[rescue] ECC [was: Re: WOT: Ebay changes to IBM from Sun E10Kservers?]

[Frank Van Damme]

On Thursday 10 July 2003 19:52, N.Miller wrote:
> On Thursday, July 10, 2003, at 10:10 AM, Joshua D. Boyd wrote:
> > "These people" also aren't given the tools to evaluate how reliable
> > what
> > they are getting is.  They walk into a local computer store because
> > they
> > feel more comfterable doing so, and if they even ask, they get told
> > that
> > ECC is something they don't need.

Indeed. And if they do the computer guy at the next block laughs away the need
for it, so he's the better one, because he recommends the user something that
costs less. Users don't have millions to spend on computers.

> > They aren't given any metric other
> > than Mhz to evaluate performance (which is agrevating to us, but
> > ultimately performance doesn't really matter to them since anything
> > that
> > can be bought new is fast enough),

Exactly. In fact, for most people outside the gaming crowd anything sold in
the last 4 years is fast enough. A P2 at 300 runs Kde perfectly well ;-)

(ok, make that 2 years if you absolutely want Xp *sigh*).

> > and they most especially aren't
> > given
> > metrics to evaluate any needs other than what peripherals they might
> > want, especially not for evaluating stability.

Measuring stability is pretty alien even to me :)

> And most of them don't want to know, because most knowledgeable
> people cannot explain it in a way that doesn't make their eyes
> glaze over.

True. I have a hard time doing so too. Try to tell your aunt the difference
between RAM and hard disk space.

> We see the same problem in our cell phone store: "I want to get
> the phone for free."  The shocked look on a customers' face
> when we do the math for them to show them how much they will
> actually pay for the phone to get it "for free" is priceless.
> And we do this without getting into the technical details of
> the phone plans.

Ah, could you take a minute toexplain that?

--
Frank Van Damme    http://www.openstandaarden.be
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Je pense, donc je suis breveti."