There were many errors made and a critical one is how we measure magnetic fields.

This error propagated via Newton and celestial motion, making the assumption that energy is related to mass. It isn't.

This was then further propagated by Einstein and we still see energy equated to mass in his E=mc^2. While this is an interesting approximation, it is skewed from actual. Not his best work or why he received the Nobel, just accepted, because he did.

How long are we willing to be wrong?

Let's revisit the earliest assumptions, now that we have much better measurement tools, and correct the early errors made.

See where that takes us vs the stalemate we have now.

I think you want 'adorabumble'

-- Rob

..magnetic field there would have to be enormous, which is not easy to do. Using the one that comes with the planet, could be touchy, as side effects could be unexpectedly bad.

Inducing a charge to the particles to have them be more attractive to an oppositely charged collector system perhaps. What kind of storm can one engineer that high up?

Out military does have high power lasers now, that can track fast moving small objects, and vaporize them. Lots of target practice.

Problem remains, space is full of dust and particles, so shielding to absorb or deflect those bits is the method used in Sci-Fi thought experiments on the subject.

.. a tractor beam, and depending on how wide the beam is, in 24 hrs, an entire strip across the sky could be debris free.

Could also be a national attraction watching things sparkle and burn up as it's doing re-entry.

Leverage the power of virtualization to run your legacy platform for now, and have time to come up with other solutions.

If you haven't evaluated BixData http://bixdata.com/ yet? You're missing out. No nag/reg required, free use for less than 30 hosts.

Does not include kitchen sink. Only the next generation advanced monitoring system that can handle phyisical and virtual as well as the hypervisors! VMware friendly.

On their science page http://www.bixdata.com/science, they say Bix is Borg. And they're not kidding.

"BixData is profoundly different. It took science fiction to provide the metaphor. Bix is Borg - 'an inter-connected collective' (self-organizing p2p) that 'assimilates' new life forms (cross-platform virtual machine), functions with a single hive-mind (n-cube datastore) and adapts through self-learning (cybernetic feedback loop) - all in pursuit of perfection. Resistance is Futile."

Just... Wow.

Haven't evaluated BixData http://bixdata.com/ ? See my previous post..

I see you haven't evaluated BixData http://bixdata.com/.. see my other comment above.

Yes, there is a solution to this problem. BixData. http://www.bixdata.com/

This is the next generation monitoring solution. Self-installing,organizing,adjusting,correcting,tuning, P2P, 3D, n-cube OLAP, scalable, ...

It's like something they'd have on StarTrek. A huge advancement in management science. I had a chance to use it a while ago, and I can only say you have to try it to experience the 'awesome'. Hardly compares to the current day popular systems people are still struggling with.

There's even a free version community edition for 30 hosts.. no registration required either, and they love critical feedback. So don't forget to give them some.

I'm not affiliated with BixData, just love the efficiency and thoughtfulness.

Please familiarize yourself with the difference between hardware fault tolerance and software fault tolerance.

Like everyone else pointed out, it's a VM in lockstep with a 'shadow' VM. This is not just 'continuous VMotion'.

If something happens to the VM, the shadow VM goes live instantly (you don't notice a thing if you're doing something on the VM).

Right after that, the system starts bringing up another shadow VM on another host to regain full FT protection.

This can be network intensive, depending on the VM load, and currently only works with 1 vCPU per VM. Think 1-2 FT VMs per ESX host + shadow VMs.

You'll need recent CPUs that support FT and have an VMware HA / DRS Cluster set up.

So if you've got it, use it wisely. It's very cool.

When these guys ramp up, there may be a great quick way of testing for any of these nasty flu variants.
They have a great test for the A/H5N1 Avian Flu right now. 100% sensitivity and specificity, which means no false positives. There's nothing else like this.. cool technology and FDA approved.

Since these guys have the best Avian Flu test, they might be able to make a variant for this one too..

Amazing biotech on this test btw..

Depending on the type of load each company has throughout the day/night, there are usually high and lows in the overall system usage which can be used to save some power apart from simply going virtual.

VMware has cool management tools for this and the shutting down of systems is managed by Distributed Power Management (DPM). http://www.vmware.com/products/vi/vc/drs.html Has more details.

So not only can you save power with shutting down servers, but the HVAC systems get their load reduced as while the servers are off. Mind you this only works well (automagically) with newer systems that support Wake on Lan (WoL).

Otherwise have your NOC monkeys take care of it instead of sleeping :)