Where is EISNER:: and who funds it?

[alanfe...@gmail.com]

Just curious what city it's in and who pays the bills. The login screen used to ask for donations, but it presently doesn't. Perhaps VSI is footing the bill?

[Volker Halle]

EISNER is co-located in a data center of VSI since a couple of years.

Volker.

[alanfe...@gmail.com]

On Sunday, December 19, 2021 at 5:43:26 AM UTC-5, Volker Halle wrote:
> EISNER is co-located in a data center of VSI since a couple of years.
>
> Volker.

Do you know what city? Whose data center? Just curious.

[VAXman-]

Well, VSI is in Burlington.

--
VAXman- A Bored Certified VMS Kernel Mode Hacker VAXman(at)TMESIS(dot)ORG

I speak to machines with the voice of humanity.

[Arne Vajhøj]

On 12/19/2021 5:32 PM, VAX...@SendSpamHere.ORG wrote:
> In article <a6553b0e-2769-49cd...@googlegroups.com>, "alanfe...@gmail.com" <alanfe...@gmail.com> writes:
>> On Sunday, December 19, 2021 at 5:43:26 AM UTC-5, Volker Halle wrote:
>>> EISNER is co-located in a data center of VSI since a couple of years.
>>>
>>> Volker.
>>
>> Do you know what city? Whose data center? Just curious.
>
> Well, VSI is in Burlington.

Given the size of VSI and the fact that it is 2021 then there is a
pretty big probability that they use external hosting.

Arne

[Craig A. Berry]

I'm pretty sure they announced as much, possibly here. They had a bunch
of hardware at the original Bolton office, but at some point realized,
like so many have, that buildings that are comfortable for people and
buildings that are comfortable for servers are not always the same ones.

[Grant Taylor]

On 12/19/21 5:06 PM, Craig A. Berry wrote:
> at some point realized, like so many have, that buildings that are
> comfortable for people and buildings that are comfortable for servers
> are not always the same ones.

And yet I have taken to telling clients that if you are comfortable, the
server is also comfortable. Conversely, if you are uncomfortable (too
hot / cold), then the server is also uncomfortable.

This has applied to x86 workstations & servers for the better part of 20
years.

$EMPLOYER runs warehoused sized data centers with temperatures in the '80s.



--
Grant. . . .
unix || die

[John Reagan]

Our hardware is in a data-center facility in Chelmsford MA.

[Dave Froble]

How many external hosting sites offer a DS20? That's what it was running on
last I heard.

--
David Froble Tel: 724-529-0450
Dave Froble Enterprises, Inc. E-Mail: da...@tsoft-inc.com
DFE Ultralights, Inc.
170 Grimplin Road
Vanderbilt, PA 15486

[Phillip Helbig (undress to reply)]

In article <spp4i9$k59$1...@dont-email.me>, Dave Froble

<da...@tsoft-inc.com> writes:

> How many external hosting sites offer a DS20? That's what it was running on
> last I heard.

I guess it depends on what you mean by "external hosting". Surely there
are some places where you can install anything you want.

[Jan-Erik Söderholm]

Probably the same today as it was in the '80s.

[gah4]

On Sunday, December 19, 2021 at 11:13:24 PM UTC-8, Phillip Helbig (undress to reply) wrote:

(snip)

> I guess it depends on what you mean by "external hosting". Surely there
> are some places where you can install anything you want.

As far as I know, there are ones that offer empty rack space, such that
you supply the hardware. It has to be rack mountable, though.

[Chris Townley]

That's what we used - in a BT site (UK) in 2012 when we moved our head
office

--
Chris

[Bill Gunshannon]

On 12/19/21 8:31 PM, Grant Taylor wrote:
> On 12/19/21 5:06 PM, Craig A. Berry wrote:
>> at some point realized, like so many have, that buildings that are
>> comfortable for people and buildings that are comfortable for servers
>> are not always the same ones.
>
> And yet I have taken to telling clients that if you are comfortable, the
> server is also comfortable.  Conversely, if you are uncomfortable (too
> hot / cold), then the server is also uncomfortable.

Definitely wasn't true about the 1401. :-)

>
> This has applied to x86 workstations & servers for the better part of 20
> years.
>
> $EMPLOYER runs warehoused sized data centers with temperatures in the '80s.
>
>
>

bill

[Arne Vajhøj]

On 12/20/2021 12:32 AM, Dave Froble wrote:
> On 12/19/2021 6:48 PM, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
>> On 12/19/2021 5:32 PM, VAX...@SendSpamHere.ORG wrote:
>>> In article <a6553b0e-2769-49cd...@googlegroups.com>,
>>> "alanfe...@gmail.com" <alanfe...@gmail.com> writes:
>>>> On Sunday, December 19, 2021 at 5:43:26 AM UTC-5, Volker Halle wrote:
>>>>> EISNER is co-located in a data center of VSI since a couple of years.
>>>>>
>>>>> Volker.
>>>>
>>>> Do you know what city? Whose data center? Just curious.
>>>
>>> Well, VSI is in Burlington.
>>
>> Given the size of VSI and the fact that it is 2021 then there is a
>> pretty big probability that they use external hosting.
>

> How many external hosting sites offer a DS20?  That's what it was
> running on last I heard.

Probably none.

But a lot of hosting facilities offer rack space where a
DS20 will fit.

Arne

[Dave Froble]

Yes, and according to John, it is something like that.

[Bill Gunshannon]

If you are providing the hardware and the software what exactly is the
advantage of putting your data in someone else's hands?

bill

[Andy Burns]

Bill Gunshannon wrote:

> If you are providing the hardware and the software what exactly is the
> advantage of putting your data in someone else's hands?

They provide the

building
mains power
generator backup
ups backup
fire suppression
backbone network
cooling
security
access control
...

[Arne Vajhøj]

You get a specialist to handle all the computer room / data center
work: power incl. UPS, cooling, network connectivity, fire protection,
access control etc..

A small company could do all that themselves, but either it would not
be done right or it would be way more expensive than paying someone
that does it for thousands of customers.

> of putting your data in someone else's hands?

The risk that the hosting provide would steal data is
probably not one of the bigger concerns.

Arne

[Bill Gunshannon]

Still confused.
If you are a functioning business I would expect you already have
most if not all of that. And some of it at the bottom of the list
better than you are likely to have at a site not under your own
control.

Well, I'll admit that "generator backup" might not make the list
of things you have covered.


bill

[Bill Gunshannon]

It's not just the hosting company's employees you need to fear.
I don't understand all the trust people seem willing to place
in the hands of people you really don't know and have no control
over. Maybe I'm just getting cynical in my old age but I don't
really see a reason to trust strangers whose only real interest
is how much the can get out of my wallet.

bill

[Grant Taylor]

On 12/20/21 10:56 AM, Bill Gunshannon wrote:
> If you are a functioning business I would expect you already have most
> if not all of that. And some of it at the bottom of the list better
> than you are likely to have at a site not under your own control.

How many functioning businesses have in house lawyers, plumbers,
seamstresses, chefs, delivery staff, etc?

It's all about economics of pay an employee to do something vs pay a
contractor (be it directly or via 3rd party) to do it.

Most smaller businesses these days are outsourcing IT infrastructure for
cost reasons. Born on the web tends to be a descriptive phrase for it.

> Well, I'll admit that "generator backup" might not make the list of
> things you have covered.

Point and case. ;-)

[Arne Vajhøj]

On 12/20/2021 12:56 PM, Bill Gunshannon wrote:
> On 12/20/21 12:30 PM, Andy Burns wrote:
>> Bill Gunshannon wrote:
>>> If you are providing the hardware and the software what exactly is the
>>> advantage of putting your data in someone else's hands?
>>
>> They provide the
>>
>> building
>> mains power
>> generator backup
>> ups backup
>> fire suppression
>> backbone network
>> cooling
>> security
>> access control
>> ...
>
> Still confused.
> If you are a functioning business I would expect you already have
> most if not all of that.

> Well, I'll admit that "generator backup" might not make the list
> of things you have covered.

I don't think normal businesses have Inergen fire suppression,
two separate electricity feeds or two separate internet
connections either.

>   And some of it at the bottom of the list
> better than you are likely to have at a site not under your own
> control.

On the contrary.

In an office people have a legitimate need to get into the building
all the time so access control need to be practical. At a
hosting facility visitors are way rare and they can check the
technicians very carefully.

In an office people tend to like windows. Computers do not care
so a hosting facility do not need windows.

Arne

[Arne Vajhøj]

Capitalism is build on the idea that vendors provide what
customers want because they make money by doing that.

Arne

[Simon Clubley]

On 2021-12-19, Grant Taylor <gta...@tnetconsulting.net> wrote:
>
> $EMPLOYER runs warehoused sized data centers with temperatures in the '80s.
>

Interesting. Add another 10 to 20 degrees and you can boil water
for free. :-)

Simon.

PS: I'm in Europe... :-)

--
Simon Clubley, clubley@remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP
Walking destinations on a map are further away than they appear.

[kemain...@gmail.com]

Outsourcing of different layers of the IT stack has been around for decades.

Today, one flavour of outsourcing is often referred to as Cloud i.e., giving part or all your IT stack to some external company for a fixed and/or variable monthly service charge for the resources consumed.

Another form of outsourcing is called collocation i.e. hosting company provides space, access control, fire mgmt., Internet access, cooling, remote access and very reliable power - typically in a tier 3 data centre. The Customer supplies rack equipment and manages all the rack gear themselves remotely. You can put whatever you want in the racks as costs are often based on rack space and/or by KW's used - not what is in the racks.

This is still a big business today. While managing, maintaining, and monitoring the equipment might viewed as strategic to a company, being in the DC business (power, AC, cooling, access security etc.) may not be viewed as strategic to the company's future. Hence, collocation might be a good option to look at.


Regards,

Kerry Main
Kerry dot main at starkgaming dot com





--
This email has been checked for viruses by AVG.
https://www.avg.com

[Phillip Helbig (undress to reply)]

In article <j2bs48...@mid.individual.net>, Bill Gunshannon

<bill.gu...@gmail.com> writes:

> If you are providing the hardware and the software what exactly is the

> advantage of putting your data in someone else's hands?

Not the data, unless you allow them access to the system or don't trust
them. Advantages: guarded around the clock, no need to worry about
fires etc. when no-one is there, maybe cheaper electricity costs.

[Phillip Helbig (undress to reply)]

In article <j2budk...@mid.individual.net>, Bill Gunshannon

<bill.gu...@gmail.com> writes:

> On 12/20/21 12:30 PM, Andy Burns wrote:

> Still confused.
> If you are a functioning business I would expect you already have
> most if not all of that.

Depends on the size of the business.

[Dave Froble]

On 12/20/2021 12:16 PM, Bill Gunshannon wrote:

Better internet connections

Better power

Someone else to do misc things

[Bill Gunshannon]

Do you really need that for the one DS20 that was mentioned earlier?

>
>>                             And some of it at the bottom of the list
>> better than you are likely to have at a site not under your own
>> control.
>
> On the contrary.
>
> In an office people have a legitimate need to get into the building
> all the time so access control need to be practical. At a
> hosting facility visitors are way rare and they can check the
> technicians very carefully.

Is the computer going to be sitting in the middle of the lobby (like at
Cray :-)? Or locked away in a small room where visitors wouldn't even
see it or know of its presence? A closet would do in many cases.

>
> In an office people tend to like windows. Computers do not care
> so a hosting facility do not need windows.

Windows? Afraid someone will see the computer? Can't see in
the closet.

We keep hearing that it's about the cost. I wonder how much real
work has been done to determine if it actually does result in a
worthwhile cost savings. I have seen too many cases of actions
being taken "in order to save money" that result in more money
being spent and only changing who's budget that money came out
of.

bill

[Bill Gunshannon]

Very true. Earlier in this discussion a single DS20 was mentioned.
But, IMHO, if the desire is to save money I really don't see how
that is accomplished. Reminds me of things like AT&T's computer
business after the Judge Green decision. AT&T had a really nice
collection of systems from Micro to decent sized Mini. All based
on the WE3200 family of processors. And then one day someone
decided it would be better to convert all the 3B's to something
offered by NCR (68K's I'm pretty sure). And the result. AT&T
was ushered out of the computer business. Pr1me went the same
path. Outsourcing is not always a good business decision. And
when it comes to real security and the risks therein, I don't
think it ever is.

bill

[Dave Froble]

Do you trust the military to protect the country, or is every home heavily armed?

Do you grow all your own food?

Do you have your own water treatment plant? If you live in town.

Do you trust congress, uhh, wait, don't go there ..

There is economies of scale in many things. Of all the possible advantages, I'd
rate good internet connection(s) at or near the top of the list. Power also.

Ok, if you're Sandia Labs, no, you don't outsource. But for many, the service
would be better, and the cost less.

[Scott Dorsey]

Simon Clubley <clubley@remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP> wrote:
>On 2021-12-19, Grant Taylor <gta...@tnetconsulting.net> wrote:
>>
>> $EMPLOYER runs warehoused sized data centers with temperatures in the '80s.
>>
>
>Interesting. Add another 10 to 20 degrees and you can boil water
>for free. :-)

If you run your data center in the 80s instead of the 60s, you get a
considerably shorter lifespan on your hardware. Great decrease in MTTF
mostly due to capacitor failures but also CPU failures to a lesser extent.

But, many facilities replace their servers on a three-year cycle anyway, so
the shorter lifespan isn't much of an issue for them. Their systems don't
need to last very long anyway.

In some climates the cost savings is dramatic and more than makes up for
the cost of a reduced replacement cycle.

Of course, this all goes wrong once you start talking about anything other
than commodity servers. HPC systems, big shared memory machines, or people
forced to run older hardware definitely want to keep the temperatures down.
--scott

--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[Arne Vajhøj]

It was one DECUS server that was put together with VSI own servers.

I would think VSI own servers were somewhat business critical.

Making the above list somewhere between "nice to have" and "must have".

>>>                             And some of it at the bottom of the list
>>> better than you are likely to have at a site not under your own
>>> control.
>>
>> On the contrary.
>>
>> In an office people have a legitimate need to get into the building
>> all the time so access control need to be practical. At a
>> hosting facility visitors are way rare and they can check the
>> technicians very carefully.
>
> Is the computer going to be sitting in the middle of the lobby (like at
> Cray :-)?  Or locked away in a small room where visitors wouldn't even
> see it or know of its presence?  A closet would do in many cases.

It is possible to secure a room in an office building, but not cheap.
The typical internal door and internal walls are not intended to keep
people out.

>> In an office people tend to like windows. Computers do not care
>> so a hosting facility do not need windows.
>
> Windows?  Afraid someone will see the computer?

Windows are a very easy way to gain access for the bad guys.

> Can't see in
> the closet.
>
> We keep hearing that it's about the cost.  I wonder how much real
> work has been done to determine if it actually does result in a
> worthwhile cost savings.  I have seen too many cases of actions
> being taken "in order to save money" that result in more money
> being spent and only changing who's budget that money came out
> of.

It happens.

But I don't think that is the case here.

Companies wanting to have the right solution will save money.

Most companies will pay more to have their servers properly hosted
instead of in a random closet. In which case it is more money, but
also getting a way better solution.

Arne

[chris]

The real issue for many is none of the above, but security of data and
who has access to it. If the data is commercially sensitive, or for any
number of other reasons, the only way to be sure is to keep all the
data local. Less sensitive data may go to cloud, but they do go
down, sosing everything, so makes sense to keep a local backup at least.


I see Barclays Bank have recently signed a big deal with HPE for on
premises cloud. I guess they have their reasons...

Chris

[Grant Taylor]

On 12/20/21 4:55 PM, chris wrote:
> The real issue for many is none of the above, but security of data
> and who has access to it.

Where the data is located has little to do with it's security.

> If the data is commercially sensitive, or for any number of other
> reasons, the only way to be sure is to keep all the data local.

Compare and contrast fully patched system in a co-location facility /
Virtual Private Server in the cloud which is utilizing disk encryption,
can't decrypt anything (on boot) without (remote) operator interaction,
verses a server in an office that hasn't ever been patched and is
internet accessible.

I won't hesitate for an instance which system will keep data more secure.

[Bill Gunshannon]

On 12/20/21 3:53 PM, Phillip Helbig (undress to reply) wrote:
> In article <j2bs48...@mid.individual.net>, Bill Gunshannon
> <bill.gu...@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> If you are providing the hardware and the software what exactly is the
>> advantage of putting your data in someone else's hands?
>
> Not the data, unless you allow them access to the system

Allow them access? You handed it to them.

> or don't trust
> them.

What reason would you have to trust them?

> Advantages: guarded around the clock, no need to worry about
> fires etc. when no-one is there, maybe cheaper electricity costs.
>

I really don't see any of those as valid. Possibilities, maybe,
but not something I would put my trust in.

bill

[Bill Gunshannon]

I was a part of it for more than 20 years. I trust the military. A
lot more than I trust the politicians running this country. And, a
lot of homes are, in fact, heavily armed. A factor that is starting
to scare those politicians.

>
> Do you grow all your own food?

Nope.

>
> Do you have your own water treatment plant?  If you live in town.

Don't live in town. have my own well. When I lived in town
I bought separate drinking water. I once had my tap water tested
by the people who tested my pool water. It was unfit for use
in a swimming pool. I certainly wouldn't drink it.

>
> Do you trust congress,  uhh, wait, don't go there ..

:-)

>
> There is economies of scale in many things.  Of all the possible
> advantages, I'd rate good internet connection(s) at or near the top of
> the list.  Power also.
>
> Ok, if you're Sandia Labs, no, you don't outsource.  But for many, the
> service would be better, and the cost less.
>

And I still don't see how you draw that conclusion. It's really all
about trusting someone who has done nothing to win that trust.

bill

[Dave Froble]

Ok, I'm beginning to think you're pulling a "Dave". Playing devil's advocate,
just for the fun of it.

Do you trust the grocery store to sell you edible food? Why? What have they
done to earn your trust?

It's the same for many things. Businesses provide services. What's so
different about some hosting company? It's just another business service, and
yes, some may be better than others, customer beware, check out your service
suppliers, for everything, not just computer system hosting. It's like avoiding
a grocery which always has rotten produce.

[abrsvc]

I don't know what type of datacenter you guys are referencing when you say that they have access to your data. I have 2 clients using the same datacenter and neither has access to the other's equipment at all. There are multiple options available for clients. Either a locked rack (or racks) or a locked "cage" where your racks are surrounded by a literal cage. Yes, the datacenter operational staff has access to both using keys, but that is usually for changing tapes or drives with instructions from the system owners. Any additional access by terminal etc. is no different than it would be for any user.

The advantages of using a datacenter are usually around redundant power and internet. In the center referenced above, they have 2 separate power feeds from 2 different locations so that if one power circuit fails, the other is there. Add to that the on-site generator and you have power for almost all conditions. There are internet connections available from multiple carriers to cover when one carrier fails. One of the major cable companies had the entire eat coast access go down for a whle a few years ago. Access for my client's customers was not impacted at all, the other internet connections took over without any intervention.

No small company would be able to foot the cost of all of the redundancy required for a 24x7 operation. Yes, the datacenter costs more than the traditional in-house setup, but has more flexibility and the additional cost for all of that redundancy is far less than having it local.

Dan

[Bill Gunshannon]

No, I seriously believe all this cloud crap is a really bad idea.

>
> Do you trust the grocery store to sell you edible food?  Why?  What have
> they done to earn your trust?

Apples and oranges, but anyway.

They have nothing to gain from poisoning me. The cloud providers
have a lot to gain by acquiring my data. And access to my wallet.

>
> It's the same for many things.  Businesses provide services.  What's so
> different about some hosting company?  It's just another business
> service, and yes, some may be better than others, customer beware, check
> out your service suppliers, for everything, not just computer system
> hosting.  It's like avoiding a grocery which always has rotten produce.
>

One of the big difference is that in many cases you really don't have
an alternative to the grocery store. If you live in NYC your not going
to have a farm to grow your own. But in the case of the cloud, you
do have an alternative. And, it is one you can trust. Unless you don't
trust yourself. :-) I know it is mostly about cost, but just like the
constant argument about true cost of TCO I think more people need to
consider the true cost of outsourcing and that includes the risk. Much
more today than in the past.

bill

[chris]

On 12/21/21 00:46, Grant Taylor wrote:
> On 12/20/21 4:55 PM, chris wrote:
>> The real issue for many is none of the above, but security of data and
>> who has access to it.
>
> Where the data is located has little to do with it's security.

If you say so, but ridiculous comment really.

>
>> If the data is commercially sensitive, or for any number of other
>> reasons, the only way to be sure is to keep all the data local.
>
> Compare and contrast fully patched system in a co-location facility /
> Virtual Private Server in the cloud which is utilizing disk encryption,
> can't decrypt anything (on boot) without (remote) operator interaction,
> verses a server in an office that hasn't ever been patched and is
> internet accessible.

Cherry picking the most extreme cases as an example is hardly a valid
argument.

What was that date center that burned down recently ?, took weeks to
get all the customers back up and running and understand that some are
still waiting. Ok, rare event, but trust an external supplier like
that and you really need to understand the risks. That's why companies
with long experience of IT, like Barclays, choose to keep all data local
onsite...

Chris

[Dave Froble]

Uhh ... Bill ...

WE AIN'T TALKING ABOUT "CLOUD" !!!!!!!!!!

We're talking about a facility where you can install and run your equipment!

A facility that provides a service. Like renting a place with special
equipment, capabilities, protections, and such. Maybe like an apartment
building with multiple renters of apartments. Common services for each renter.
It's still your equipment. It's still your data.

Go elsewhere if you want to rant about "the cloud". Not here.

[Grant Taylor]

On 12/21/21 9:21 AM, chris wrote:
> If you say so, but ridiculous comment really.

Is it?

> Cherry picking the most extreme cases as an example is hardly a valid
> argument.

The example I used isn't that extreme. I know many people that are
using disk encryption in the cloud and many people that aren't doing so
on premise.

Didn't you cherry pick an extreme case too?

> What was that date center that burned down recently ?, took weeks to
> get all the customers back up and running and understand that some
> are still waiting.

I think you're talking about OVH.

> Ok, rare event, but trust an external supplier like that and you really
> need to understand the risks. That's why companies with long experience
> of IT, like Barclays, choose to keep all data local onsite...

What difference would it have made for clients if the fire had been in
their own on-premise data center with the same state of backups? Would
the location of the fire have really made that much difference to their
operation?

I maintain that things (equipment gets stolen, fire, floods, etc) happen
and that what happens is somewhat independent of the location (3rd
party, 1st party, etc).

[Bill Gunshannon]

Sorry Dave. When it leaves your control and goes to someone else's
it all looks like cloud to me.

>
> We're talking about a facility where you can install and run your
> equipment!

With someone else having complete access to your system and all its
data?

>
> A facility that provides a service.  Like renting a place with special
> equipment, capabilities, protections, and such.  Maybe like an apartment
> building with multiple renters of apartments.  Common services for each
> renter. It's still your equipment.  It's still your data.

Except that someone other than you has full access to it.

>
> Go elsewhere if you want to rant about "the cloud".  Not here.
>

bill

[Grant Taylor]

On 12/21/21 6:38 AM, Bill Gunshannon wrote:
> No, I seriously believe all this cloud crap is a really bad idea.

I agree.

IMHO, "the cloud" is /just/ another data center /somewhere/. I probably
don't have any physical access to it. Thus I have to rely on other
people to do the physical part of the work. -- But I have to
administer servers in the cloud just like I have to administer servers
in my companies on-premise data center.

That's one type of "cloud", namely the (virtual) "system" level.
Another type of cloud is at the "service" level, a la. outsourcing email
to someone like Google's Gmail / Microsoft's Office 365.

IMHO "the cloud" is a marketing buzz word.

I will say, that cloud tends to have one very strong advantage, and
that's business / legal which is decidedly non-technical, in a word
"contract". More precisely "contractual obligations". Businesses can
hold other businesses accountable for things, meaning that they can sue
if the other business fails to uphold the contractual obligations.
That's something that is quite a bit more difficult to do with an employee.

Similarly, "the cloud" provides abstraction for physical problems much
like renting provides abstractions from property maintenance issues.
Much like renting a car and swapping for the newer model every 18-24 months.

> Apples and oranges, but anyway.

Not really.

Either you trust that someone does something; sells you safe food /
hosts your systems or data in a safe way, or you do not.

> They have nothing to gain from poisoning me.

Your repeat business and word of mouth poisoning their reputation seems
like something to gain from you.

> The cloud providers have a lot to gain by acquiring my data.
> And access to my wallet.

And yet, safe for a few specific cases, e.g. Gmail, almost all cloud
providers aren't accessing your data, much less the source of data
leaks. Rather it's almost all of the data leaks are from mis-configured
systems / services located /somewhere/. And that mis-configuration is
almost always based on the 1st party (not) doing something (they should
have).

There is very little difference in posting sensitive data to the website
document root on a local server verses a cloud provider server. Someone
in the company still did a dumb. Where the server is doesn't matter
much in this case.

> One of the big difference is that in many cases you really don't
> have an alternative to the grocery store. If you live in NYC your
> not going to have a farm to grow your own.

Buying your food vs growing your food, sure.

But I'll almost guarantee that you have multiple choices as to where you
buy your food from. There are probably multiple grocery stores within a
reasonable commute and almost certainly multiple, if not many,
restaurants and / or gas stations / vending machines that sell food.
Admittedly the quality and desirability of the food will likely vary
SIGNIFICANTLY. But there are probably many places that you can get
sustenance in your proximity.

> But in the case of the cloud, you do have an alternative. And, it
> is one you can trust. Unless you don't trust yourself. :-)

I know a bunch of people that have pretended to be computer people and
failed absolutely miserably. Yet hardly any of them will even attempt
to be a plumber / mechanic / carpenter / doctor / etc.

> I know it is mostly about cost,

Cost is just one aspect.

Convenience is another.

One of the bigger ones that I see people doing is outsourcing their
email to ... email professionals. Very similarly to how many small
businesses outsource their book keeping to CPAs or legal work to
lawyers. Nothing is preventing these same businesses from doing their
own book keeping or representing themselves in court. Yet they choose
to outsource. I wonder why that is?

Another big reason is (perceived) expertise. As in the outsourced party
is probably better at doing $THING than doing it in house.

> but just like the constant argument about true cost of TCO I think
> more people need to consider the true cost of outsourcing and that
> includes the risk. Much more today than in the past.

Cost is usually likened to fiduciary currency. But cost can be many
different things; time, corruption (data integrity), privacy (data
confidentiality).

[Grant Taylor]

On 12/21/21 10:31 AM, Bill Gunshannon wrote:
> Sorry Dave. When it leaves your control and goes to someone else's
> it all looks like cloud to me.

Cloud is a somewhat new term that tends to be all encompassing of
"someone else's problem / responsibility" read: "not my problem / not my
responsibility".

> With someone else having complete access to your system and all
> its data?

"Cloud" does *NOT* imply that someone else has access to my systems,
much less /complete/ access to them. Nor does anyone at the VPS
provider I use have /any/ knowledge of what my disk encryption keys are.

Some cloud offerings /do/ mean that level of access. But there are
other cloud offerings that are simply "rent this bare metal from us and
do with it what you want to we can't / won't log into it".

> Except that someone other than you has full access to it.

Not all rental properties come with full access. I've had many clients
that had explicit clauses that landlords were expressly forbidden from
being on the property / in the place /without/ the tenant being there.
So much so that the tenant replaced all the locks & keys at their whim
without telling the landlord. The only hard requirement was that the
tenant had to coordinate with the fire department to put a current key
in the Knox Box, which the landlord has no access to.

There are all sorts of rental agreements. Not all of them imply that
the owner / landlord has physical access.

[Simon Clubley]

On 2021-12-20, Dave Froble <da...@tsoft-inc.com> wrote:
>
> Ok, I'm beginning to think you're pulling a "Dave". Playing devil's advocate,
> just for the fun of it.
>
> Do you trust the grocery store to sell you edible food? Why? What have they
> done to earn your trust?
>

I don't need to trust the grocery store or supermarket (unless special
cooling handling is required) because they are just a reseller of other
companies products (and any fresh food they may sell can be easily
inspected for quality). I place more trust (but not absolute trust) in
any well-known brands they sell because those brands have a reputation
to maintain.

It's the same reason I won't buy el-cheapo battery storage banks but will
spend more money to buy a well-known branded product. If the branded
product has a safety problem, that's instant massive reputation damage
for them so they are motivated to reduce the chances of that happening.

Even so, branded lithium rechargable battery fires do still occur, so
nothing is 100% safe.

> It's the same for many things. Businesses provide services. What's so
> different about some hosting company? It's just another business service, and
> yes, some may be better than others, customer beware, check out your service
> suppliers, for everything, not just computer system hosting. It's like avoiding
> a grocery which always has rotten produce.
>

Reputation matters. It's also the same reason why many people will not
buy an el-cheapo CAT off Amazon (for example) but will instead spend
more money buying one from a high-quality well-known medical supplies
vendor.

The problem is that some people seem to want to invest in el-cheapo
hosting instead of going to a vendor who builds business based on
reputation. Hopefully VSI selected the latter kind of vendor. :-)

Simon.

[Simon Clubley]

On 2021-12-21, Bill Gunshannon <bill.gu...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> With someone else having complete access to your system and all its
> data?
>

Your operating system vendor has complete access to your data and your
secrets. Do you trust them ?

[Jan-Erik Söderholm]

Den 2021-12-21 kl. 19:54, skrev Simon Clubley:
> On 2021-12-21, Bill Gunshannon <bill.gu...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> With someone else having complete access to your system and all its
>> data?
>>
>
> Your operating system vendor has complete access to your data and your
> secrets.

What do you mean?

Would VSI have complete access to our data, if it was stored on an
OpenVMS instance running at Azure or AWS? How would that work?

> Do you trust them ?

In this case, VSI? To not tamper with our data? Yes I do.


>
> Simon.
>

[Dennis Boone]

> If you run your data center in the 80s instead of the 60s, you get a
> considerably shorter lifespan on your hardware. Great decrease in MTTF
> mostly due to capacitor failures but also CPU failures to a lesser extent.

Not everyone agrees. For example, Google and Backblaze both say
temperature isn't as big a factor in disk drive life as you'd expect.

https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-temperature-does-it-matter/

The Google link in that document talks specifically about hard drives.
Elsewhere, Google also report that they run their datacenters at 80
degrees:

https://www.google.com/about/datacenters/efficiency/

De

[Scott Dorsey]

Simon Clubley <clubley@remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP> wrote:
>Your operating system vendor has complete access to your data and your
>secrets. Do you trust them ?

In the case of Microsoft...
Not very much, and that is the most terrifying thing of all.

[Scott Dorsey]

Dennis Boone <d...@ihatespam.msu.edu> wrote:
> > If you run your data center in the 80s instead of the 60s, you get a
> > considerably shorter lifespan on your hardware. Great decrease in MTTF
> > mostly due to capacitor failures but also CPU failures to a lesser extent.
>
>Not everyone agrees. For example, Google and Backblaze both say
>temperature isn't as big a factor in disk drive life as you'd expect.
>
>https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-temperature-does-it-matter/
>
>The Google link in that document talks specifically about hard drives.

Yes, it doesn't have as big an effect on hard drives. As I said, it's mostly
increased numbers of electrolytic capacitor failures and to a lesser extent
CPU failures.

>Elsewhere, Google also report that they run their datacenters at 80
>degrees:
>
>https://www.google.com/about/datacenters/efficiency/

Yes. It's more cost-effective for them and they are changing the hardware
out on a fairly short cycle anyway.

[Jan-Erik Söderholm]

Aha! F! Why not use a standard temp scale.
I thought it sounded a bit high...

[Arne Vajhøj]

> Aha! F! Why not use a standard temp scale.
> I thought it sounded a bit high...

The standard is K.

:-)

Arne

[Arne Vajhøj]

On 12/21/2021 12:31 PM, Bill Gunshannon wrote:
> On 12/21/21 11:45 AM, Dave Froble wrote:
>> On 12/21/2021 8:38 AM, Bill Gunshannon wrote:
>>> No, I seriously believe all this cloud crap is a really bad idea.

>> Uhh ... Bill ...
>>
>> WE AIN'T TALKING ABOUT "CLOUD" !!!!!!!!!!
>
> Sorry Dave.  When it leaves your control and goes to someone else's
> it all looks like cloud to me.

Not everything external is cloud. Being cloud requires some scalability
and location fuzziness to qualify.

A sufficiently large hosting facility could have been called
LaaS (Location as a Service) cloud, but by convention it is not.

env HW+hypervisor OS+platform SW
traditional customer customer customer customer
hosting facility provider customer customer customer
IaaS cloud provider provider customer customer
PaaS/FaaS cloud provider provider provider customer
SaaS cloud provider provider provider provider

Arne

[Dave Froble]

On 12/21/2021 7:59 PM, Jan-Erik Söderholm wrote:

For some of us, "F" is standard.

As is inches, feet, yards, miles, pounds, quarts, gallons, etc ...

:-)

[Jan-Erik Söderholm]

Right, I have heard about that. While the rest of the world has moved on.

[VAXman-]

Dynes or newtons?

--
VAXman- A Bored Certified VMS Kernel Mode Hacker VAXman(at)TMESIS(dot)ORG

I speak to machines with the voice of humanity.

[Phillip Helbig (undress to reply)]

In article <00B6DA8D...@SendSpamHere.ORG>, VAXman-

@SendSpamHere.ORG writes:

> >> As is inches, feet, yards, miles, pounds, quarts, gallons, etc ...
> >>
> >> :-)
> >
> >Right, I have heard about that. While the rest of the world has moved on.
>
> Dynes or newtons?

Both are metric, but newton is the SI, and hence preferred, unit. Same
with tesla over gauss.

[Simon Clubley]

On 2021-12-21, Jan-Erik Söderholm <jan-erik....@telia.com> wrote:
> Den 2021-12-21 kl. 19:54, skrev Simon Clubley:
>> On 2021-12-21, Bill Gunshannon <bill.gu...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> With someone else having complete access to your system and all its
>>> data?
>>>
>>
>> Your operating system vendor has complete access to your data and your
>> secrets.
>
> What do you mean?
>
> Would VSI have complete access to our data, if it was stored on an
> OpenVMS instance running at Azure or AWS? How would that work?
>

Nothing to do with cloud instances and nothing to do with just VSI.
(IE: Simon _isn't_ on a VSI related rant. :-))

By definition of what it does, the operating system has direct access
to your data. If that operating system had a backdoor added to it, the
people who ordered the backdoor to be added would have direct access
to your data.

This is nothing new. There were active suspicions about this kind of
thing 20 years ago:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSAKEY

The backdoor could be added by the vendor on the order of a government
or it could be added by employees really working for someone else without
the vendor's knowledge.

>> Do you trust them ?
>
> In this case, VSI? To not tamper with our data? Yes I do.
>

This is not directed to VSI, but to operating system vendors in general.

[Simon Clubley]

On 2021-12-21, Jan-Erik Söderholm <jan-erik....@telia.com> wrote:
>

> Aha! F! Why not use a standard temp scale.
> I thought it sounded a bit high...

I guess my comment about boiling water was a bit too subtle. :-)

[Simon Clubley]

On 2021-12-22, Dave Froble <da...@tsoft-inc.com> wrote:
>
> For some of us, "F" is standard.
>
> As is inches, feet, yards, miles, pounds, quarts, gallons, etc ...
>
>:-)
>

The US lost a probe due to that mindset. :-)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter

[Arne Vajhøj]

Barclays chose on-prem.

But that is not a universal picture across banks.

A quick google of some big banks revealed:

Barclays - private cloud
Deutsche Bank - Google cloud
HSBC - Amazon cloud
JP Morgan - multi cloud
Bank of America - IBM cloud
Citibank - private cloud
Goldman Sachs - Amazon cloud
BNP Paribas - private cloud
UBS - Microsoft cloud

They are all over.

Arne

[Dave Froble]

On 12/22/2021 10:41 AM, Simon Clubley wrote:
> On 2021-12-22, Dave Froble <da...@tsoft-inc.com> wrote:
>>
>> For some of us, "F" is standard.
>>
>> As is inches, feet, yards, miles, pounds, quarts, gallons, etc ...
>>
>> :-)
>>
>
> The US lost a probe due to that mindset. :-)
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter
>
> Simon.
>

I'd suggest the problem was stupidity ...

The discrepancy between calculated and measured position, resulting in the
discrepancy between desired and actual orbit insertion altitude, had been
noticed earlier by at least two navigators, whose concerns were dismissed
because they "did not follow the rules about filling out [the] form to document
their concerns".


"The sky is falling ..."

Fill out the proper form ...

[chris]

Good, but that doesn't split it down enough and you can bet that
the really critical and sensitive is kept onsight, or at least a
mirror copy of. To do otherwise seems foolish, even irresponsible,
to me.

One also has to remember that all external cloud requires internet
access, unless they are using leased line or some other sort of
private network, not connected in any way to the internet. Once
internet connected, a whole world of security issues need
to be addressed...

Chris

[alanfe...@gmail.com]

On Tuesday, December 21, 2021 at 7:59:48 PM UTC-5, Jan-Erik Söderholm wrote:
> Den 2021-12-22 kl. 01:24, skrev Scott Dorsey:
> > Dennis Boone <d...@ihatespam.msu.edu> wrote:

[...]

> >> Elsewhere, Google also report that they run their datacenters at 80
> >> degrees:

[...]

> > --scott
> >
> Aha! F! Why not use a standard temp scale.
> I thought it sounded a bit high...

I would have chimed in sooner, but my Mac hard drive failed a few days ago and I was rather occupied with recovery.

Anyway, regarding Fahrenheit: Americans aren't switching to the "standard," Celsius, for the same reason you're not using a Dvorak keyboard. Actually, if you want to go all the way you should be using Kelvin, the only "true" temperature scale in use.

[alanfe...@gmail.com]

On Wednesday, December 22, 2021 at 7:55:40 AM UTC-5, Phillip Helbig (undress to reply) wrote:
> In article <00B6DA8D...@SendSpamHere.ORG>, VAXman-
> @SendSpamHere.ORG writes:
>
> > >> As is inches, feet, yards, miles, pounds, quarts, gallons, etc ...
> > >>
> > >> :-)
> > >
> > >Right, I have heard about that. While the rest of the world has moved on.
> >
> > Dynes or newtons?

Excellent point.

> Both are metric, but newton is the SI, and hence preferred, unit. Same
> with tesla over gauss.

Depends on the purpose. Use the right too for the job. And to my European freinds: How many Newtons do you weigh?

Dynes and Newtons are pretty much limited to the realm of physicists and perhaps some engineers.

Both Telsas and Gausses are in use. Different purpose? Different units.

Would you use Coulombs when dealing with the charges of subatomic particles? No! Physicists use the positron as the unit of charge. And energy? Nuclear and particle physicists use electron volts, usually as keV, MeV, GeV, and now TeV, not ergs or BTU's or joules. Electron volts are not SI units! You've also got the very useful atomic mass unit. Cross sections are measured in barns. 1 barn = 10^{-28} m^2. Not an SI unit, but based on the meter. Actually, millibarns is used a lot, and microbarns in neutrino physics, IIRC.

Astronomers use all sorts of non-SI units: astronomical unit, light-year, parsec, stellar magnitude (which is not only not even linear, it's logarithmic. But also higher numbers mean dimmer stars!), solar masses, Schwarzschild radius, and probably more I can't think of at the moment.

Theoretical physicists often set natural constants like c (speed of light), \hbar (the reduced Planck constant), and e (charge of a positron) to 1.

America uses both English/Imperial/US customary units or WTFTC _and_ metric units. We can handle it (well, except for the Mars Observer probe!)! OK, many Americans can't. But we have metric in lots of things: beverages, liquor, drugs (both legal and illegal), engine displacement, film width, gun calibers (both systems), focal length, lens or mirror size (both systems, at least in astronomy), and probably more. But you get the idea. We have not eschewed the metric system. We just haven't adopted it for everything. Oh, there's tools! They come in both metric and non-metric units (I'm talking wrenches and the like). Apple brags that the thickness of their new 24" M1 macs is only 11.5 mm, IIRC.

Back to Fahrenheit: It has its advantages. When the temperature is in the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s -- each range conjures up a different feeling. The Celsius degree is too big for that. "But is based on 0 and 100 for water!" So F what [pun not intended!]. How often do you even think of those when you are involved with the temperature. You've got two numbers: 32 and 212. Is this too hard to memorize? And when you hear those numbers you know it's temperature-related. 0 and 100 could be 'most anything.

Again, the reason Americans don't adopt Celsius is the same reason you haven't switched from the QWERTY to the Dvorak keyboard.

[alanfe...@gmail.com]

On Wednesday, December 22, 2021 at 1:42:27 PM UTC-5, Dave Froble wrote:
> On 12/22/2021 10:41 AM, Simon Clubley wrote:
> > On 2021-12-22, Dave Froble <da...@tsoft-inc.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> For some of us, "F" is standard.
> >>
> >> As is inches, feet, yards, miles, pounds, quarts, gallons, etc ...
> >>
> >> :-)
> >>
> >
> > The US lost a probe due to that mindset. :-)
> >
> > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter
> >
> > Simon.
> >
> I'd suggest the problem was stupidity ...

It was the fact that they were using different systems of units, not that one was using non-metric units. Which goes more toward the "stupidity" explanation.

>
> The discrepancy between calculated and measured position, resulting in the
> discrepancy between desired and actual orbit insertion altitude, had been
> noticed earlier by at least two navigators, whose concerns were dismissed
> because they "did not follow the rules about filling out [the] form to document
> their concerns".
>
>
> "The sky is falling ..."
>
> Fill out the proper form ...
> --
> David Froble Tel: 724-529-0450
> Dave Froble Enterprises, Inc. E-Mail: da...@tsoft-inc.com
> DFE Ultralights, Inc.
> 170 Grimplin Road
> Vanderbilt, PA 15486

AEF

[alanfe...@gmail.com]

On Sunday, December 19, 2021 at 9:23:26 PM UTC-5, xyzz...@gmail.com wrote:

> On Sunday, December 19, 2021 at 6:48:51 PM UTC-5, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
> > On 12/19/2021 5:32 PM, VAX...@SendSpamHere.ORG wrote:
> > > In article <a6553b0e-2769-49cd...@googlegroups.com>, "alanfe...@gmail.com" <alanfe...@gmail.com> writes:
> > >> On Sunday, December 19, 2021 at 5:43:26 AM UTC-5, Volker Halle wrote:
> > >>> EISNER is co-located in a data center of VSI since a couple of years.
> > >>>
> > >>> Volker.
> > >>
> > >> Do you know what city? Whose data center? Just curious.
> > >
> > > Well, VSI is in Burlington.
> > Given the size of VSI and the fact that it is 2021 then there is a
> > pretty big probability that they use external hosting.
> >

> > Arne
> Our hardware is in a data-center facility in Chelmsford MA.

So I assume you are from VSI.

Again, who _funds_ EISNER? I don't think anyone has answered that. Is it 100% VSI-funded? The login bit no longer asks for donations.

[Steven Schweda]

> [...] How many Newtons do you weigh?

Normally, _mass_ is what is measured, not weight (force of gravity,
which depends too much on the environment).

> Dynes and Newtons are pretty much limited to the realm of physicists
> and perhaps some engineers.

Or any car mechanic with a torque wrench and a metric service manual.
(Although one written in the US might have goofy values, blindly
converted from foot-pounds.)

And "Newton" is the man; "newton" is the unit of force.

My high-school physics teacher drew a healthy-looking stick-figure
horse(?) on the blackboard, and labeled it "cm". Next to it, he drew a
similarly shaped animal, but on its back, with limp legs, and X's for
eyes, and labeled it "erg".

> Physicists use the positron as the unit of charge. [...]

No, they use the magnitude of the charge on an electron, just as they
did before the positron was discovered.

> Nuclear and particle physicists use electron volts, usually as keV,

> MeV, GeV, and now TeV, [...]

Note: "eV", not "pV". There is no "e" in "positron".

> [...] the reason Americans don't adopt Celsius is the same reason you

> haven't switched from the QWERTY to the Dvorak keyboard.

Not really. There's an Engineer Guy movie about the Dvorak keyboard,
by the way:

http://www.engineerguy.com/failure/dvorak.htm

Note that SI _did_ take over the world. (Almost completely.)

[Dave Froble]

On 12/23/2021 10:42 PM, alanfe...@gmail.com wrote:
> On Wednesday, December 22, 2021 at 1:42:27 PM UTC-5, Dave Froble wrote:
>> On 12/22/2021 10:41 AM, Simon Clubley wrote:
>>> On 2021-12-22, Dave Froble <da...@tsoft-inc.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> For some of us, "F" is standard.
>>>>
>>>> As is inches, feet, yards, miles, pounds, quarts, gallons, etc ...
>>>>
>>>> :-)
>>>>
>>>
>>> The US lost a probe due to that mindset. :-)
>>>
>>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter
>>>
>>> Simon.
>>>
>> I'd suggest the problem was stupidity ...
>
> It was the fact that they were using different systems of units, not that one was using non-metric units. Which goes more toward the "stupidity" explanation.

I totally disagree. It''s quite simple to convert between systems.

When someone tells you to get off the road, the bus is coming, do you refuse
because they didn't fill out the proper forms? That's stupidity.

[alanfe...@gmail.com]

On Friday, December 24, 2021 at 12:03:05 AM UTC-5, Steven Schweda wrote:
> > [...] How many Newtons do you weigh?
>
> Normally, _mass_ is what is measured, not weight (force of gravity,
> which depends too much on the environment).

Nitpicking. Nit-, nit-, nitpicking. Fine. If you want to go there, then be prepared to adjust your scale to take the small differences in g around the world due to the earth's rotaiton and slightly non-spherical shape. Or just stay home.

> > Dynes and Newtons are pretty much limited to the realm of physicists
> > and perhaps some engineers.
> Or any car mechanic with a torque wrench and a metric service manual.
> (Although one written in the US might have goofy values, blindly
> converted from foot-pounds.)
>
> And "Newton" is the man; "newton" is the unit of force.

Sure, whatever.

>
> My high-school physics teacher drew a healthy-looking stick-figure
> horse(?) on the blackboard, and labeled it "cm". Next to it, he drew a
> similarly shaped animal, but on its back, with limp legs, and X's for
> eyes, and labeled it "erg".
>
> > Physicists use the positron as the unit of charge. [...]
>
> No, they use the magnitude of the charge on an electron, just as they
> did before the positron was discovered.

You're really nitpicking here. It's the same thing. I know you might find that hard to believe, but it really is the same thing.
We now know there's a positron, so I'm using that term instead. Takes fewer words until I had to respond to your post. I see nothing wrong with that. I guess it's news to you that it has the same, but opposite charge of the electron. Amazing, no? Next you'll be telling me that the meter is really 1/10,000,000th of the distance from the N pole to the equator through Paris or whatever it was.

Please, give me the numerical difference between the charge of a positron and the absolute value of the charge of an electron.

I'm waiting.

A difference without a distinction, as there is no difference.

> > Nuclear and particle physicists use electron volts, usually as keV,
> > MeV, GeV, and now TeV, [...]
>
> Note: "eV", not "pV". There is no "e" in "positron".

Well duh. And that's for a unit of energy, not charge. Again, please tell me the numerical difference between the charge of a positron and the absolute value of the charge of an electron. Hint: It's pretty damn close to zero.

BTW, physicists often use T for kinetic energy and U for potential energy. So what? There's no U in potential! B is used for the magnetic induction. No B in that! H is used for magnetic field. No H in that! Planck's constant is a lowercase h. No h in Planck or constant! p is used for momentum. No p in that!

> > [...] the reason Americans don't adopt Celsius is the same reason you
> > haven't switched from the QWERTY to the Dvorak keyboard.
> Not really. There's an Engineer Guy movie about the Dvorak keyboard,
> by the way:
>
> http://www.engineerguy.com/failure/dvorak.htm
>
> Note that SI _did_ take over the world. (Almost completely.)

So has climate change. So what?

And it looks like authoritarianism is taking over the world. I suppose that makes it a good thing, too.

America put men on the moon, despite only partial embrace of the SI system. Five decades later Jeff Besos launched people up 100 km or 62 miles or whatever it was. Just an odd side comment.

One other thing: SI hasn't taken over physics or astronomy. Physicists sometimes even use feet! Light travels about 1 foot in a nanosecond. This is useful for estimating delays in cables. That's probably the only unit from the English/Imperial/Customary/WTFIC system. The rest is a mix of SI and some non-SI units.

[alanfe...@gmail.com]

On Friday, December 24, 2021 at 12:36:28 AM UTC-5, Dave Froble wrote:
> On 12/23/2021 10:42 PM, alanfe...@gmail.com wrote:
> > On Wednesday, December 22, 2021 at 1:42:27 PM UTC-5, Dave Froble wrote:
> >> On 12/22/2021 10:41 AM, Simon Clubley wrote:
> >>> On 2021-12-22, Dave Froble <da...@tsoft-inc.com> wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>> For some of us, "F" is standard.
> >>>>
> >>>> As is inches, feet, yards, miles, pounds, quarts, gallons, etc ...
> >>>>
> >>>> :-)
> >>>>
> >>>
> >>> The US lost a probe due to that mindset. :-)
> >>>
> >>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter
> >>>
> >>> Simon.
> >>>
> >> I'd suggest the problem was stupidity ...
> >
> > It was the fact that they were using different systems of units, not that one was using non-metric units. Which goes more toward the "stupidity" explanation.
> I totally disagree. It''s quite simple to convert between systems.
>
> When someone tells you to get off the road, the bus is coming, do you refuse
> because they didn't fill out the proper forms? That's stupidity.

Touche'. Actually it's kind of both. But mostly stupidity. You'd figure there would be teams and that _someone_ would notice something wasn't right.

[alanfe...@gmail.com]

On Friday, December 24, 2021 at 12:03:05 AM UTC-5, Steven Schweda wrote:
[...]

]>

> > [...] the reason Americans don't adopt Celsius is the same reason you
> > haven't switched from the QWERTY to the Dvorak keyboard.
> Not really. There's an Engineer Guy movie about the Dvorak keyboard,
> by the way:
>
> http://www.engineerguy.com/failure/dvorak.htm

I just read the article.

"He showed that many of the most frequent letters are clustered at the center of the keyboard and so are confined to a reasonably small visual field."

Yes, a real advantage there, esp. for touch typists! I don't even believe it. Really? These are the most frequently used letters? TYUGHJBNM

QWERTY is terrible. Many words have all or a long sequence of letters entirely on the left hand, like SEARCH and SCRATCH. This is the hand that has to move the wrong way ergonomically. There are many such words and such things cause repetitive strain injuries like tendonitis and carpal tunnel. Supposedly the Dvorak keyboard is much better in that respect. It's much easier on the hands if you get to alternate hands between most letters in actual words.

QWERTY is bad on at least the left hand. Mice, on the right. And bingo! Disabled user.

But the Dvorak keyboard takes months to learn. And it would take months for Americans to get used to Celsius. No one wants to do either. And is Celsius even an SI unit? Kelvin is the base SI unit.

> Note that SI _did_ take over the world. (Almost completely.)

And America put men on another world, without being a purely SI nation. Hey, there's a good name for a show: SI nation!

Hey. QWERTY ain't an SI thing. So how good could it be?

AEF

[Steven Schweda]

> Nitpicking. Nit-, nit-, nitpicking. Fine. [...]

It's really not. Mass and weight are different concepts.

> [...] be prepared to adjust your scale [...]

Why? _I_'m measuring _mass_ using a balance, so I don't need to
adjust anything. Only someone who actually measures _weight_ needs to
worry.

The once-ubiquitous phrase, "No Springs -- Honest Weight", should, of
course, have read, "No Springs -- Honest Mass", because that's what was
actually measured. Of course, with pound (mass) and poundal (force), or
pound (force) and slug (mass), it's clear why SI might cause less
confusion among the easily confused.

> You're really nitpicking here. [...]

Real nit-picking would have been complaining that "the positron as
the unit of charge" was wrong because "the positron" is a particle, not
a "unit of charge". Note: "the magnitude of the charge on an electron",
not "the electron".

Precise language might look like nit-picking to a sloppy mind, but
it's really not.

[alanfe...@gmail.com]

On Friday, December 24, 2021 at 1:19:15 AM UTC-5, Steven Schweda wrote:
> > Nitpicking. Nit-, nit-, nitpicking. Fine. [...]
>
> It's really not. Mass and weight are different concepts.
>
> > [...] be prepared to adjust your scale [...]
>
> Why? _I_'m measuring _mass_ using a balance, so I don't need to
> adjust anything. Only someone who actually measures _weight_ needs to
> worry.

Hmmm. I didn't know you were using a balance scale. Most people don't. I actually have a beam balance, like the ones you see in doctors offices. But most don't. I suppose to p[ay a compliment to someone who lost weight you'd say, "Hey, I see you lost some mass there! Lookin' good!" Really? Is that how you'd put it, and you'd give people s*** if they said weight instead of mass?

It's still nitpicking.

>
> The once-ubiquitous phrase, "No Springs -- Honest Weight", should, of
> course, have read, "No Springs -- Honest Mass", because that's what was
> actually measured. Of course, with pound (mass) and poundal (force), or
> pound (force) and slug (mass), it's clear why SI might cause less
> confusion among the easily confused.
>
> > You're really nitpicking here. [...]

Have you ever checked out onlineconversion.com? Talk about lots of units!

>
> Real nit-picking would have been complaining that "the positron as
> the unit of charge" was wrong because "the positron" is a particle, not
> a "unit of charge". Note: "the magnitude of the charge on an electron",
> not "the electron".
>
> Precise language might look like nit-picking to a sloppy mind, but
> it's really not.

No, nitpicking looks like irrelevant time-wasting criticism to people who aren't interested in wasting time on things that don't matter. We're humans, not computers. Most of us don't need every blasted last detail expounded to us. That's why computers are so bad at common sense. Of course I'm writing this post anyway. (^_^)

Ever been on quora.com? We've got some classic nitpickers there. It's often obvious what questioner means by a poorly worded question. Some will go on and on about how color is really a perception of the mind blah blah blah, when it's damn obvious what the question was. "Why is the grass green?" gets answered with a multi-paragraph explanation about how color is really just a perception of the mind. Shutup and answer the damn question, for Chrissakes. Sheesh.

Or the time isn't real bit, or the am/pm/noon/midnight bit. You'd have a ball!

I could go on, but time's-a-wasting! (And I'm sure interest would be waning!)

AEF

[Andreas Eder]

On Do 23 Dez 2021 at 19:40, "alanfe...@gmail.com" <alanfe...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Depends on the purpose. Use the right too for the job. And to my
> European freinds: How many Newtons do you weigh?

roughly: 1kN

'Andreas

[Dave Froble]

On 12/24/2021 12:44 AM, alanfe...@gmail.com wrote:
> On Friday, December 24, 2021 at 12:36:28 AM UTC-5, Dave Froble wrote:
>> On 12/23/2021 10:42 PM, alanfe...@gmail.com wrote:
>>> On Wednesday, December 22, 2021 at 1:42:27 PM UTC-5, Dave Froble wrote:
>>>> On 12/22/2021 10:41 AM, Simon Clubley wrote:
>>>>> On 2021-12-22, Dave Froble <da...@tsoft-inc.com> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> For some of us, "F" is standard.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> As is inches, feet, yards, miles, pounds, quarts, gallons, etc ...
>>>>>>
>>>>>> :-)
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> The US lost a probe due to that mindset. :-)
>>>>>
>>>>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter
>>>>>
>>>>> Simon.
>>>>>
>>>> I'd suggest the problem was stupidity ...
>>>
>>> It was the fact that they were using different systems of units, not that one was using non-metric units. Which goes more toward the "stupidity" explanation.
>> I totally disagree. It''s quite simple to convert between systems.
>>
>> When someone tells you to get off the road, the bus is coming, do you refuse
>> because they didn't fill out the proper forms? That's stupidity.
>
> Touche'. Actually it's kind of both. But mostly stupidity. You'd figure there would be teams and that _someone_ would notice something wasn't right.

According to the Wiki piece, several someones did notice, but were ignored.

[kemain...@gmail.com]

Other than marketing, outsourcing is not much different to a Public Cloud
i.e., giving all and/or part of your IT stack to an external vendor in
return for paying a fixed and/or variable charge based on resources
dedicated and/or used on a monthly basis. Both provide compute and/or
storage capacity on demand (COD has been around since 70's or 80')
solutions. Course, one could argue there are no outsourcers who are as large
as AWS or Azure, but the principles are the same.

A Private Cloud is a business decision to implement an IT environment that
has many of the benefits of a Public Cloud (capacity on demand, automated
provisioning of VM servers, standardized API's), but also provides
additional benefits of:

- choice of platforms - Solaris, AIX, Mainframe z/OS etc., OpenVMS, HP-UX
etc. still provide a huge amount of the worlds business transaction
processing. Companies can integrate these platforms on prem with low
latency, customized solutions that integrate with the companies integrated
service desk (see below).
- choice of DC location e.g. if multi-site availability is required with 0
RPO (no loss of data - think banks and other financial businesses), then you
need synchronous replication that by industry best practices, dictates sites
be within 100km of each other). Case in point - Azure in Canada. Moving to
Azure in Canada means your workloads will be hosted in the one MS Toronto DC
(most workloads) or in their Quebec City DC (800km apart).- control,
implementation and monitoring of security policies,
- control of top to bottom IT stack - minimize finger pointing between
multiple vendors)
- integrated service management model (monitoring alerts, events of all IT
layers integrated with company Service Desk, synthetic transactions with
control of network environment)
- increased control of latency issues (Internet is largely based on
different vendors, flexible routing options which provides great
availability, but different routing means different latency that can change
at any time)
- dealing with more rapid changes in service model requirements

Having stated this, a Private Cloud is often implemented via a collocation
option i.e. in a Tier III high availability, highly secure DC that is
managed by a DC facility provider. Many of those doing Private Clouds want
the benefits of the above, but do not view building or maintaining a Tier
III DC facility as being strategic to their business. If a vendor does not
provide dual sites within 100km, then they will typically choose a second DC
provider as well so that the less than 100km requirement for sync
replication can be maintained.

Vendors like HPE and IBM are jumping on the growing number of Customers
migrating from Public Cloud and/or transforming their existing IT
environments to Private Cloud solutions. Google "HPE Greenlake", or review
the following IBM link:
<https://www.ibm.com/cloud/learn/introduction-to-private-cloud>


Regards,

Kerry Main
Kerry dot main at starkgaming dot com





--
This email has been checked for viruses by AVG.
https://www.avg.com

[Paul Hardy]

alanfe...@gmail.com <alanfe...@gmail.com> wrote:
> …

> Theoretical physicists often set natural constants like c (speed of
> light), \hbar (the reduced Planck constant), and e (charge of a positron) to 1.

One of my abiding memories was of going to a lecture by Stephen Hawking in
Cambridge in 1975, one of the last times he spoke with his own voice in
public. He had prerecorded the lecture using his voice synthesis system
(which was a DECtalk) but answered questions himself. The lecture was
jointly hosted by the university physics society and the university science
fiction society, and the tittle was something like “can black holes provide
faster than light travel to distant stars?”

He started by defining the units in which he worked - setting the speed of
light, Planck’s constant, and the electron charge, all to one. He said it
gave a set of units that was ideal for his work in studying the time just
after the Big Bang - damned hot, damned fast, and damned heavy!

Very memorable talk!

--
Paul at the paulhardy.net domain

[Scott Dorsey]

alanfe...@gmail.com <alanfe...@gmail.com> wrote:
>Depends on the purpose. Use the right too for the job. And to my European f=

>reinds: How many Newtons do you weigh?

Unknown. If I jump in the air, I might weigh zero newtons on the way down.

Weight-Watchers is really misnamed. They don't actually care about your
weight, they just want to reduce your mass.
--scott

--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[Bill Gunshannon]

On 12/24/21 3:27 PM, Scott Dorsey wrote:
> alanfe...@gmail.com <alanfe...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Depends on the purpose. Use the right too for the job. And to my European f=
>> reinds: How many Newtons do you weigh?
>
> Unknown. If I jump in the air, I might weigh zero newtons on the way down.
>
> Weight-Watchers is really misnamed. They don't actually care about your
> weight, they just want to reduce your mass.
> --scott
>

And they accomplish that by lightening your wallet.

bill

[Jan-Erik Söderholm]

Den 2021-12-24 kl. 21:27, skrev Scott Dorsey:
> alanfe...@gmail.com <alanfe...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Depends on the purpose. Use the right too for the job. And to my European f=
>> reinds: How many Newtons do you weigh?
>
> Unknown. If I jump in the air, I might weigh zero newtons on the way down.

Not only on the way down, all the time after your feets leaves the ground.
No matter if you move up or down (relative to the earth surface...).

[Johnny Billquist]

On 2021-12-24 04:09, alanfe...@gmail.com wrote:
> Anyway, regarding Fahrenheit: Americans aren't switching to the "standard," Celsius, for the same reason you're not using a Dvorak keyboard. Actually, if you want to go all the way you should be using Kelvin, the only "true" temperature scale in use.

Kelvin and Celsius is easy to move between. It's just an offset difference.

Johnny

[Dave Froble]

As far as that goes, so is Fahrenheit with either. It's just a multiplier and
an offset.

A couple of lines from a simple VB program I have:

C = (F - 32) * 5 / 9
F = C * 9 / 5 + 32

If I remember correctly (always questionable anymore) for Kelvin the additional
constant would be 273. Maybe not.

[Johnny Billquist]

On 2021-12-24 04:40, alanfe...@gmail.com wrote:
> On Wednesday, December 22, 2021 at 7:55:40 AM UTC-5, Phillip Helbig (undress to reply) wrote:
>> In article <00B6DA8D...@SendSpamHere.ORG>, VAXman-
>> @SendSpamHere.ORG writes:
>>
>>>>> As is inches, feet, yards, miles, pounds, quarts, gallons, etc ...
>>>>>
>>>>> :-)
>>>>
>>>> Right, I have heard about that. While the rest of the world has moved on.
>>>
>>> Dynes or newtons?
>
> Excellent point.
>
>> Both are metric, but newton is the SI, and hence preferred, unit. Same
>> with tesla over gauss.
>
> Depends on the purpose. Use the right too for the job. And to my European freinds: How many Newtons do you weigh?

I think I might have hit reply instead of follow up. But instead of a
long rant, I'll just observe that newtons is force.

And newtons are defined as kg * m/2^s. Anyone using SI units thus have a
pretty easy time to figure out how many newtons of force he asserts,
based on his mass. If you are lazy, you just add a "0" after your
weight, and you have approximately how many newtons you are asserting at
the surface of the earth. If you want to be a bit more precise you
multiply your weight by 9.81, and if you want to be very precise, you
need to know the actual gravity at the point where you are, and you
multiply your mass by that to find the force. (But then you need to also
really figure out what your mass is, which isn't that easy to figure out.)

And of course, if we move to the moon, our weight, and the force we
assert will be all different.

But in the most simplistic terms, since if you step on a scale, you get
a number for your weight, in kg, just multiplying it by 10 is usually
good enough for newtons.

Do you have any other "difficult" questions for your European friends?

And while we're at it, how many lbf do you weight? And what is lbf?
Force in pounds for acceleration expressed in m/s^2 ? So if you want it
in lb * foot/s^2, there isn't even a unit? How messed up is this thing?

> Back to Fahrenheit: It has its advantages. When the temperature is in the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s -- each range conjures up a different feeling. The Celsius degree is too big for that. "But is based on 0 and 100 for water!" So F what [pun not intended!]. How often do you even think of those when you are involved with the temperature. You've got two numbers: 32 and 212. Is this too hard to memorize? And when you hear those numbers you know it's temperature-related. 0 and 100 could be 'most anything.

There is absolutely no problems looking at celcius in ranges and figure
out a feeling based on that. Most people do. Nonsense to think you can't.

It's not about memorizing. Any human should be able to memorize. It's
about how easy or hard it is to use.
Yes, when you are used to one thing, it is always easy. If you learn
one, and then move to another. The interesting question is - do you want
to move back? That's what tells you which you should be going with.
Don't torment kids with the broken systems of their ancestors just
because it is easier for you...

> Again, the reason Americans don't adopt Celsius is the same reason you haven't switched from the QWERTY to the Dvorak keyboard.

Definitely true in a sense. It's about using what you are used to in a way.
But you can both argue the superiority of Dvorak, and also observe and
countries like France and Germany don't even use Qwerty.

Johnny

[Simon Clubley]

On 2021-12-25, Dave Froble <da...@tsoft-inc.com> wrote:
>
> As far as that goes, so is Fahrenheit with either. It's just a multiplier and
> an offset.
>
> A couple of lines from a simple VB program I have:
>
> C = (F - 32) * 5 / 9
> F = C * 9 / 5 + 32
>

I looked at the above two statements and basically went "eek!" at
all the implicit type conversions potentially going on above. :-)

Does VB do the right thing above or do variables F and C get
type converted to an integer (with loss of information) before
the above calculations are done ?

Just curious. (In situations like that, I would have written the
integers with a decimal component, so 32 would become 32.0 for example.)

Simon.

--
Simon Clubley, clubley@remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP

Walking destinations on a map are further away than they appear.

[Simon Clubley]

On 2021-12-23, alanfe...@gmail.com <alanfe...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sunday, December 19, 2021 at 9:23:26 PM UTC-5, xyzz...@gmail.com wrote:
>> Our hardware is in a data-center facility in Chelmsford MA.
>
> So I assume you are from VSI.
>

I'm amazed you don't know who John is by now...

He is VSI's compiler expert and is responsible for producing the
compilers for x86-64 VMS.

> Again, who _funds_ EISNER? I don't think anyone has answered that. Is it 100% VSI-funded? The login bit no longer asks for donations.

Currently VSI.

Eisner has had multiple homes over the years. When it was no longer
possible to host it at the previous home, VSI offered to provide a
home for it.

[Arne Vajhøj]

On 12/23/2021 10:49 PM, alanfe...@gmail.com wrote:
> On Sunday, December 19, 2021 at 9:23:26 PM UTC-5, xyzz...@gmail.com wrote:
>> On Sunday, December 19, 2021 at 6:48:51 PM UTC-5, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
>>> On 12/19/2021 5:32 PM, VAX...@SendSpamHere.ORG wrote:
>>>> In article <a6553b0e-2769-49cd...@googlegroups.com>, "alanfe...@gmail.com" <alanfe...@gmail.com> writes:
>>>>> On Sunday, December 19, 2021 at 5:43:26 AM UTC-5, Volker Halle wrote:
>>>>>> EISNER is co-located in a data center of VSI since a couple of years.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Volker.
>>>>>
>>>>> Do you know what city? Whose data center? Just curious.
>>>>
>>>> Well, VSI is in Burlington.
>>> Given the size of VSI and the fact that it is 2021 then there is a
>>> pretty big probability that they use external hosting.
>>>

>> Our hardware is in a data-center facility in Chelmsford MA.
>
> So I assume you are from VSI.
>
> Again, who _funds_ EISNER? I don't think anyone has answered that. Is it 100% VSI-funded?

VSI host it so VSI pays for space, power, cooling, internet etc..

I assume VSI has donated licenses as well.

So what more cost are there to fund?

Arne

[Johnny Billquist]

On 2021-12-26 00:33, Dave Froble wrote:
> On 12/25/2021 6:05 PM, Johnny Billquist wrote:
>> On 2021-12-24 04:09, alanfe...@gmail.com wrote:
>>> Anyway, regarding Fahrenheit: Americans aren't switching to the
>>> "standard,"
>>> Celsius, for the same reason you're not using a Dvorak keyboard.
>>> Actually, if
>>> you want to go all the way you should be using Kelvin, the only "true"
>>> temperature scale in use.
>>
>> Kelvin and Celsius is easy to move between. It's just an offset
>> difference.
>>
>>   Johnny
>
> As far as that goes, so is Fahrenheit with either.  It's just a
> multiplier and an offset.

Of course. But that multiplier is what makes it uglier. Yes, sure,
anyone can do it. But it's much less straight forward. And you have two
different offsets for C and K when you come from F.

Everything is just math in the end. Nothing strange to see here. It's
just a question of how much do you need to remember and compute.

> A couple of lines from a simple VB program I have:
>
>     C = (F - 32) * 5 / 9
>     F = C * 9 / 5 + 32
>
> If I remember correctly (always questionable anymore) for Kelvin the
> additional constant would be 273.  Maybe not.

273.15 unless I remember wrong. (Checked - I remembered right.)
So if you have C, add 273.15 and you have K.
Of course, in most cases, just 273 is good enough.

Johnny

[Bill Gunshannon]

On 12/26/21 11:13 AM, Johnny Billquist wrote:
> On 2021-12-26 00:33, Dave Froble wrote:
>> On 12/25/2021 6:05 PM, Johnny Billquist wrote:
>>> On 2021-12-24 04:09, alanfe...@gmail.com wrote:
>>>> Anyway, regarding Fahrenheit: Americans aren't switching to the
>>>> "standard,"
>>>> Celsius, for the same reason you're not using a Dvorak keyboard.
>>>> Actually, if
>>>> you want to go all the way you should be using Kelvin, the only "true"
>>>> temperature scale in use.
>>>
>>> Kelvin and Celsius is easy to move between. It's just an offset
>>> difference.
>>>
>>>   Johnny
>>
>> As far as that goes, so is Fahrenheit with either.  It's just a
>> multiplier and an offset.
>
> Of course. But that multiplier is what makes it uglier. Yes, sure,
> anyone can do it. But it's much less straight forward. And you have two
> different offsets for C and K when you come from F.
>
> Everything is just math in the end. Nothing strange to see here. It's
> just a question of how much do you need to remember and compute.
>

Or, for those of us who have lived with both you just hear the number
and know if it's cold or hot or comfortable.

>> A couple of lines from a simple VB program I have:
>>
>>      C = (F - 32) * 5 / 9
>>      F = C * 9 / 5 + 32
>>
>> If I remember correctly (always questionable anymore) for Kelvin the
>> additional constant would be 273.  Maybe not.
>
> 273.15 unless I remember wrong. (Checked - I remembered right.)
> So if you have C, add 273.15 and you have K.
> Of course, in most cases, just 273 is good enough.
>

Other than some labs, who actually uses Kelvin? I didn't in
High School chemistry or physics. I didn't in college chemistry
or physics. And I certainly never have in real life beyond seeing
it used in a science fiction book once in a while. :-)

bill

[Chris Townley]

I certainly did in the early 70s in both Chemistry and Physics

--
Chris

[Michael Kraemer @ home]

Bill Gunshannon wrote:

> Other than some labs, who actually uses Kelvin?

All of Thermodynamics and its applications.
That's way more than just "some labs".

> I didn't in
> High School chemistry or physics. I didn't in college chemistry
> or physics.

If they didn't teach you more than just Newton's mechanics...
Try to apply the Gas laws using Celsius instead of Kelvin.

[alanfe...@gmail.com]

On Sunday, December 26, 2021 at 5:55:29 AM UTC-5, Simon Clubley wrote:
> On 2021-12-23, alanfe...@gmail.com <alanfe...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Sunday, December 19, 2021 at 9:23:26 PM UTC-5, xyzz...@gmail.com wrote:
> >> Our hardware is in a data-center facility in Chelmsford MA.
> >
> > So I assume you are from VSI.
> >
> I'm amazed you don't know who John is by now...

Why? I've not been active in cov for a long time. Only in Oct of 2021 did I chime in and start using EISNER:: again. Why should I know who he is? And his handle is given as xyzz...@gmail.com. Hardly illuminating!!!

Back in, probably late Sep 2021, it was just on a lark that I thought I'd check the Freeware page and see the status of my contributions. I was disappointed to find that my main one, TO.COM, was languishing un-downloadable. And a rather old version to boot! So I thought I'd update it and resubmit.

Hmmm. Some quick research shows that I reconnected with EISNER:: around Feb 19, 2021, but didn't chime back in until Sep 30, 2021.

Anyway, so starting Sep 30, 2021, I started using EISNER:: again. And I started to work on my TO.COM so that I could submit an up-to-date version.

Additionally, my last VMS stint ended in 2018, where my main task was -- you guessed it -- moving stuff off of a couple of Alphas. No real users. Just me and a couple of co-workers tending to file transfer stuff. Backups were contracted out to some other company before I arrived.

Back on EISNER::, I noticed that at least one of the bugs of SET DEFAULT was fixed, and so posted on cov asking about it. It also suddenly occurred to me that I was using EDT with 60 lines or so. Say what?! EDT didn't used to do that, did it? So I added that as a bonus question. Found the release notes for the EDT bit on my own. Still haven't seen anything about SET DEFAULT other than an some old release notes for VMS 5.5-2 documenting at least two of the bugs and saying they would be fixed "in a future release of VMS." The second one was actually a SHOW DEFAULT bug, more or less, and the notes gave an example of it. It is still broken on EISNER:: -- again something with colons. I did some googling, but to no avail. Then I found the old cov post about SET DEFAULT not changing disk when you didn't include a colon in the equivalence name! (See
https://groups.google.com/g/comp.os.vms/c/7oHZdsabAcc/m/HlqfDSFcLOYJ
) That has been fixed.

Other than all that, I haven't really been keeping up with VMS much -- until now. So why should I know this John dude?

> He is VSI's compiler expert and is responsible for producing the
> compilers for x86-64 VMS.

Awesome!

> > Again, who _funds_ EISNER? I don't think anyone has answered that. Is it 100% VSI-funded? The login bit no longer asks for donations.
> Currently VSI.
>
> Eisner has had multiple homes over the years. When it was no longer
> possible to host it at the previous home, VSI offered to provide a
> home for it.

Very kind of them!

Thirty thumbs up!!!

> Simon.
>
> --
> Simon Clubley, clubley@remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP
> Walking destinations on a map are further away than they appear.

Alan

[Dave Froble]

:-)

Try to apply the gas laws 50 years after studying them, and then never using
them again.

:-)

For most, understanding how things work is enough, unless needing to use the
details. Not understanding how things work is not so good.

[alanfe...@gmail.com]

On Sunday, December 26, 2021 at 11:46:42 AM UTC-5, Bill Gunshannon wrote:
> On 12/26/21 11:13 AM, Johnny Billquist wrote:
> > On 2021-12-26 00:33, Dave Froble wrote:
> >> On 12/25/2021 6:05 PM, Johnny Billquist wrote:
> >>> On 2021-12-24 04:09, alanfe...@gmail.com wrote:
> >>>> Anyway, regarding Fahrenheit: Americans aren't switching to the
> >>>> "standard,"
> >>>> Celsius, for the same reason you're not using a Dvorak keyboard.
> >>>> Actually, if
> >>>> you want to go all the way you should be using Kelvin, the only "true"
> >>>> temperature scale in use.
> >>>

[...]

> Other than some labs, who actually uses Kelvin? I didn't in
> High School chemistry or physics. I didn't in college chemistry
> or physics. And I certainly never have in real life beyond seeing
> it used in a science fiction book once in a while. :-)

Someone was bragging about standards and SI units and such. The SI temperature scale is kelvins, not Celsius.

Man, you had some pretty lame physics and chemistry courses! Thermodynamics uses kelvins. The ideal gas law works in kelvins, not Celsius. As a Ph.D. in physics, I can tell you that Celsius has no place other than establishing its definition based on -- kelvins!

>
> bill

Alan

[alanfe...@gmail.com]

On Saturday, December 25, 2021 at 6:35:26 PM UTC-5, Johnny Billquist wrote:
> On 2021-12-24 04:40, alanfe...@gmail.com wrote:
> > On Wednesday, December 22, 2021 at 7:55:40 AM UTC-5, Phillip Helbig (undress to reply) wrote:
> >> In article <00B6DA8D...@SendSpamHere.ORG>, VAXman-
> >> @SendSpamHere.ORG writes:
> >>
> >>>>> As is inches, feet, yards, miles, pounds, quarts, gallons, etc ...
> >>>>>
> >>>>> :-)
> >>>>
> >>>> Right, I have heard about that. While the rest of the world has moved on.
> >>>
> >>> Dynes or newtons?
> >
> > Excellent point.
> >
> >> Both are metric, but newton is the SI, and hence preferred, unit. Same
> >> with tesla over gauss.

The SI unit for temperature is kelvin, not Celsius. (Or kelvins. I never got that bit straightened out. Used to be degrees kelvin. That was better.

> > Depends on the purpose. Use the right too for the job. And to my European freinds: How many Newtons do you weigh?
> I think I might have hit reply instead of follow up. But instead of a
> long rant, I'll just observe that newtons is force.
>
> And newtons are defined as kg * m/2^s. Anyone using SI units thus have a
> pretty easy time to figure out how many newtons of force he asserts,
> based on his mass. If you are lazy, you just add a "0" after your
> weight, and you have approximately how many newtons you are asserting at
> the surface of the earth. If you want to be a bit more precise you
> multiply your weight by 9.81, and if you want to be very precise, you
> need to know the actual gravity at the point where you are, and you
> multiply your mass by that to find the force. (But then you need to also
> really figure out what your mass is, which isn't that easy to figure out.)
>
> And of course, if we move to the moon, our weight, and the force we
> assert will be all different.
>
> But in the most simplistic terms, since if you step on a scale, you get
> a number for your weight, in kg, just multiplying it by 10 is usually
> good enough for newtons.
>
> Do you have any other "difficult" questions for your European friends?
>
> And while we're at it, how many lbf do you weight? And what is lbf?

You bet! I weigh myself every morning and can tell you in an instant. I'd rather not on a public forum though! And I don't even have to add a 0, which is not quite accurate enough in my book. If memorizing 32 and 212 is too much effort (which you don't even need to know the majority of the time you use temperature), then multiplying by 9.8 certainly is! Yes, you can figure it out, but if you go by that standard, neither system is superior.

And it's lbs., not lbf. Well, I suppose you could use lbf. I'd have to look it up. Not really relevant here.

> Force in pounds for acceleration expressed in m/s^2 ? So if you want it
> in lb * foot/s^2, there isn't even a unit? How messed up is this thing?

I never said anything about acceleration. I was talking about weighing things, esp. yourself. Well, I recall a value of 32 ft/sec/sec for g. Different system, different units and such. What's wrong with ft/sec/sec?

> > Back to Fahrenheit: It has its advantages. When the temperature is in the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s -- each range conjures up a different feeling. The Celsius degree is too big for that. "But is based on 0 and 100 for water!" So F what [pun not intended!]. How often do you even think of those when you are involved with the temperature. You've got two numbers: 32 and 212. Is this too hard to memorize? And when you hear those numbers you know it's temperature-related. 0 and 100 could be 'most anything.
> There is absolutely no problems looking at celcius in ranges and figure
> out a feeling based on that. Most people do. Nonsense to think you can't.

Really? I'm talking ranges of 10. In Celsius if you say it's in the 20s, what does that really mean? Anywhere from 68 F to 86 Fahranheit. Is it hot out or comfortable? If I say 70s F, it's comfortable or slightly warm. Sure, if you give a particular number, like 23 deg C., you can have a feel for it. But in ranges of tens, F is clearly better.

>
> It's not about memorizing. Any human should be able to memorize. It's
> about how easy or hard it is to use.
> Yes, when you are used to one thing, it is always easy. If you learn
> one, and then move to another. The interesting question is - do you want
> to move back? That's what tells you which you should be going with.
> Don't torment kids with the broken systems of their ancestors just
> because it is easier for you...

Teaching the kiddies Celsius _instead_ of Fahrenheit would be "torture." Just watch or read any U.S. weather forecast.

> > Again, the reason Americans don't adopt Celsius is the same reason you haven't switched from the QWERTY to the Dvorak keyboard.
> Definitely true in a sense. It's about using what you are used to in a way.
> But you can both argue the superiority of Dvorak, and also observe and
> countries like France and Germany don't even use Qwerty.

Really? What do France and Germany use instead? Just askin'.

>
> Johnny

Alan

[alanfe...@gmail.com]

On Saturday, December 25, 2021 at 6:35:26 PM UTC-5, Johnny Billquist wrote:

> On 2021-12-24 04:40, alanfe...@gmail.com wrote:
> > On Wednesday, December 22, 2021 at 7:55:40 AM UTC-5, Phillip Helbig (undress to reply) wrote:
> >> In article <00B6DA8D...@SendSpamHere.ORG>, VAXman-
> >> @SendSpamHere.ORG writes:

[...]

> It's not about memorizing. Any human should be able to memorize. It's
> about how easy or hard it is to use.
> Yes, when you are used to one thing, it is always easy. If you learn
> one, and then move to another. The interesting question is - do you want
> to move back? That's what tells you which you should be going with.
> Don't torment kids with the broken systems of their ancestors just
> because it is easier for you...

This cuts both ways. How is F hard to use? It's hard for YOU for the same reason you say C is hard for Americans: ". . . when you are used to one thing, it is always easy."

Yes, I'd want to move back. Why wouldn't I want to move back? When you switch to the Dvorak keyboard, let me know. Then I'll reconsider.

In science I like kelvins. For weather, cooking, laundry and such, I like F. Anything else would involve pointless effort. If something is given in C, like wash temperatures often are now, I convert. No biggie. 20 F is 68 C. 30 F is 86. Then just add or subtract 18 per 10 for anything else. Good enough.

[...]

> Johnny

Alan

[Scott Dorsey]

Michael Kraemer @ home <M.Kr...@gsi.de> wrote:
>Bill Gunshannon wrote:
>
>> Other than some labs, who actually uses Kelvin?
>
>All of Thermodynamics and its applications.
>That's way more than just "some labs".

My thermo class used Rankine, but it was in the seventies.

Still, Kelvin gets used a lot for things like color temperatures, where it
is useful because color changes are perfectly proportional (which they would
not be if they were measured in centigrate).
temperature is.