pr wholesale theft of motorcyles by van-men.
5. Cross platform transfers should be easy.
6. Elevators and escalators hould be finadable from train doors.
7. Pedestrian entrances need not be sidealk obstructions with escalators exposed to
rain, blowing sand, etc. They could be in storefronts.
8. Platform canopies to protect passengers from rain and sun
Thanks to Seattle's Sounder for the illustrations.
Posted by dc at 09:47 PM | Comments (1)
Logical book
Sun-Joo Shin, _The Iconic Logic of Peirce's Graphs_
(MIT Press, 2002).
From the publisher's catalog blurb:
"At the dawn of modern logic, Charles S. Peirce invented
two types of logical systems, one symbolic and the other
graphical. In this book Sun-Joo Shin explores the
philosophical roots of the birth of Peirce's Existential
Graphs in his theory of representation and logical
notation. Shin demonstrates that Peirce is the first
philosopher to lay a solid philosophical foundation for
multimodal representation systems.
"Shin analyzes Peirce's well-known, but much-criticized
nonsymbolic representation system. She presents a new
approach to his graphical system based on her discovery
of its unique nature and on a reconstruction of Peirce's
theory of representation. By seeking to understand
graphical systems on their own terms, she uncovers the
reasons why graphical systems, and Existential Graphs in
particular, have been underappreciated among logicians.
Drawing on perspectives from the philosophy of mind,
cognitive science, logic, and computer science, Shin
provides evidence for a genuinely interdisciplinary
project on multimodal reasoning."
Posted by dc at 08:35 PM | Comments (3)
Silly google searches
Silly google searches, an occasional series: proffesional+proofreading.
Posted by dc at 07:50 PM | Comments (0)
Pretty Good Business
From CNET:
Security company Network Associates said Monday that it had purchased a
small start-up whose software lets corporations and others "wiretap" their
computer networks.
[...]
While the system could easily be used to track unauthorized uploads to a
network--uploads by hackers, for instance--it could also be used to tap
e-mail, printing jobs, instant messaging discussions and even
voice-over-IP phone calls.
"It is completely transparent to the user," said England, who envisions
companies using the software to see what is going on around their network
and the government using it to investigate employees and hackers. While
Network Associates hasn't approached law enforcement agencies yet, the
network-tapping software could add considerable teeth to the FBI's own
network-tapping program, known as DCS-1000 or, formerly, as "Carnivore."
NAI completes its transition to the Dark Side writes one former PGP-fan.
Posted by dc at 01:53 PM | Comments (0)
About this issue I've worked on
In political debates and advocacy, I see two idioms which have a very
hedged connotations.
Bill X is about (list of nice things).
Such assertions usually offer no explanation or enumeration of how
Bill X actually promotes any of the nice things.
Prop 51 is about making the pie bigger for public transit, bicycling infrastructure, and other environmental needs, especially considering that California has hardly been putting in enough money for transportation for basic upkeep, let alone the kind of infrastructure that is necessary to support a growing population. It's frightening to contemplate the future knowing that the state is projected to underinvest in transportation infrastructure by billions of dollars. Prop 51 is an attempt to fill some of the gap.
I've worked on this issue. Examples.
Such ambiguous claims don't reveal if the speaker actually supports
or opposes specific actions or proposals.
I've been working on Gloabal Climate Change for years.I've been burning coal for fun and profit.
Posted by dc at 01:40 PM | Comments (0)
Smog check
The SF Bay area is getting a new smog check, where cars
must be inspected for condition of various engine, exhaust,
and fuel systems, and tailpipe emmissions are tested while
the car runs on a treadmill.
Most inspections will be performed at gas stations or car repair
businesses which may repair cars failing the inspection or test.
However, some cars are required to submit to a test-only facility.
It also sends a small percentage of cars to test-only smog stations,
which cannot make smog repairs. That provision is intended to cut
down on unscrupulous mechanics who fake successful smog tests to
avoid redoing repairs.
Explanation 2;
Smog Check II also requires 15 percent of vehicles to go to test-only
stations, which are not allowed to make repairs. If the cars fail,
then they go to a second shop for pollution-reducing repairs. The
system was meant to curb fraud -- either needless repairs or bribes
to pass smog-belching vehicles.
Posted by dc at 11:03 AM | Comments (0)
September 06, 2002
Just One Fix
Coming soon: Meg Lee Chin's concert.
I asked for _Ministry_ at the Karaoke Bar,
and this concert is what I get.
2002 September 16 (Monday) 9pm
Galaxy, this Washington Avenue nightclub offers a dance floor and live stage.
The club mainly books ska, alternative and hardcore touring acts.
The nightclub is known for its infamous Fetish Nights where the underground
Goth scene emerges for industrial music and risqué fashion shows.
1227 Washington Ave., STL, MO. ph 314-231-2404.
Doors open for most shows at 8 p.m. and close at 3 a.m
From St. Louis Magazine.
Posted by dc at 09:17 PM | Comments (3)
Joy to the Mac
One of the bonuses of using Mac OS X is that
M$-Windows-centric adverts posing as error
messages look so out of place that they're
never tempting.
Posted by dc at 06:37 PM | Comments (8)
September 05, 2002
Continental e-mail
I was searching the 1000 messages in my inbox for the confirmation
e-mail which should show the details of my recent booking on Continental.
I searched for Continental, for booked, for flight, and for confirm[ation].
No luck.
Finally, I found a message from eTicketonline@coair.com.
This message turns out to be from Continental, though as a Continental
message it doesn't tell me the flight numbers. It doesn't tell me the
ticket cost. It doesn't tell me the date and time of travel.
It doesn't give me the desination or origin. It doesn't give me the
connecting airports. This e-mail offers only a confirmation number
and an phone number and URL for a personalized travel web page
for this trip.
In the next two months I have 16 flights to 5 cities. To match
these flights to e-mails, to figure out which one I need to print
Aiiieeeee.
Final Score: Expedia 10, Continental 1.
Here is what my e-mail program, elm, shows me:
| Aug 21 * eTicketonline@coai (46) eTicket Itinerary and Receipt
Jul 28 * travel@expedia.com (176) Expedia.com Flight E-Ticket Confir |
Posted by dc at 11:38 PM | Comments (3)
contingency design
Robust software design means designing for when things
go wrong. Testing and validating inputs, conditional
operations depending on how things got messed up all
make software more reliable and enjoyable.
In usability analysis and interaction design, contingency design
means planning for when the user could make a mistake:
catching the mistake, and providing contextual information
to avoid or repair the mistake.
37signals have a good exposition on contingency design.
For instance, isn't the second screen below better than the first:
404 Not FoundThe requested URL /37 was not found on this server. |
Posted by dc at 10:39 PM | Comments (10)
TextEdit broken filenames in Mac OS X
The TextEditor in Mac OS X has a stupid way of saving files.
It suggests a default filename of Untitled.rtf, but when a file is
saved with an .rtf extension, it rejects the extension.
Unlink Textpad for Win32, users can't fix
this problem by editing Preferences.
A: Do you want fries with that ?
B: Yes
A: You can't handle fries.
A: Well, you can't have fries with that.
Click on thumbnail to enlarge. 
Posted by dc at 09:58 PM | Comments (32) | TrackBack
September 04, 2002
get off the bus
SAMTRANS replaced the Caltrain rail service with
bus service and ridership plummeted 80 percent.
SF Giants fans were much happier on the train.
Meanwhile, Vancouver replaced a fast express bus with a faster train,
and cut 17 minutes off a typical commute, and in St. Louis, somebody
takes their first unaccompanied Metrolink trip.
Posted by dc at 09:47 PM | Comments (4)
Breakdown in the Emergency Lane
With disasterous results, Boston has the crazy policy
of allowing traffic to drive on the shoulders of the freeway,
the area normally reserved for emergencies and breakdowns.
See also.
(Note: Massachusetts State "Route 128" is no longer actually that; it is the
local parlance for the Federal Interstate and Defense Highway 95. Be very
aware of this when you drive in a certain State, which has received Billions
in Federal Highway Dollars, called Massachusetts or you may end up like Mr.
Salcedo. These lanes are not marked with any special paint such as Diamonds,
and the signs which list the "open hours" are small and often damaged or
missing. So much for "National Standards"; Highway Engineers: Please don't
"add capacity" to your highways like this.)
Posted by dc at 08:46 PM | Comments (9)
September 03, 2002
Urbanity designed
Some more notes about urban design:
1. Communities vie for uses that produce sales tax dollars such as
shopping centers and office parks. That's called fiscalization
of land use.
2. By adding traffic fatalities to homicides, William H. Lucy,
professor of urban and environmental and planning at U.Va.
with graduate research assistant Raphael Rabalais show
inner ring suburbs are safest place to live.
Lucy reports, 'The truth is people traveling from
the exurbs to the city have many more opportunities to
get killed than those traveling closer in'.
Lucy and Rabalais' Original Study[.PDF], press release: 1, 2.
News coverage: Contra Costa Times, Perimetergo.
3. A letter from Mike Jacoubowsky argues the grade-school
environment of removing lockers and prohibiting cel phones encourages
students to bring cars, if only to for use as lockers to secure after-school
gear. No wonder few children bicycle or walk to school.
4. Another study shows 70 percent of tot run-over deaths involve SUVs.
Posted by dc at 08:38 AM | Comments (0)
September 01, 2002
Weekend cocoon
Holiday weekends are crowded and expensive times to travel.
I'm catching up with housekeeping and Sunday Papers:
A hysterical review of Sammy and Rosie Get Laid (1987).
Have mobile phone, don't need home phone [NYT]
(I gave up my home phone in 1999 and survive by PCS phone
and cable modem);
Cruised LiveJournal and posted comment on a social Metcalf's Law
(See Linked: The New Science of Networks, by Albert-Laszlo Barabasi for more
background).
Now playing:
chemlab.org:
Meat Beat Manifesto: Prime Audio Soup
Radio Active - A concert to promote the Internet Radio Fairness Act.
Ministry: Every Day is Halloween (Twelve Inch Singles)
BOSHETUNMAY : Vote for The Black
Meg Lee Chin Just One Fix
Lords of Acid: Farstucker
ObNerd:
liquid cooled over-clocking
It is lovely to recycle old boxen for learning/demo purposes, but it is
also important to be aware of a couple of gotcha's. One is that it gets
harder and harder to run modern kernels on really old boxes, as they
tend to need a fair chunk of resources to run at all. A second one is
related to a mix of Moore's Law and the cost of electricity.
Old boxes or new -- they tend to burn somewhere between 60 and 100 watts
(presuming we're not talking about bleeding edge duals, and depending on
just how loaded they are. 100 Watts running 24x7 for a year costs $70
at $0.08/KW-hour. Running them inside a building (where we have to
remove the heat) is likely to add somewhere between 1/6 (if one can use
the heat during part of the year, as in a home during the winter) and
1/2 this cost, plus the space they occupy is a cost, plus the
maintenance and admin is a cost (which we'd better neglect or it would
REALLY skew this argument:-) -- call non-labor cost of operation
$100/year just to make the arithmetic easy -- a dollar a watt in round
numbers.
Now, let's assume that a 486 running at 66 MHz can on a good day execute
one instruction per cycle, without worrying too much about what an
"instruction" is. Maybe a float, maybe an int. Let's assume also that
the ones we are using are only burning 50 W (and so cost only $50/year
to operate). Thus our 486 can run at "66 (bogo)MIPS".
A current 2 GHz P4 system (in addition to coming with more disk and
memory, and supporting a far faster network) costs (say) $700 up front
and runs roughly 2000 (bogo)MIPS, or 30x as much. It draws about 100W
(to be generous) and hence costs about $100/year to operate.
Hmmm. A 30 node 486 cluster has about the same aggregate bogoMIPS as a
single P4. It costs $1500/year to operate in electricity and cooling
and shelf/floor space. Even allowing for the cost of buying the P4, it
is twice as cheap and we haven't even discussed Amdahl's Law with NICs
on the old 486 ISA bus yet.
To me it isn't at all clear that recycling old computers this way is
really "green" -- good for the environment in aggregate. Yes, you find
a home for many computers that might otherwise make it to the landfill
(or might better be properly recycled to recover their toxic metals).
OTOH, you burn a lot more free energy to get anything done. This latter
argument is even stronger if you compare the energy costs of tower 486's
to the energy costs of a laptop, which might burn only 25W even running
at > GHz speeds. One of the motivations cited for Transmeta/Blade
computers -- they don't run the highest possible clock, but they are
VASTLY cooler and cheaper to operate than my stack of dual Athlons.
So, for fun, 486's are fine if you can afford to feed them. As a
learning exercise (in perhaps a school), they are also just lovely,
especially if you can foist/hide their real cost of operation in the
building's electricity budget, which is often a lot easier than trying
to get money to buy a single modern computer. However, they are NOT
efficient ways to get any sort of useful work done. Neither are 133 MHz
586/Pentia or 200 MHz P6 class CPUs. Even a free 400 MHz/bogoMIP PIII
costs $500/year to operate (they tend to burn more like 100 W instead of
50) vs $100 to get the same aggregate MIPS as a P4, making them a break
even proposition on perfectly scalable code over 2 years, NEGLECTING
admin costs. This is pretty much the oldest speed class that it makes
sense to operate for production in an administratively efficient
environment, and even these are pretty much ready to retire.
For more, see the Beowulf project.
Obviously a plan would be to get a cluster of 1000 '486 tower PCs
for ~free, then apply for an energy and environment grant
to replace them with 100 p4 rackmount systems.
Posted by dc at 03:58 PM | Comments (1)