Such Lovely People
The ABC reports on the downfall of the Prime Minister of Australia: Malcolm Turnbull to become prime minister after toppling Tony Abbott:
Prime Minister-designate Malcolm Turnbull says he will lead a “thoroughly Liberal government” and paid tribute to his predecessor, Tony Abbott, after winning a late-night ballot for the Liberal Party leadership.
The former communications minister defeated Mr Abbott 54 votes to 44 in a party room ballot which also saw Julie Bishop re-elected as deputy leader ahead of Kevin Andrews 70 votes to 30.
The new leadership team fronted the media just after 10:40pm (AEST) where Mr Turnbull said he was humbled by the honour bestowed on him.
Possibly because Australia is in the Southern Hemisphere, the Liberal Party is the rightwing conservative party in its political system. Prime Ministers are actually members of parliament who are the leaders of the winning political party. While the leaders are elected by the entire membership of some parties, the Australian Liberal Party limits participation to members of the party in parliament.
20 comments
Aha. And so far, the new PM is the same as the old PM (which is unsurprising to myself and others I’ve spoken to, but it seems that many actually expected Turnbull to be better.) After all, he did *say* he would change a few things. And he did. after he won, he said he changed his mind and the status-quo would continue.
And don’t even get me started on Bishop!! The less said about that #^^%$%# The better!!
*shrug* So… Same old, same old… As expected.
OT: My main workstation died a few weeks ago (during a major thunderstorm. fried the PSU & motherboard. and possibly other components). I’m trying to get together a few $k to build a new system. Still no Internet, but the ports are finally available. No point until I get a new system (I still have the other system I use as my internal dev server, but I don’t want to change that unless I have to. I also have my Android SmartTV, but I’d rather get a new dev WS than play on the Internet.) I’m easily distracted these days. 😉 😀
Hope all is well with everyone! Best Wishes. 😀
Tony made promises to keep his job the last time he was challenged and he didn’t keep them. The members don’t care that he could get a victory in elections if they can’t get something for their voters. Basically SA members were pissed off over the submarine contract and the way Abbott conned them.
Lightning is the death of electronics. If it’s close enough the surge protectors are worthless as the radiated EMF takes out the electronics, not a surge on the wiring.
All of the ‘alternate’ devices aren’t really as useful as the old fashioned workstation. As a general device it can be customized to do whatever you want.
We are making out here, glad to see you are still hanging in. 🙂
I still haven’t gotten around to buying that $400 Windows 10 laptop. But in my mind a laptop is ideal if you’re just wanting to browse the Internet and keep some documents around. I must admit that I go to my big 4Ghz Core I-7 4790k gaming system in traditional workstation box (well, other than the vastly better ventilation than a traditional workstation!) when I want to play games though.
Gaming has always wanted the maximum hardware available. I don’t need all of that power, but compiling or assembling on my laptop really sucks, so, as you say, good for the ‘Net but not so great for developing or gaming.
You’re correct Bryan. 🙂 I can’t run most of the s/w I need on the other systems I have. 🙂
I have a UPS on my server, but it’s not big enough for two systems. I did have a good surge protected power board, but it wasn’t good enough. Oh well… It was the system I got a couple years ago for designing those Xmas PC’s for a Melbourne store if you remember. So at least it didn’t really cost me anything *shrug* Easy come… 😉 Just really glad my NAS was on the UPS!! loosing THAT would have been painful!
I’m trying to decide between getting a 5th gen Z97/i7 4790K/DDR3 based system, or the new 6th Gen Z170/i7 6700K/DDR4 based system. I’m not normally an *early adopter* which surprises people given my background. But it’s because of my background that I’m not! 😉 😀 Still… The current reviews look quite good, *sigh* decisions, decisions! 🙂
I will get one of the latest Radeon R9 390X graphics cards, because I want a 4K display (Samsung E85 28″ UHD 3840×2160, 1ms GtG). The 390X is about $640, and the display about $790. I see Seagate have released 8TB HDD’s. They have an Archive (low end) version for about $45/TB, but it’s write performance and write life are not good (hence for archival purposes). The Enterprise version much is better but twice the price, of course. 🙂
I hear you Badtux. 🙂 I plan to get a 500GB M.2 SSD for the new system (Samsung make one for $260). Then I can partition it for Win7 & Win 10. Or I can put Win 10 on the 250 GB SSD I had in the old system (I think it survived). But I was planning to put Linux on that. 🙂
One of the downsides with the Intel Z170 chipset is that it’s doesn’t support the DDR4 in quad channel config, only dual channel. Apparently the next chipset will. Still, there are other advantages to DDR4.
I’m glad all is well. 🙂
Because of the local grid and our little storms I have three back-ups – two for computers and one for the modem and router. I ended up with three because of how long it took to get new batteries when one failed.
It is always a pain when building a new box to decide what you really need, what you really want, and what you can afford. That’s what took me so long before I built my last box, but by waiting I ended up with what are still current standards on a solid motherboard.
If you are going to work with multimedia, you have to have the ability to test it.
Take it easy, M8, Spring will arrive next week.
“If you are going to work with multimedia, you have to have the ability to test it.”
Exactly. 🙂 I was planning to update the vid card and buy the UHD display anyway. The 390x has 8GB vid RAM. So will support my 2560 x 1440 and the UHD display simultaneously. 🙂
It’s also why I have a smart phone, tablet & smartTV (also a 1920 x 1080 display on the server system). I can test designs on pretty much all the standard display types & sizes. 🙂
I am leaning towards the new Gen 6 system. It has some nice features and performance looks quite good. That way, I only have to update the MoBo when the next version comes out (probably end of next year). 🙂 I’m thinking of getting two of the new 8TB Archive HDD’s so I can make 2 archive copies of my NAS (which currently has almost 7TB of data), for $320/drive, it’s cheap and easy insurance. 🙂 I have a USB 2-drive HDD dock/duplicator, so it will be easy to do in the background.
Your concern for back-up shows that you are obviously a stuff old computer guy because today everything is just stuck on the ‘cloud’ which is totally, absolutely, unequivocally safe and secure as a bank 😈
It must be someone’s law that the smaller the device you are designing code for, the larger the machine you need to do it.
You are probably correct about the only upgrade being the motherboard. That should hold unless they mess with the CPU socket again.Your concern for back-up shows that you are obviously a stuff old computer guy because today everything is just stuck on the ‘cloud’ which is totally, absolutely, unequivocally safe and secure as a bank 😈
It must be someone’s law that the smaller the device you are designing code for, the larger the machine you need to do it.
You are probably correct about the only upgrade being the motherboard. That should hold unless they mess with the CPU socket again.
Ah yes, the cloud. The same one where half the Internet went down last weekend because Amazon burped :).
I actually wasn’t using a particularly big machine last time I ran PICSIM to design PIC software for an embedded front panel. When you’re simulating a 1mhz SOC with 2K words of RAM and 8K words of program ROM, it doesn’t take a whole lot of resources to simulate it :).
The problem with motherboard upgrades is that they keep changing the form factor and power supply connectors. I had a great AT-style case, then they came out with ATX. I had a great ATX style case, then they changed the location of the CPU to deal with newer high-energy-use CPU’s and new motherboards wouldn’t fit in the case. So I got a new case, and then they changed the power spec on the new motherboards so I had to get a new power supply. I’m happy with my current Antec gamer case, but I’m pretty sure that sooner or later, they’re going to break it somehow too. I was frankly surprised that I could fit my Devil’s Canyon motherboard in there without needing a new *something*.
My NAS right now is a 12 disk SuperMicro 2U rackmount unit running a couple of Westmeres with 32gb of RAM. I.e., total overkill for a NAS :). But I built it out of scrap that I hauled out of the dumpster when a prior employer tanked, so (shrug). I just ordered a backplane upgrade off of eBay to a SAS2 backplane, that’ll let me use drives bigger than 2TB (I already have a SAS2 disk controller). That should let me upgrade its drives easily when the current ones start dying, they’re all drives that I pulled out of USB backup disk enclosures or drives I had in my previous NAS so they’re all getting close to their end of life now. Luckily everything’s RAID’ed with Linux software RAID so I don’t have to worry about how to mix and match drives… hardware RAID controllers get downright frustrated when you put different size drives and end up wasting space all over the place!
Creating with machine language, assembler, or ADA for embedded systems is fine, but when you have to accommodate APIs, the story changes. Almost every App on my iPAD is over a 20MB executable. Anything with a GUI requires absurd resources.
You stuttered Bryan! 😉 😀
I cut my programming teeth on machine code and ASM. 🙂 During my engineering career, I had to code a lot of PLC’s and RT CPU’s etc. Good times (seriously!) 🙂 I had some great tools to help me, such as a Tektronix DAS 9200 (kind of a super logic pattern generator/analyzer) and a DATA IO Unisite 40 PLD programmer (had several *personality* modules as new ones available when new PLD’s were released) with the ABEL (Advanced Boolean Expression Language), which made programming so much easier. 🙂 I still remember most of the Z80/8080 mnemonics. LOL
I was thinking after my previous comment about a graphics system I bought late 80’s that was an addon for the Mac II from a company in Scotland called Harlequin. The Harlequin graphics System was in a case about the size of a 1 or 2U rack unit, had 2 MB frame buffer (16 RAM boards) and RGB-Sync I/O. I got it for a bargain 40% discounted price of $2,600! A lot in the late 80’s! 😀 Now you can get a graphics card with over 2,600 compute unit’s & 8GB DDR5 RAM for around $650! LOL
My NAS is the Baffalo TeraStation 7200R Enterprise that I got wholesale about 2 years ago. Supports 12 HDD’s but I have 8 2TB in RAID 6. Has 16GB cache with a Xeon E3-1275 3.4 GHz Quad-Core. I just saw they have a F/W update to support the 8TB drives & RAID 60/61 (which my RAID card supports).
I’ve decided to get another UPS. Saw a good Eaton 1750VA UPS with good warranty (incl. batteries) for around $750. It’s also scalable up to 3kVA. Also greater than 94% efficiency. 🙂 My current UPS is an Eaton 1200VA and has been excellent over the 3 years I’ve had it.
One of the good things about the new DDR4 is that it allows for up to 16GB modules. So the new MB’s can support up to 64 GB RAM. Handy for a decent RAM disk! LOL It’s also only 1.2V.
OK. Time to go pay bill’s. yay. 😐
TTYL 😀
Talking about embedded systems, this story about the Raspberry Pi made me smile.
The GUI for the PIC system was a 4 x 40 LCD display that was driven by a byte-serial interface. You put a byte on 8 pins of the PIC, strobed the clock bit, and there you go. I also had to bit-bang 9600 baud RS-232 to the main computer so the main computer could display things on the display (this is how you configured the initial IP address), as well as scan the 4-button keypad. All on a chip with no IRQ’s and no timers! That was fun because I understood immediately what had to be done, I had to create a state machine for each “process” (key scan, serial out, serial in, character display) where each state took a constant number of cycles, then carefully cycle count each state. Debouncing the keys was almost as much fun as bit-banging the RS232 :).
The whole purpose of this contraption was to allow configuring a $72,000 NAS system that had 48 drives in a 5U form factor. It was a headless unit that was configured by a web interface once you connected to it — but first you needed to configure an IP address! So I wrote both the PIC firmware that actually drove the front panel, and the little daemon inside the NAS that drew a menu and listened for button presses from the front panel, then let you navigate around and set the IP address, netmask, and gateway. Once you had those you could use the web interface to get in and actually configure the system.
Fun times, fun times…
Damn, I thought I caught that. The ‘Net connection was really flaky and I was having a hell of time getting things to post. ‘Cut & Paste’ is not always your friend 😉
Ah, yes, the good old days of using switches grouped in threes to enter octal load addresses and commands to create a driver for a paper tape reader, which contains a tape containing the driver for a 100K 8-inch floppy that allows you to load the driver for the disk pack that actually has the OS. Of course, the IBM 360 used rotary switches labeled 0 to F and a card reader to prepare for the 9-track tape that would load the ‘cake box’ disk pack that contains the working software for the hex version of the process. Dog, I love Boot ROMs!!! No one really appreciates them who hasn’t spent a day cold booting a mini or main frame.
LOL That is a great story in Le Reg Badtux! Made me smile also. 😀 Good to see that some Aussie kids can still think! 😉 😀 During the 90’s, I had my 2 nephews living with me for about 6 years. The youngest was always getting in trouble at school, and after some time gently probing I figured out he was bored to death. So I got him interested in electronics & chemistry… we bought some kits and I taught him the basics and we had a lot of fun. 🙂 He really got into it when I bought him an electronic Cricket kit. It was simple really (for someone with a Master’s in Electronics anyway), basically a photo sensor and a piezo buzzer. I redesigned it a bit (made the photo sensor cc’t more sensitive to light changes, added a variable or random time delay and changed the audio cc’t & tone to give a more realistic cricket chirping sound. 🙂 We even made a body and leg’s to make it look more like a large cricket (he did most of the work, I just gave advice etc.) The big test was to hide it under his Mom’s bed and wait for the night and the fun to start! It was a HUGE success (well, for my nephew and myself at least). LOL Drove my sister crazy! 😀 Ahhh… Nothing like having an excellent fun reason to learn! I also got him into a secondary school that understood kid’s like him and went against the pathetic education ‘status quo’ by challenging and making it fun. Over the next few years, he went from being an average student, to becoming the 1st in the State for year 10, and 2nd in Year 11 (to his horror, he was 2nd to a GIRL!!) 😉 LOL He won a full Scholarship to study Chemical Engineering @ Uni. The older boy did very well also. Very proud of them. 😀
Old timers Bryan! 😀 My first serious computer was a Sperry Univac 1100 (I forget which model, but they were the first Aussie company to upgrade to a new 1100/60 in ’79) that I was a junior programmer on during the late 70’s.Worked on many mainframes and mini’s after. 🙂 I left in ’78 to spend the next 3 years studying for a ‘Certificate of Technology’ (basically electronics/electrical/mechanical engineering) that was essentially a precursor to any of several engineering degrees that I could study for only 1 or 2 years, instead of 4, to earn my degree. It was also aimed more at practical skills rather than theory at about 60% practical/40% theory, essentially the reverse of Uni courses. Had to learn to use tools (including oxy/fuel & arc welders, lathes, etc.; how to make circuit boards from design to etched and drilled, and so on. 🙂 It all came in very handy over the years. Then I made possibly the biggest error of my life and joined the military. Oh well. *shrug*
Anyway, I think I’m close to finalizing what I want for my new Workstation. 🙂
I got an eMail from my hosting company Prometius that they have updated and created new Cloud & KVM systems they want me to test. *sigh* I’ve told them I can’t for now. They replied just new & said no problem, they aren’t going live until Jan 2016 so I have time to test. 🙂 They have some special pricing for me if I find them useful and want to use them. 🙂
SSD, 768 MB RAM, 1 vCPU, €0.003 / hour (€2.16 per month)
SSD, 1.5 GB RAM, 2 vCPU, €0.005 / hour (€3.60 per month)
SSD, 3 GB RAM, 2 vCPU, €0.010 / hour (€7.20 per month)
SSD, 6 GB RAM, 4 vCPU, €0.020 / hour (€14.4 per month)
SSD, 12 GB RAM, 8 vCPU, €0.040 / hour (€28.8 per month)
Not bad! 😀
I’m using Digital Ocean’s $5 plan for my backup DNS (512mb RAM/1 core/20GB SSD/1TB transfer) but of course that would not be useful for you because they are based in NYC (sigh). One thing that’s clear is that cloud computing based on KVM is getting really cheap now. Even Amazon has released new KVM-based instance types that are ludicrously cheap for a month, though they’re not useful for me because Amazon filters out ports that I need.
I understand why you guys need to work with those types of resources but it bothers me to leave my or my clients’ information out on the ‘Net. If you have to, you have to, but that doesn’t make me happy with it. I know I’m being obsessive about by data, but the military and law enforcement like it like that. It was reinforced by having clients who saw their data as ‘gold’, even if everyone else saw ‘iron pyrites’.
Good luck with your new box, Kryten.
The core issue is that the customers are “out there”, and hosting providers have way bigger pipes than we could ever afford. Plus Amazon AWS has much better security than we could ever have by attaching our boxes directly to the ‘Net, their firewall and monitoring capabilities are ridiculously awesome. I have data flowing to me that tells me more about what’s happening on my constellation than I could have ever instrumented myself, at least not in any timely fashion.
That said, we’re pretty meticulous about our data too. Not only do we back it up on a nightly basis to S3 (which in turn replicates it to at least three different places worldwide), we are also replicating our database in real time to two replicas in two different availability zones, either of which can take over if the master database dies. And BTW we are *not* using the Amazon database that died last weekend and took down a bunch of sites, we rolled our own database cluster that we can more easily tweak and monitor in real time. I’m not sanguine about Amazon’s reliability by any means, everything is redundant out the yazoo.
You have the core requirements for the capabilities, something I didn’t and don’t have. You have real=time requirements while my client base actually tends to be batch oriented. Different needs lead to different solutions. You need the capabilities of a cloud while I can almost get by with sending DVDs by snail mail.
My ‘problem’ with the cloud are clients who use it for back-up and expect me to do recover their data when the cloud rains on them.
Can’t say I disagree with either of you. 🙂
I dislike those *general* type cloud services (like Dropbox etc.) They are disaster’s waiting to happen I think (and they have had serious problems already). Non savvy people are conned by the ‘ease of use’ features and low prices (or free in some cases).
Prometius have worked very hard on security and reliability. Those are their primary focus. I’ve used several providers over the past 15 years, and this is the best service I’ve used! 🙂
I’ve decided to go with the previous ‘5th Gen’ system. The new ‘6th Gen’ is too new for my liking. Most of the new MoBo’s look like they were designed and shot out to retail too rapidly to take advantage of the ‘early adopters’. I’ll wait for the dust to settle in a year or so I think (and prices to drop! Prices are a high premium for the new gen.) Kinda sad, the new gen does hold a lot of promise, and features I’d like. 🙂 Still, for a biz system, I’ll settle for something that’s been around about 3 years and works. 😉 😀
Just have to wait for the funds now. because of age and situation, I’m eligible to withdraw up to 10% of my super funds. I can get all of it when I reach 65, but I plan to leave it until 70. The payout will be a lot better! 🙂
I hope all is well with you guys. 😀 Take care.
It is one of those areas where if you need the capabilities you have to use them, whether you like or trust them or not. You trust what you have learned is trustworthy – earned, not automatic.
We have both been on the ‘bleeding edge’ of technology for too many years, and as we age we appreciate reliability over ‘whiz bang effect’. 😉
We always take care … to avoid catching something, if nothing else 😆