*Suspect* [Oberon] Re. Power-down restoration

W B Hacker wbh at conducive.org
Fri Jan 2 16:33:40 MET 2009


Chris Glur wrote:
>>> Altho' I don't pay for electricity, society pays for me.
*trimmed*

>>> Will it be economic to have a home-server, when boxes can be shutdown
>>> and rebooted to the 'same state' by saving the relevevant RAM conditions
>>> to disk ?

IOW - NVRAM, solar panel battery recharge, modest CPU (ARM'ish or 
something developed for mobile/PDA) - and the storage 'generally 
hibernating' in some way until called for?

*trimmed*

>> As you know, computers won't boot if you just plug in the power
>> cable ;-)
>

They will if the BIOS is set to do so..

*trimmed*

> I'm asking a socio-economic question & Ya'all giving only
> technical p.o.v.
> 
> What is a typical duty-cycle of a home-server ?
> What if each year there's an extra 20 million Chinese
> home-servers running 7/24 ?
>

See above.  The bandwidth available to the average residence is the 
single smallest knothole thru which all must pass.

An ARM-ish 'device' running any of the *BSD's or an appropriate Linux -
'sounds like' first-choice.

However - as an old Forth coder, I'd suggest that:

- none of the *n*x derivatives are all that well-suited to lying in 
wait, near-as-dammit powered-down AND waking 'instantly' AND just not 
breaking. Ever.

What I would *want* to use is a PLA 'hardware' state machine.

What I'd settle for is a bespoke Forth - configured as essentially a 
'state machine' (Canon AE1 camera, microwave ovens, et al).

Or even JOVIAL on an RCA 1802 derivative (as used in the F-15 fighter 
for wehat 30+ years?).

IOW - your 'server' here might be a modified GSM handset or PDA....
It coudl then 'wake up' whatever else was called for - be that the door 
locks or the salvaged 300 megawatt AN/FSQ-7 in the annex...

;-)


> 
> == Chris Glur.
> 
> and related:--
> Newsgroups: alt.comp.software.newsreaders,news.software.readers,comp.os.linux.networking
> Subject: blogs kill groups; cars kill trains;  unsustainable ?
> 
> Except for the most technical, newsgroups have all migrated to blogs.
> So my ISP newsServer is often disabled/sluggish.
> 
> When I try blogs, I see that 'the whole book' is transfered back&forth
> each time an addition is made. And of course there's no concept of
> threading, which gave further specialisation and opportunities for
> bandwidth economising.
>

There you go - it ain't the technology that's at fault - it's the misues 
- in that nearly every 'designer' thinks his disk-to-screen b/w or LAN 
to screen b/w will hold true for some poor 1 mbps or even dial-up client 
on the 'net.

> So then I read about RSS, which 'activates on new/additional stuff'.
> But does this allow Txing of only the new material, or is the whole
> book still Txed ?
> 
> What do they use in China/India ?
> I can't believe they'd use such 'convenient'/wastefull methods as
> we obsese slobs do?
> 

Largely yes.

Fibre has a deeper penetration into metropolitan Asia (which has few 
'suburbs') than it has in suburban USA / EU (which have fewer 
residential metro centers than Asia).

Far less old copper for the bean-counters to try to preserve.

AFAIK, Hing Kong was the first major city to go all-digital - and is 
more populous as a 'city state' than many entire European countries or 
even several entire US states. See also Shanghai - with a 'city' GDP 
about 20%+ that of *all* of India.

My b/w in HKG - or to our other house in Zhongshan - is superior to what 
I can get adjacent to Dulles Airport in Northern Virginia, and at half 
the cost.

The Americas and Europe have long since lost the lead in connectivity - 
be it mobile comms, WiFi, or wire/fibre.

They just haven't yet noticed.

;-)

> == TIA.
> 




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