[BALUG-Talk] hardware operations, etc. Re: operation appears to have been a success: hardware issues

[Rick Moen]

Forgot to mention:

> The aforementioned PII pizza box, when I checked on it in the first
> Menlo Park location, had started to get its fans clogged with dust,
> which I then made a point of more-frequently cleaning (being mindful
> of static discharge).  Dust can trigger the previously-described cascade
> failure early.

Some dust components are also to a greater or lesser degree electrically
conductive, which contributes to electronics becoming unreliable before 
(also, then) bringing about early failure.  Your typical house, if it's
like mine, is a pretty miserable failure at dust elimination compared to
a server room, so introducing to it a delicate electronic device with a
high-speed fan that blows air _and dust_ into and through the
electronics is an accident waiting to happen.  (Servers are more at risk
than are workstations and laptops because of airflow and air speed
through them.)   But notice how this entire risk factor pretty nearly
vanishes if there are no fans.

> Sure, though it was just a bit frustrating that people weren't
> focussing, and instead just promoted irrelevant things they were
> familiar with.  

Also, it never fails:  Whenever people just don't understand a market 
for goods or servies, by default all they _do_ understand is price, so 
what they say and do reflects that mindset.  In particular, they always
gravitate to whatever's _cheapest_ (for myopic and self-defeating values
of 'cheapest'; see also inkjet printers, QIC tapes).

http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/lexicon.html#moenslaw-bicycles