7 ms·

The fact that ECC isn't the default across everything is a failure of human cognition and Capitalism.

jandrese 6y ago
I have always been angry that ECC was treated as an "enterprise" feature and increased the price way more than it should have.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- sneak 6y ago
  I feel this way about all software.
- buran77 6y ago
  It's treated as enterprise because most regular users had no realistic reason to care about it. The practical consequences of not having this on your phone or home PC are completely invisible for the vast majority of people. Because of this and the fact that in the consumer space prices matter most the situation is quite expected.
  - behringer 6y ago
    Users most definitely want it. They just aren't technically literate enough to know about it. Hello user, for an extra 10 dollars, would you like to guarantee that cosmic radiation never affects your computing experience, including having to reformat, reinstall, or otherwise reboot your phone/computer randomly when one day something just doesn't work anymore? Was it an update? Was it cosmic radiation? Was it a bad capacitor? Who knows! Why do you think so many problems are solved by rebooting? Sure 99 out of 100 might be software bugs, but the other 1 out of 100 is straight up cosmic radiation, and that 1 percent is growing more and more every year as software becomes more robust and bug free with better tooling.
    - buran77 6y ago
      Indeed, users don't know enough to care but more than that, for most users this is simply not a problem because they haven't been practically affected. Most may never experience a bit flip, and most of the flips won't be obvious anyway (e.g. no visible effect). So your hypothetical dialogue will sound more like a scam to a regular user. You're charging money to tackle a problem they don't have or see, only addressing a single one of the root causes that trigger that same result, and in the end you're not even completely fixing it, just reducing the already infinitesimal odds it happens. It will become mainstream when manufacturers just decides to include it everywhere and not really give the user a choice. Apple is a prime candidate for a company with enough clout to afford this.
      - behringer 6y ago
        My point is, they have been affected. I think most people have seen bitflips. >2009 Google's paper "DRAM Errors in the Wild: A Large-Scale Field Study" says that there can be up to 25000-75000 one-bit FIT per Mbit (failures in time per billion hours), which is equal to 1 - 5 bit errors per hour for 8GB of RAM after my calculations. Paper says the same: "mean correctable error rates of 2000–6000 per GB per year". https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2580933/cosmic-rays-what-is-the-probability-they-will-affect-a-program https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2580933/cosmic-rays-what... I believe bitflips are far more common than people realize. I see weird shit all the time from my users that is only explainable due to bizarre software bugs or bitflips.
        buran77 6y ago
        But behringer, regular users don't see bitflips, they see "a random error", a random reboot, a random green pixel in a photo. That's if they even consciously observed anything at all. You yourself said those could have a dozen other root causes. I for one have not actually observed a bitflip (so something that I can actually consciously detect as an issue) in a decade. No unexpected reboots, no unexpected file corruption, etc., nothing that made me say "weird, must be some memory corruption". Don't get me wrong, I'm all for ECC memory, I practically showed the value of ECC after intentionally running the same multi-day Matlab job several times on a non-ECC machine with different results just to prove this very point. But you use your deeper knowledge to assume what someone with shallow knowledge and interest wants or needs, and that will almost always be off mark. Your car does not have a roll cage. Normal computers do not have ECC memory.
shrewduser 6y ago
capitalism? what? i suppose under a communist system we would all be using ECC?
- klodolph 6y ago
  Just because capitalism fails to provide something does not mean that communism would solve the problem, or that criticism of capitalism as a system is uncalled for. This is not some kind of binary capitalism/communism world we live in.
  - shrewduser 6y ago
    i'm just struggling to find the link between capitalism and ECC memory.
    - versteegen 6y ago
      Market segmentation.
    - eptcyka 6y ago
      It's the act of maximizing profits by segmenting the market that creates artificially bad products that end up being the mainstream because of the price difference. If the companies responsible for making these decisions were optimizing just a tad bit more for practicality and usability rather than just profit, ECC would be the standard and that would be the end of that. Similar to how a lot of luxury and non-luxury cars will have seemingly essential and cheap equipment only available as part of an expensive options package - the cost of producing and installing the extra equipment is a mere fraction of the total package cost, a large majority will end up buying the package anyway (and 100% would if money was no object). One might argue that this practice is part and parcel of modern industrial markets, and is almost fair - prices are arbitrary and consumers get to pay for the value they get out of something, there is no optimal, moral way to determine what someone's margins should be, yadda yadda. In my opinion, usually the market will choose what are acceptable margins on a given product and/or service, but with 2 thousand dollar parking sensors and double-the-price ECC memory, with artifical segmentation, I'm paying not for the manufacturing and delivery of a product with a feature I want, but instead I'm having to pay for the opportunity of being able to have the product with the features I want + the manufacturing and delivery.

I have always been angry that ECC was treated as an "enterprise" feature and increased the price way more than it should have.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
sneak 6y ago
I feel this way about all software.
buran77 6y ago
It's treated as enterprise because most regular users had no realistic reason to care about it. The practical consequences of not having this on your phone or home PC are completely invisible for the vast majority of people. Because of this and the fact that in the consumer space prices matter most the situation is quite expected.
- behringer 6y ago
  Users most definitely want it. They just aren't technically literate enough to know about it. Hello user, for an extra 10 dollars, would you like to guarantee that cosmic radiation never affects your computing experience, including having to reformat, reinstall, or otherwise reboot your phone/computer randomly when one day something just doesn't work anymore? Was it an update? Was it cosmic radiation? Was it a bad capacitor? Who knows! Why do you think so many problems are solved by rebooting? Sure 99 out of 100 might be software bugs, but the other 1 out of 100 is straight up cosmic radiation, and that 1 percent is growing more and more every year as software becomes more robust and bug free with better tooling.
  - buran77 6y ago
    Indeed, users don't know enough to care but more than that, for most users this is simply not a problem because they haven't been practically affected. Most may never experience a bit flip, and most of the flips won't be obvious anyway (e.g. no visible effect). So your hypothetical dialogue will sound more like a scam to a regular user. You're charging money to tackle a problem they don't have or see, only addressing a single one of the root causes that trigger that same result, and in the end you're not even completely fixing it, just reducing the already infinitesimal odds it happens. It will become mainstream when manufacturers just decides to include it everywhere and not really give the user a choice. Apple is a prime candidate for a company with enough clout to afford this.
    - behringer 6y ago
      My point is, they have been affected. I think most people have seen bitflips. >2009 Google's paper "DRAM Errors in the Wild: A Large-Scale Field Study" says that there can be up to 25000-75000 one-bit FIT per Mbit (failures in time per billion hours), which is equal to 1 - 5 bit errors per hour for 8GB of RAM after my calculations. Paper says the same: "mean correctable error rates of 2000–6000 per GB per year". https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2580933/cosmic-rays-what-is-the-probability-they-will-affect-a-program https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2580933/cosmic-rays-what... I believe bitflips are far more common than people realize. I see weird shit all the time from my users that is only explainable due to bizarre software bugs or bitflips.
      - buran77 6y ago
        But behringer, regular users don't see bitflips, they see "a random error", a random reboot, a random green pixel in a photo. That's if they even consciously observed anything at all. You yourself said those could have a dozen other root causes. I for one have not actually observed a bitflip (so something that I can actually consciously detect as an issue) in a decade. No unexpected reboots, no unexpected file corruption, etc., nothing that made me say "weird, must be some memory corruption". Don't get me wrong, I'm all for ECC memory, I practically showed the value of ECC after intentionally running the same multi-day Matlab job several times on a non-ECC machine with different results just to prove this very point. But you use your deeper knowledge to assume what someone with shallow knowledge and interest wants or needs, and that will almost always be off mark. Your car does not have a roll cage. Normal computers do not have ECC memory.

shrewduser 6y ago

capitalism? what? i suppose under a communist system we would all be using ECC?

klodolph 6y ago
Just because capitalism fails to provide something does not mean that communism would solve the problem, or that criticism of capitalism as a system is uncalled for. This is not some kind of binary capitalism/communism world we live in.
- shrewduser 6y ago
  i'm just struggling to find the link between capitalism and ECC memory.
  - versteegen 6y ago
    Market segmentation.
  - eptcyka 6y ago
    It's the act of maximizing profits by segmenting the market that creates artificially bad products that end up being the mainstream because of the price difference. If the companies responsible for making these decisions were optimizing just a tad bit more for practicality and usability rather than just profit, ECC would be the standard and that would be the end of that. Similar to how a lot of luxury and non-luxury cars will have seemingly essential and cheap equipment only available as part of an expensive options package - the cost of producing and installing the extra equipment is a mere fraction of the total package cost, a large majority will end up buying the package anyway (and 100% would if money was no object). One might argue that this practice is part and parcel of modern industrial markets, and is almost fair - prices are arbitrary and consumers get to pay for the value they get out of something, there is no optimal, moral way to determine what someone's margins should be, yadda yadda. In my opinion, usually the market will choose what are acceptable margins on a given product and/or service, but with 2 thousand dollar parking sensors and double-the-price ECC memory, with artifical segmentation, I'm paying not for the manufacturing and delivery of a product with a feature I want, but instead I'm having to pay for the opportunity of being able to have the product with the features I want + the manufacturing and delivery.