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Mobile Users Plug-in Anywhere They Can
jasonla writes "The New York Times looks at mobile technology users who leech power from restaurant and airport outlets while on the road. The article looks at the habits and 'culture' of people who use portable devices -- such as laptops, iPods and cellphones -- and what the businesses think of power hungry customers." As interesting as the phenomena of customers leeching power from the businesses they frequent is the self-imposed etiquette of many users.
people who use a businesses' air, light and even gravity?
In some cases, those staking a claim do so by plugging in a device - even a $2,000 laptop - only to leave it unattended while fetching a $4 coffee.
... as their insurer takes care of that pesky dead battery problem.
I have to admit that I do this all the time, especially in airports-- and it is getting harder and harder to find places to recharge.
I've done it and I've never had a problem through doing. Makes one wonder at the motivation of those who are too mean and stingy to let people charge up their iPod in a public place.
They don't bat an eye at helping yourself to serviettes or sugar but a little juice gets a 'leeching' tag?
The summary indicates the article is referring to use of power (electrical outlets) not wireless access. WEP would clearly have no place if preventing this.
University - a box of academia nuts.
"It is part of the culture," said Mr. Lebrun, 27, who finds it necessary to charge his cellphone in the classroom because its battery can manage little more than three hours of talk time
Buy a better phone, then. Those brick-sized analogue phones are kind of obsolete now, especially since they tore down all the analogue masts...
I'd be interesting in you telling me how I can protect my electricity supply with WEP ?
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
Geeze, you could have a cafe full of plugged in laptop users and still not have this cost you 25 cents an hour.
Dog is my co-pilot.
I borrow. Sometimes with interest!
Back in January 1998, when a good hunk of Canada had no power due to an ice storm, I couldn't go to work because we had no power at the office. I also had no power at home, and was bored out of my tree.
So, I grabbed a pair of APC BackUPS 400s, threw them in a knapsack, and walked to the local pub (which DID have power). Plugged 'em in, had a few beers, walked home, watched TV; repeat.
I tell ya, though, my back was kinda sore. Those things ain't made to be portable!
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
Seems perfectly plain to me, perhaps it is *you* who need schooling!
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
(Centrino, Macs are better yadda yadda I know)
Whenever I've visited a resturant, I've asked permission 99% of the time.. unless it's an emergency. (What's an emergency to you?) I've been turned down some times, but remind them you'll buy more, or *gasp* pay a dollar or two for the privelige.. Once in Arby's I was denied permission, and got a wierd look.. Then the manager thought better, said not to put the cord of the floor, and I bought food to go.
Whatever happened to them? Theyre supposed to save us from having to having to charge like that.....Top off the.....methanol?....and go....
I personally cant wait til theyre readily available....Does anybody have any info?
Back on topic - I dont think many businesses have a problem with people doing so...Power consumption cant be too too bad, and it brings in traffic...
-thewldisntenuff
My MythTV HowTo
As far as cost goes, it shouldn't really be too much of a problem for many businesses, assuming they are charged on the same basis as the power companies do here in the UK. Companies (at least, the theatres I work in) are not charged according to the number of units used, but by the maximum amount of power they use during the billing period. For example, during a theatre show we use a hell of a lot of power, and the power companies takes this peak rate and charges us across the board at that rate. I don't know whether this is just limited to certain businesses.
If I'm having an overpriced cup of coffee at Starbucks and paying for WiFi, they damn well better let me plug in ...
Do it!
Dog is my co-pilot.
I do this all the time (or rather anytime I can since they tend to hide those more and more...). Well, when I take the plane, I pay an airport tax, which I believe covers the charges of the mere kWh I borrow. I mean, what about that guys that drink the water in the restroom. Aren't they leechers, also?
what, 50 laptops? The point is, public-ish facilities that want or depend on public traffic don't lose much by being accommodating, and no doubt generate some good will among the lithium-ion set. The guy that uses a lot more paper towels or flushes twice in a public bathroom is chewing up a LOT more overheard than the lady who's trickle-charging her laptop (let alone her cellphone).
/.ing
I'd say the bigger cost is the risk of liability when one Starbucks customer trips over the power cord of another customer's laptop. You know, the one the user has stretched from the pillar in the middle of the room over to his table, where he's
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
It's perfectly grammatically correct, though a comma after "frequent" might help things along.
Seems perfectly plain to me, perhaps it is *you* who need schooling!
Can someone tell me whether "it" or "you" is supposed to be the pronoun here? I reckon it's "it" in which case "need" should be "needs".
Just make all of the outlets which are in public spaces under lock and key. That'd stop the vast majority.
Then, to make an extra buck they can have a little "power cafe" if you will. Same idea as getting a little internet time somewhere, but you go plug in to recharge instead. Personally, I'd pay a dollar for the right to plug in and charge from a single outlet for whatever time I am there. I think most people who needed to charge something would pay out a dollar, and the airports could make good money offerring it at that price.
...he could simply meet the person face to face.
Seriously, doesn't anyone else here think 3 hours of cell phone yammering every day might be a bit excessive?
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
... my elderly and rather knackered Nokia 6110i manages a good 6 hours of talk time, and several days of standby time. That's with its stock (and now quite old) battery. I have noticed that standby time is getting shorter, but talk time is still good.
during a theatre show we use a hell of a lot of power, and the power companies takes this peak rate and charges us across the board at that rate
Surely not *at that rate*, why in hell would you agree to that? A rate *based on* peak usage, maybe, but not one assuming peak usage continuously!
... then stick a padlock on the outlet. But how much will that cost??.
There's 'prior art' now... ;)
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
Har! Back in 1986 when I was on the road making locale-specific engineering modifications to a pay telephone system I designed, I had an 8085 emulator-in-a-briefcase and a full-size Compaq "Luggable" (8088 12 Mhz 40 MB HD) that I used to plug into airport AC outlets and play Chess and Rouge (Epyx's version for PC) with it while waiting for flights!
You see, I had no "Geek Shame" back then, and nowadays no one would give me a 2nd look, except perhaps the wonderful TSA folks...
It also had a nice clock on the screen by a TSR program of some sort, which would remind me when to pack up and go to the gate. Unfortunately, once, after a couple of cocktails, I forgot completely about the whole time zone thing, and missed my flight clean by an hour! But that is another story...
-- You are in a maze of little, twisty passages, all different... --
Leeching power is a singular subject, so it's a PHENOMENON, not a PHENOMENA.
Self awareness - try it!
...kinetic storage could be made practical for that sort of medium. Unfortunately the power consumption is far too great for that I think.
Maybe in cooperation with solar panels though... BIG ones!
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
Here in the UK Virgin has been putting power outlets for charging up phones and laptops next to all the seats in their new trains.
So you could go on a pleasure trip and charge up (but given the state of the UK rail system that might not be a good idea if you need to make it to something on time. )
Philip
Signatures are broken
Cellphones, ipods and even portable computers are not that power hungry that it would matter. I consider using the power outlets included in what I pay for coffee, airport tax or whatever. Just like I don't pay extra for breathing air from businesses' ventilator systems (which probably costs more than the power). If some business doesn't like me charging my laptop, I choose to go elsewhere.
For reference, my portable computer's battery is rated 14.8V, 4400mAh. That roughly equals 65 watt-hours. The biggest cost of electricity I found is 9 cents per kWh, so filling the battery from empty to full would cost less than 0.6 cents. I will gladly pay 0.6 cents extra to use my laptop wherever I go, if asked for.
If you have a problem with me charging my laptop up while I'm purchasing services in your place of business, just let me know and I'll be sure to find somewhere that doesn't. That simple, really.
Its a case of pot-kettle-black, anyway.
Starbucks are the damned leaches, remember that, distant-caffeine-fogged memories of the 90's notwithstanding!!
Bloody rude, if you ask me, anyway, not letting a customer 'power up' if they need to, while using so-called 'free WLAN services' while enjoying raped-the-earth-coffee
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Yep! "needs" is right. Bad pedant, needs to go back to pedant school (or is that "need"?).
1) www.bugmenot.com It has a firefox plug in, you right click the username field, click bugmenot, and it logs you in, no registration required. 2) I'm guilty, so what? I like to go to a coffee place (a cheap, friendly one nearby) and work for 3-4 hours. It's a productive environment. I reckon I drink a coffee every 30 minutes while I'm working, so I probably have about 6 in 4 hours. Call it £3/coffee, that's £18. Call it 6p/kWh, my laptop drinks 65W, so that's about 2p worth of energy. It's a bit of a fuss about nothing. Quote: "Somebody's got to pay for that electricity." Yes, the customer. They might say "if everybody came in and did it..." well, for 12 hours, there are 10 people drawing 100W, that's 12kWh, that's about 70p for the day. Boohoo. BTW, guys who can't find power outlets, use my Confucius say style motto... Think like the cleaner.
I'll translate it for you as I read it:
"Many users, despite needing to recharge the battery of a device, are aware that electricity costs businesses money, and so ask for permission before plugging into an outlet, and perhaps offer a token payment in addition to whatever goods they were planning on buying."
I took it as a good thing, an expression of basic politeness - an indication that not all people are selfish, even with regards to something as relatively minor as taking a small amount of electricity.
I've never seen any coffee shop or bar complain about this behaviour, it costs pennies to charge a laptop and it's a rounding error on a typical bar's power bill to charge a cell phone.
It's like using the bathroom or taking more paper napkins; it's part of the business and only idiots would even blink at a customer taking this kind of liberty.
Sure, the store's insurance will cover it, but then they'll get their rates jacked up and probably a clause in the next policy specifically prohibiting customers from plugging in anywhere.
If they put power jacks and tables in good areas, where nobody can trip, this becomes a non-issue...
who yelled in the office "plug it UP YOUR ASS !" ?
If I make my wireless network unavailable to leeches, then the leeches presumably wouldn't have a reason to use their craptops, and thus wouldn't plug them into my power jacks. Think of all the cents I would save on my electric bill every month!
Of course that's ridiculous because people did have a use for computers before the Internet -- didn't they?
aQazaQa
I'm not sure I'd use other people's power sockets without first applying my trusty AVO, maybe even an oscilloscope to check the frequency and waveshape; and even then, I'd always insist on using a well-filtered and surge-protected extension lead. Because I know exactly what I would do if I was the proprietor of a catering establishment where people were even half-likely to leech my power! In the olden days, when it used to be common for equipment to be housed in metal cases, I would just have swapped the phase and earth contacts in the customer area sockets. But today, I'd hafta settle for installing something like a Schaffner 2050 transient generator upstream of the wall sockets in the customer area, and cranking it up to its most extreme setting. Oh, yes, and I'd get another Schaffner and couple its outputs to a bunch of innocuous-looking RJ45s.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
I think there is another important issue: safety. If your device short circuits the airport power network and then it takes 20 minutes before someone finds the circuit breaker then people are not going to be happy. And what if your device screws up someones laptop? (I know this is _really_ unlikely) The UK solution is that all electrical devices plugged in any sort of public socket (e.g. libraries) should be tested for safety, whenever they're more than one year old.
I'd imagine that airports have two or three different level of electricity grid one for the "totally essential" and one for all the shops adverts and Christmas trees.
As for the electricity bill: if I'm at the airport and everything is running on time then batteries in my laptop last long enough. If my flight gets delayed by 7 hours like it did the last time then I feel I have the right to use some electricity, for all the airport taxes I have paid. Even if that means unplugging some Christmas tree.
And if any employee of the airport wants to come and argue about this then he's welcome: I have 7 hours to spare and I'm pretty annoyed to begin with.
$hit on a $tick!
Someones laptop, even if a 100W power hungry Alaskan mosquito is gonna use what? At 14 cents/kWh, 2 hours is only 2.8 cents. I've seen fat business guys at the airport drop a couple of bucks in change when they struggle toward an erect posture after sitting with their laptop. At this point they are too stiff to bend over and pick up their change.
You want leeches?
Atlanta airport concessionaire contracts as political payoff and nepotism. Handily exempt from 'living wage' requirements of city businesses. Now that's leeching on a scale that puts the world total portable device mosquitoes in 'drop in a bucket' perspective. Besides, why the hell would a business offer free WiFi for customers and then worry about a buck or two a day, max, in power nibbling?
I'll plug in at coffee shops from time to time if my laptop's battery is starting to go dead. I've always considered buying coffee there to be a form of rent fo rthe table space I'm using. Power is just an extension of that.
It's good to use your head, but not as a battering ram.
"Normally" you have a meter that gives you the total kW/hr reading, metered at some discount rate.
.... ooops! $4,000 for a single 5 second 200kW peak surge this month.
You then also have a "surge" meter that reads peak usage, or usage above a stated kW/hr.
This is normally used in industrial estates to (help) discourage Big Power Users from switching everything on at once. This way the electrical company can use equipment with a lower surge capacity.
This used to be a real problem at a lab I used to work at, as they had a number of large (20kW) sample drying ovens. Coupled with the "small" (5kW) furnaces we had in the lab + A/C + freezer storage etc, it was quite easy for all the switched loads to "sync up" and
There was a power meter gadget on the main incomer with a serial interface left from the previous tenants, and after much cursing in Perl, I eventally linked it to the server in the lab to turn on a light when we were nearing our "peak meter threshold" (100kW). The lab staff would then hold off putting new samples on, or would switch off a few idle furnaces.
As the average lab load was about 75kW, this saved us many thousands over a year.
You are in a twisty maze of processor lines, all alike.
There is a lot of hype here.
Fuelcell
It's because you're paying for a capacity to be made available for you as well as the power itself.
As a simple example, suppose your peak power consumption is the same as the peak output of the local power-station.
Given that you could want 100% of the power plant output at any one time, the power ocompany has to effectively reserve it for you. Even if you just want 1% of it, it can't sell the other 99% because you might need it.
DISCLAIMER - yes I do work in the electricity industry.
I recently got stuck in London Victoria Station, with my battery dead.
Of course, I brought my phone's charger. Little did I know that those silly brits used *square* power wall plugs instead of the European standard.
Thankfully, it's 230v. So I whopped out my thrusty leatherman, unscrewed a wallsocket in the toilets, removed the wires, and taped them to my charger. I was saved =).
That none of the online hotspot directories include a rating for each hotspot to show availability of outlets. Range: "none," "1-4," "5-10," "10+," and "Almost every table."
fencepost
just a little off
In North America the billing model depends on the power requirements of the company. Smaller companies are metered just like homes. Even rather large companies can be metered.
My friends and I would specifically go to Denny's instead of the IHOP across the street, because they had a booth with an outlet. We would plug in and watch movies while we ate and hung out. It was 3am so nobody minded us hogging a booth, and the manager would come and sit with us and watch the movie when it was slow enough or the movie was good enough. We cost them $.50 in electricity and made them much more than that in business. I don't feal guilty for it....and the manager never minded....
The biggest power hog on laptops now is that florescent backlight. Eliminate that and I'm certain you could get twice as much battery time with current tech.
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
Nokia is using a standard charger for all models that has not been changed since the mid 90s. With the (past) marketshare of Nokia this means you are never far from a charger, at a friends, at work, with a customer or around town. I travel a lot without bringing a charger (+adapter) for my Nokia without a problem. Genious.
In capitalist USA, The schooling needs YOU.
Uh, whatever.
That would solve this 'issue'.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
What is it going to take to get /. editors from using links in stories that actually LINK TO the article/story they are referring to, instead of ones that prompt for some stupid login.
If it requires a login, its a private site, and isnt public news. If its public news, the same story *WILL* be posted on a public site that doesnt waste peoples time with login nonsense. It would take an editor posting a story 15 seconds to hit google news, and find such a link for a story, to substitute for where a story submitter has included a link to such a private news site. Instead of each view having to either do that or waste time either maintining a login or making up a disposable one for every story.
WHY IS SLASHDOT SUPPORTING THE NEW YORK TIMES OBNOXIOUS, PRIVACY-INVADING, AND GENERAL PAIN IN THE ASS REGISTRATION POLICY? How much are they paying, and to who?
If this is going to continue, it would be damn nice if instead of the (intermittent) '(free reg required)' comment on these stories, that fact was stored in a boolean field in the story database, so that viewers could have a prefs option to choose to just have those stories completely supressed from their slashdot experience.
And if enough people set that pref, perhaps the eds will finally realize that posting stories with that type of link is a complete waste of time.
I have to admit that I do this all the time, especially in airports-- and it is getting harder and harder to find places to recharge.
That's strange: the only place where I can consistently find a free* outlet is in the airport. I have on occasion carried a small outlet strip in my bag just in case all the outlets are taken, but this has not been an issue. (Someone using a laptop probably wouldn't mind unplugging for a few seconds while you plugged in the strip (so you could share the outlet), unless he was a complete turlingdrome.)
I also fly on newer Airbus aircraft whenever possible. The 300 series have DC power outlets in the armrests of all the seats (yes, even in coach/steerage). If I know I'm going to be on such a flight for an hour or more, I won't bother looking for an AC outlet in the terminal. I picked up one of these for use on the road. (The auto-DC-to-airline-DC adapter is the C-chaped item at the bottom of the picture.) Airline DC outlets are standardized (I forget the name of the connector) so any vendor's adapter should work.
* "free" as in "no people". In this context, I suppose "free as in beer" would also apply.
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
I know at the "School of Advanced Technology" college I went to they had zero [yup count them zero] places to sit down and use a laptop. We had to make due sitting in the cafe and steal from the wall outlets [of which there were a half dozen for a school of 14,000 people].
Just wondering, anyone else goto tech schools like that?
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
Please, this is just a bunch of psycholibertarians furious that they can't put a coin slot on your very soul. Any 'vendor' who objects to me using their outlets which are out in the open needs to find a new customer to replace me.
I've been the "hero of the day" at Starbucks a few times when I'm on the road because I carry a power strip in my laptop bag. I'll plug in my power strip, and then invite anybody nearby who wants to plug in.
I have a picture on my web site of one night in a hotel room where between my wife and I we had plugged in two laptops, two PDAs, two cell phones, two digital camera battery chargers, a video camera, and an iPod.
The next Cmdr Taco duplicate will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
I own Node Coffee Shop in Milwaukee, WI (open 24 hours). When I built the cafe I had the electrician put in quad outlets every 6-8 feet around the shop so that customers would never have to fight over a power outlet. Every seat has an outlet. No other cafe in the area can boast that kind of setup. I dont believe it costs us very much more as far as operating expenses go, but it does increase our profits as we get a lot of customers who come to our establishment because we have such great access. Check us out if you are ever in the Milwaukee area! http://www.nodecoffee.com/
Ok lets see now: My iBook charger outputs 24.5v @ 1.875A. Based on an electricity price of 5.5p per KHW (I plucked that from the first thing I could google) which is pretty high and probably lower for commercial outlets.. anyway i digress.. thats 0.003p per hour. Now lets take an average cup of Starbucks and break it down:
Price: ~£2.50
Costs: ~£0.80
and there for the amount of time I would need to sit there charging my laptop before they started loosing money:
~680 hours or about 1 month!
Obviously that makes some assumptions:
a) I would only buy one cup off coffee for the whole month and would live off drinking out of the toilet for the rest of the time (an improvement)
b) They probably wouldnt let me stay overnight
and
c) I would actually have to go to Starbucks for more than an hour - the time after which you can no-longer stand its nuvo art fake prints and dirty seats.
This is so no big deal, its in all these places interests to just let people plug their laptop in for an hour or so, the WiFi and coffee price will more than make up for it.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Here's the article:
Power Users, Ready for a Refill
By MICHEL MARRIOTT
MIHOKO HAKATA, a freelance illustrator and recent art-school graduate, ducked into a coffee shop in Midtown Manhattan last week, desperate for a jolt of energy.
She had work to do. But as she removed her materials from her backpack, it became clear that the energy she was seeking could not be found in a cup. She had a more pressing need: to find a power outlet for her laptop computer, whose battery had died.
"I realized they have this," said Ms. Hakata, a 29-year-old Tokyo native, as her hand slipped beneath a table to deftly plug her I.B.M. ThinkPad into a wall socket.
Before Ms. Hakata, who lives on a drafty boat on the Hudson River, could settle into her work, a young man clutching a dying cellphone rushed in.
"I just have to charge it," he said, asking Ms. Hakata if he could share one of the two power outlets under her table. She smiled politely and nodded.
Every day, millions of people are finding themselves scurrying about in search of wells of electricity they can tap so their battery-powered mobile devices can remain mobile. Dependence is growing on laptops, cellular telephones, digital music players, digital cameras, camcorders, personal organizers, portable DVD players and the latest hand-held gaming devices - most of which operate on rechargeable lithium-ion batteries - and finding available electrical outlets away from home and office has become more urgent.
Starbucks and other establishments catering to wired customers appear to do little to discourage or regulate customers who plug in, either to work on AC power or charge up. In large part, the power seekers seem to negotiate their needs among themselves with cooperative grace, following a series of unspoken rules.
Chief among them, some say, is never to use more than half of the sockets in a wall outlet. If an outlet provides four sockets, electrical etiquette dictates that you can plug in, say, your laptop and your cellphone, but not the iPod, too.
Those who disregard this courtesy may find themselves the targets of grumblings and harsh stares.
"It's better not to hog all the outlets, of course," said Zyphus Lebrun, a graduate student in journalism at Columbia University. "It's like when you go to the Laundromat and there is one person using four dryers."
While some devices, like a dying cellphone, require only a few minutes of charging to regain short-term use, most devices, like laptops, take much longer. It is not uncommon for users of electronics with more ravenous appetites to camp out for hours near an electrical outlet. In some cases, those staking a claim do so by plugging in a device - even a $2,000 laptop - only to leave it unattended while fetching a $4 coffee.
Much of the mounting quest for power stems, some hardware manufacturers say, from battery performance that has generally not kept up with the rapidly expanding capabilities of today's consumer electronics.
In turn, some battery makers blame hardware makers for adding power-consuming extras like larger, brighter display screens on laptops and bigger hard drives in digital music players. The result is devices that can operate for little more than four to six hours between charges.
As a consequence, knowing the location of a well-placed (and unused) electrical outlet may be considered more vital than knowing the closest public bathroom.
"It has become part of your lifestyle," Ralph Bond, the consumer education officer for Intel, said of the continual challenge of taking advantage of the widening offerings of digital electronics but not becoming a slave to the socket. "I can give you a guided tour of the two concourses for United Airlines in Chicago O'Hare." He then rattled off a long list of airports where he knows the whereabouts of obscure but accessible electrical outlets. "I can show you where the very valued and highly prized electrical outlets are for frequent travelers that need to jui
Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped.
Or alternativily you could argue that todays consumer electronics haven't designed their products well enough to take into account the clearly known limitations of current battery technology (it's not like the mainstream market has changed very much recently). Sure they've made efforts, but the direction has been (until recently) on bigger, better, faster and more powerful rather than lower heat output and reduced power consumption.
Or you could blame product managers and consumers. One for actually considering that a product with a 3 hour battery life is marketable and the other for actually proving them right.
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
For everyone who thinks this is OK, how about putting an extension cord out your window and publishing your address. My wife and I have a few things we need to recharge... ;)
Also, if it isn't too much bother, disable WEP on your WiFi.
What if some punter comes in with a defective charger that fuses the outlet circuits or worse, starts a fire?
Some establishments (my kid's school for example) don't allow any electrical appliances to be used unless they have been through a safety check.
The same concern may apply at hotels etc. I wonder what the liability position is. Is it the establishment owner or the owner of the defective device?
Panera Bread Company in Fort Worth, TX on University Drive. Good food (sandwiches, soup, etc), free wireless, and signs indicating the booths that have power available for laptops. All this, and cute college chicks from nearby TCU...
If business owners are mad about people plugging devices in, why are there electric outlets there anyway?
This is clearly Power Piracy or maybe even Power Terrorism
That's why you need to carry around one of those adapters that plug into an incandescent lightbulb socket with a couple plugs on the side. That way if they lock down the outlets, all you need to do is sit next to a lamp.
Oh . . . and bring an oven mit along too, if the light is on.
So they are constantly charging you for things you don't use? I think such a mode of billing not only rips you off, it encourages wastefulness in off-peak times (because everything is 'free' unless you stay below-peak).
I have thought about drawing outlets on our maps, but we haven't set that up yet. Would this be useful for our mobile users looking for access AND power?
Zhrodague.net - I do projects and stuff too.
Yes, but you can get standard European plugs into British power points with a little force even without your leatherman. ;-)
The company I work for is in a large, multi-tenant office tower and I know for a fact we don't cut a check to the power company, our power costs are part of the rent, figured based on some wattage-per-square-foot formula.
When we put in new air conditioning for a data center, they made us put a meter on the feed to the air conditioning units, but I don't think it's resulted in any surcharges -- they just wanted to be able to see what kind of power these units actually consumed.
Sitting in San Francisco International Airport one trip, I had the misfortune of having to wait for my flight to arrive. Having nothing else to do, I pulled out my Laptop (having been drained of much of it's power already) and plugged it into a local socket. Funny thing about that socket, it was one of those localized ones that has it's own circuit breaker built in, similar to the ones you find in bathrooms. In the event my laptop, god forbid, had drawn too much power, it would've likely (if they designed it smartly) tripped the circuit breaker in the plug itself, and only that circuit breaker.
I could have reset the switch myself by simply pushing the reset button on the socket, had it come to that. Seems like a pretty darn smart way to localize a power socket that the public may be using.
Just wanted to say I took a look at the opening page(s) of your website and was impressed. Hope you get lots of business.
The only winning move is not to play.
I spoke with one of the leaders of the conference about it (figuring I wasn't the only one who got yelled out), and she told me it was most likely due to union issues...the union apparently was very strong there and the conference staff wasn't allowed to pull any cables...they needed union convention center staffers to do it. What that has to do with me plugging in a personal laptop is beyond me. Should I have gotten a union rep to do it instead?
I'll chalk it up to lack of intelligence on the guard's part, but I had no further problems. 'Course, whenever I saw that guy, I immediately unplugged.
If I go into a coffee shop that I haven't been in before, I'll ask the barista if it's cool to use an outlet.
They've always responded with "Oh, sure, no problem!" so far.
Starbucks usually has outlets available anyway. Guess I'm not "stealing" energy. heh.
There's a friggin 24/7 coffee shop in MILWAUKEE, WISCONSIN but I cannot find *any* here in the goddamn SILICON VALLEY. There is something seriously wrong with this picture. :P
"Heart of technology" my ass. This dump sucks. I'm going to Wisconsin!
> Similarly, Mr. Bond of Intel said his 20-year-old daughter recently discovered that her iPod Mini's battery lasts longer if she limits the use of the backlight on the L.C.D. screen.
Naah... too easy.
> please share your recipes that combine bannanas and cheese
Here's mine:
Toast some bread. Slice bananas on to it, cover the banana with cheese and pop it under the grill until the cheese melts.
Most people are quite dubious about this recipe when they hear it, but just about everyone who tries tasting it really quite likes it.
"When I grow up, I want to be a weirdo"
I don't know if its some kind of airport policy, an FAA thing, or something deliberate, but I've found available outlets mighty scarce at MSP, LGA, and SNA. If you can find them, they're often along walls of corridors where it's highly impractical to sit. If you *can* find seats near outlets, often the outlets are in use or the seats are taken by non-power consuming people (how *rude*!).
MSP has these "business centers" where you can (rent?) a cube-like space, but they're a million miles from the gate (at least *my* gate!).
I've largely given up on my AC adapter and just lug a couple of spare laptop batteries. 1 battery gets me through a DVD on the flight, one's enough for pre-flight wifi/itunes, and the third is power for wherever I end up. Sometimes the third ends up in checked luggage with the adapter if I know I won't need it.
Last year alt.coffee in NYC freaked out about power consumption. I don't know if it is still this way. It's a pretty good discussion on what the real costs are.i reless /2004-February/008140.html
http://lists.nycwireless.net/pipermail/nycw
www.bleepyou.com
The real issue with restaurants is not going to be electricity cost ... MAYBE a cent an hour per user ... but whether the additional time spent in the facility will result in an increase in purchases. For a restaurant to be profitable, they must "turn the tables". They also have to consider the legal liability. What if ... power fails, power damages your system, someone trips over the cord, your cord has bare wires and electrocutes someone ... DARN LAWYERS ... but more, DARNED PUBLIC.
Otherwise you might as well have LAN points next to the power sockets....
HALGot them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
Have a brief read of my white paper on 4G on this subject. Basic tenant: "Who cares what the access is - 3G, GSM, WiFi. I just want my public IP address HERE AND NOW, wherever and whenever. Operator beware - this is a buyers market." David
It's called a "GFCI" (ground fault circuit interrupter). They also prevent you from getting electrocuted.
They are supposed to prevent minor shocks, too. Last year while camping, I was plugging in some of those dumb xmas-type "camping" lights. One of the bulbs was broken and I was leaning on it (D'oh!). The lights were plugged into the camper, which was plugged into a long cord plugged into a GFCI outlet. The breaker tripped, but due to the capacitice in all the wire, I got the SHIT knocked out of me!
Restaurants definitely pay for their air.
The air you breathe is processed, filtered, temperature and humidity regulated. That costs money and customers are people who are willing to pay for "atmosphere" which usually does include special lighting.
They pay for water, for toilets, for square footage.
That gravity that's holding your ass to the seat, that's called "real estate". Underneath your fat ass is dirt and that is where the gravity comes from.
What's so far off the mark? Another poster noted that restaurants are in the service industry, not the food industry. He is exactly on target. Power is just another potential service that they can market just like any utility(service) company. Hell, they could even improve the power and advertise "uninterruptible" for a premium if they thought there was a market for it.
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
Um ... surely if you were trying to save power it would've been better to turn a light off rather than on?
SmylersThe "is this right or wrong" issue here isn't whether a business will let you, or whether it costs you extra, but whether you've obtained consent to use their power. If they provide it as part of their service (as some apparently do), then consent is implicit. If not, then if you haven't obtained their permission first, you are a thief. Plain and simple.
Any justification otherwise is simply an attempt to justify being a thief. It doesn't make it right, it just makes you more pathetic of a thief.
You could say that you would stick to places that do let you, but some places (especially independently owned shops) might not advertise this and so from those it is your duty to ask permission. If I was a shop owner and I saw you simply plugging in without asking, I'd make you stop. If I was asked first, I'd honestly consider it. I might charge you (because I can, and because it wasn't factored into my costs originally), but it wouldn't be much. A fair shop owner might post a notice "$0.25 surcharge per visit for use of outlets for laptops and other portable devices."
putfwd.com - 1GB Free file storage with a twist
The answer to the portable power problem is right in front of your nose (actually, on top of your head): make that tinfoil hat do double-duty!
Simply affix a few square feet of solar panelling to the top, tape a wire to the foil and stick the other end in your notebook/PDA/air pump for the blowup doll, and volia!
I have not had anyone complain when plugging in a laptop in any restaurant. I have had issues finding a socket though. Once I found it, they usually did not care if I used it. If someone buys something, it should just be part of the service. If someone just walks in JUST to plug in, well that's a different story.
I know what someone needs to invent....a safe and portable power strip. One that uses a retractable cord and maybe folds in the middle.
Gorkman
Make your public power outlets switched, and let the A/C switch be controlled by the server. (RS/232 or USB to a simple solenoid would do the trick). A user has to pay their WI-FI toll, get the WEP key, and login on battery power - then once logged in the server can switch on the A/C circuit to the wall power.
A "GFCI" is a ground fault circuit interrupter. A ground fault circuit interrupter is an inexpensive electrical device that, if installed in household branch circuits, could prevent over two-thirds of the approximately 300 electrocutions still occurring each year in and around the home. Installation of the device could also prevent thousands of burn and electric shock injuries each year.The GFCI is designed to protect people from severe or fatal electric shocks Because a GFCI detects ground faults, it can also prevent some electrical fires and reduce the severity of others by interrupting the flow of electric current.
In homes built to comply with the National Electrical Code (the Code), GFCI protection is required for most outdoor receptacles (since 1973), bathroom receptacle circuits (since 1975), garage wall outlets (since 1978), kitchen receptacles (since 1987), and all receptacles in crawl spaces and unfinished basements (since 1990).
Never trust a man wearing a coat and tie!
In India recently, I noticed a "Mobile Phone Charging Point" on the platform of a railway station - I was very impressed until I realised that this means they expect trains to be so late that there is some point to charging a phone while you wait...
When I first moved back to NYC, all my gear (including my wallplug charger) was packed in storage. So I would take a cab ride, and plug into the cigarette lighter. I'd call a "black car" (unmetered, charge by geographical zone) with my last juice, plug in, and ask for a route through the most congested traffic possible within a single zone. I usually got over 10min for $5, a ride to lunch, and at least a 75% recharge, good for a day or two.
--
make install -not war
Given most houses today have RCD's (Residual Current devices/detector) installed, you can bet public building do.
Toast some bread. Slice bananas on to it, cover the banana with cheese and pop it under the grill until the cheese melts.
;-)
"When I grow up, I want to be a weirdo"
Mission accomplished.
I own a Restaurant (http://www.schnackdog.com);
a) we offer wifi
b) we offer electrical connections
Some people use neither; some use just the wifi because they have nice laptops with big batteries and they don't lug their powercords with them. Other use both and that's ok. I want them in the store, ordering soda, fries, beer or just hanging out and making us look busy.
http://www.hawknest.com/
I agree, this makes a lot of sense. A nice coffee shop in Tokyo's crowded area of Shibuya has very high prices, maybe US$6-7 for a small cup of coffee or cappucino. This seems so silly, when you could buy it in the vending machine for less than 1/5 the price. But as my brother pointed out, the reason you pay so much here in that busy area isn't that this coffee is particularly good, but the fact that you get to sit down to drink it and have a table to work at, and this is such a crowded expensive place that businesses must pay a lot to rent their store. Coffee=rent is a pretty common view in this area, and people take it to the full extent; you can find people sitting in these coffee shops for 8 hours, one sip of cold coffee left in the cup in front of them.
are not charged according to the number of units used, but by the maximum amount of power they use during the billing period.
I had an uncle whose house (in a Cleveland suburb) was set to a similar billing plan. The house was all electric (the street didn't have natural gas lines at the time it was developed) so he had a device that measured the electricity load at any one time, and could shut the power to certain high energy appliances in order to reduce the load in a pre-determined sequence (for instance, first dryer, then refrigerator...et cetera.)
What goes around comes around.
Ceci
Sue them all. Shop owners must be losing millions every year from this theft.
MSM sees it too: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/06/technology/circu its/06powe.html?oref=login&8dpc
If she floats, she's a witch.
I gave them my SSN and credit card numbers, but I so love to read their stuff online!
There exists no way of exchanging information without making judgments. --Bene Gesserit Axiom
When I was traveling around Australia in 2002-2003, I would never even *think* of plugging my laptop into a power outlet. (or power point as they are known there). The only time where it was ok is if I had paid for a hostel room or a powered site at a caravan park. There were a few trendy coffeeshops in Sydney where this was ok though.
A few times initially I just plugged in and it was made *very* clear to me that I should have asked first and no, it wasn't ok even if I had asked....and this was in a library. A lot of times it will be ok, but if you are traveling in a foreign country, always ask first.
Eventually when traveling around the top end when I needed to do some power-intensive operation (copying mp3 CD's to my mp3 player), I would just offer the restaurant $2-3 for use of their power for an hour or so. No worries then.
Traveling by bike around Australia with 5 thinkpad batteries was a bit of science. I would have to wake up at 3am in a hostel just to swap the batteries in my laptop and then go back to sleep. Sometimes instead of camping out I'd have to get a motel room just so I could spend the night charging batteries.
I still don't take power for granted anymore, at least not after 1.5 years of planning my life around the need for a power outlet.
OK before anything, i agree 100% with you. I'm just adding to the example.
Cybercafes used to serve COFFEE for you. (now it's just the cyber, the coffee thing didn't work pretty well). If standard cafes are missing the fact that you're using a LAPTOP, they're missing potential clients by denying you access to their power outlets.
Really - what's so hard of asking for 50 cents for electricity use?
And regarding airports... well, you're probably going on a BUSINESS TRIP, aren't you? You wouldn't like to be on the plane without being able to use your laptop because you ran out of power.
These times productivity is the big word. If you're not productive (even on your plane), then the airlines aren't helping.
After all... THE CUSTOMER IS ALWAYS RIGHT.
I'd not call this Flamebait. It is a long-time valid complaint that I too wish Slashdot would address before any topic is posted. Today even my valid NYTimes account wasn't working and I had to re-login, which I don't do often enough to just remember the details. Real pain in the posterior.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
That's like charging you an extra hundred dollars because you filled up a second cart (trolly) at the grocery store.
We do have tiered pricing, it get's more expensive the more power you use based on user type, and they do have an option for charges based on peak/none peak usuage, but it's more to encourge solar/wind hook ins and conservation.
My local power co-op is billed for peak usage continuously, each day. They pass that onto any large business - anyone who can cause large peaks in the load, to encourage them to not cause peaks.
A power plant works best at 80-95% peak capacity (depending on the plant type and age). The ones that do best (efficiency, not related to capacity) take 2 weeks(!) to bring up to full power. So it is to the power companies advantage to use the same amount of power all day, with no dips or peaks. Anyone with large peaks mat peak time can expect to see a surcharge from the power company to deal with it, while those who peak at everyone Else's off time (overnight) get a discount.
Most of these posts have been from polite, courteous people. You guys are not the problem. I own a coffee house with free wifi, great drinks and what people tell me is great ambience and long hours. The problem has not been people plugging in; it has been people hogging the outlets. Here is a common scenario. Someone comes in, spends $1.40 on a cup of tea (I only do loose leaf here), then sits down in the best seat for 6 hours without buying anything else. We will have to turn away other people because this person won't budge. These people will even unplug lamps to plug their devices in.
I won't go into the details of costs, but suffice it to say that once you figure in the cost of the electricity (which is about 2x residential rates by the way), I lose money on this person before figuring in labor and overhead costs. Then there is the opportunity cost that is lost, too. Don't tell me to just raise my prices -- I couldn't raise my prices enough to make much of a difference here. I could raise my margins by lowering the quality of my products, but I am loathe to do that. Plus, one of my biggest competitive differences is my product quality.
So, I am more than open to solutions for this problem. I am increasing the seating density a bit to help reduce the impact of people like this. I grew up in Texas and I set up things so that you have elbow room -- a real rarity here in San Francisco. I've thought of expiring WIFI access after two hours, but that's going to require some software that I don't have. I can't think of a low-touch way to require minimum periodic purchases. It has to be low-touch because I only hire very nice, accomodating people and asking them to be time police is not going to work.
An interesting detail is that this problem only occurs when student traffic is heavy. Yeah, I understand that maybe students can't afford to be courteous, but I can't have 40% of my business hours be unprofitable. I am barely breaking even as it is.
I am not complaining. It is a pleasure to be your own boss and finding solutions to problems like this is really enjoyable. However, the attitude that "it's a cost of business, deal with it" is arrogant and condescending. In San Francisco, everything costs more for businesses -- taxes, insurance, permits, electricity, water, sewage, etc. Heck, taxes and insurance for my employees results in a surcharge of close to 25% of wages. That's not including what they pay. There are so many costs that are mandated or that you exert no control over (like a 35% increase in unemployment taxes), that you try your hardest to squeeze every tenth of a penny from anything you can.
BTW, my place is called Pearls and is in San Francisco. And you can plug in.
I guess courtesy is out of order at the good ol' US of A.
In the US it depends on the restaurant's business model. Some of them (fast food joints) go for the fast nickles and want turnover. Some of them (classic sit-down restaurants) go for the slow dimes, catering to people who want to meet over food, enjoy a meal at a more leisurely pace, etc. Some are happy to have you camp out there long-term, some arent (especially those that close between major meals for cleanup and redressing).
And of course some restaurant managers are clueless about what is good for their business and what is not.
What gets me are the ones that provide WiFi service but no outlets. B-(.
Also: In the US getting wiring done to code costs a bundle - and may not be possible in leased space. (There are downsides to division of effort into separate businesses.) So some are OK with it but you have to use the outlets that were there for vacuums and the like. You have to ask for a table near the outlet and if it's busy you're on battery.
(By the way: Shouldn't the last line of your sig be "find ~ -name 'base*' -exec chown you {} \;" ?)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
In the US there are code requirements for how circuits are laid out and wired, I'm sure it's the same in the UK.
For example, in the US for commerical buildings the lights and outlets are seperate.
Chances are very good that if you happened to short out an outlet somehow you'd only take 2-3 other outlets with you.
Though I suppose in a poorly laid out building, or one where expansion was done haphazardly, you run the risk of cutting power to a computer at the gate terminal or something...
But in general you'll likely only take out public outlets, nothing serious would happen...
We short out outlets at work all the time... the outlets in the cubes are mounted sideways so that the hot leg is on top... as a result, if a plug is loose in the outlet (sticking out 1/2" or so) and you kick the metal panel trim panel off (very easy to do), it falls on the hot leg. Since the metal panel is grounded it trips the breaker.
Solution is to make the damn metal panels stay in place, but they're snap in...
For reference, my portable computer's battery [...] would cost less than 0.6 cents. I will gladly pay 0.6 cents extra to use my laptop wherever I go, if asked for.
Think about how much power it takes to run an ELEVATOR. (Sorry, don't have it handy - and it varies a lot by type, too.)
Then about how much it takes to INSTALL AND MAINTAIN one.
Laptop recharges are a vanishingly small expense by comparison.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Man, that sucks.
We actually ATE at restauraunts.. Or talked to real people. Good old internet, removing social skills since 1969.
C'mon, I can't be the only one who saw this and had to read the parent post simply because I *thought* it said Yankerville, can I?
Hey Lady, I'm gonna charge my laptop! Yaay!
There's a friggin 24/7 coffee shop in MILWAUKEE, WISCONSIN but I cannot find *any* here in the goddamn SILICON VALLEY. There is something seriously wrong with this picture. :P
Some Silicon Valley cities require you to hire an off-duty cop as an armed guard if you want to be open after certain hours. (California's gun control has led to high crime rates and overnight stores are easy targets. The cities in question have used this as an excuse to set up a graft mechanism for their police officers.)
Others just zone things like that out of exisesence - so you need to be grandfathered or get a variance from the zoning board to go 24/7.
California runs the entertainment industry. The entertainment industry noticed that computer geeks keep late hours, jumped from that to the conclusion that Silicon Valley had more night life than the rest of the world, and promulgated that image.
I moved here from southeastern Michigan, which really DID have lots of stores open 24/7. (When I left there was a drugstore near my old place with a 24/7 MANNED AUTO PARTS counter! Rebuilt waterpumps at 3 AM if you needed 'em.) It was quite a shock to discover that Silicon Valley actually rolled up the streets at night.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I don't know about the majority, but I don't go to a restaurant to be entertained. Hospitality is a part of this, but entertainment? I don't expect my waiter to jump up and start dancing on a table with a tophat.
I'd qualify restaurants more as a convenience: For when one doesn't feel like cooking, can't (on the road with no stove, etc), or is incapable of cooking the level/type of food provided.
Maybe it's different in the USA. Most restaurants don't offer video games (fast food esp Macondalds etc which caters to kids does). Many do have music, but mostly it's pubs that have TV. Electricity... well I'm this can be expected of almost any indoor venue nowadays. It's not a convenience it's a requirement.
And yes, that laptop plug is an extra that costs. In a place like Starbucks you're not just paying $5.50 for a latte, you're also getting the option of seating space and other amenitites.
And those aren't even GFCI. Outlets near bar tables intended for customer use really should be GFCI, or on a GFCI breaker, although the NEC doesn't currently require it.
Hmmm. Around here flushing twice is often a courtesy. Flushing ones can still leaving a surprise for the next customer that's generally not good for the location's reputation... and the guys that don't flush at all well...
OT, I know...
That is weird, you have the same rug and floor that we do, although our walls are painted a nice taupe (or whatever it is called). You have great taste!
So what you're telling me is that a GFCI will probably stop a short circuiting device from electrocuting you or starting a fire (a concern with public access power sockets), but you can still overload it by plugging in 30 laptops or so into one circuit. Sounds to me like exactally the device to provide safety in public power outlets. Doesn't need to limit the power flow, per sae, it just needs to stop something bad from happening, like fire or death.
Knew there was an appropriate name for those kinds of sockets, too. For the life of me, I couldn't recall it. Thanks.
I live in Seattle where there's so much WiFi available (free or otherwise) that it would be foolish for any business not to provide outlets for their customers. In fact, I've noticed places ADDING outlets and power strips. There's one place in Belltown that has a plug at each table, at table height so you don't even have to stoop over to plug in.
The biggest problem that I can see some businesses having is that people DON'T WANT TO LEAVE their nice cushy spot next to an outlet, which can be off putting to other potential customers.
I frequently see people walk up to a coffeehouse, look through the window... see that there's nowhere (near a plug) to sit and walk away.
"Under the spreading chestnut tree, I sold you and you sold me."
One rude waitress seems to think people shouldn't plug in in her restaurant.
Everybody else on the damn planet seems to think it's fine.
Wow. Those newshounds at NYT continue to impress me.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Years ago I plugged my laptop into an airport plug for about 3 hours while waiting for a flight. I didn't feel quite right about "stealing" the power, so when I got home I thought I'd measure exactly how much it cost for me to run the laptop for 3 hours.
The only ammeter I had was limited to 10 Amps of DC current. I had to hook up a 12 volt battery through an inverter, through the adapter and into the laptop. I pulled the battery out of the laptop to make sure I wasn't measuring charging current or anything. The measurement came out just less than 9 watts.
Even ignoring any efficiency losses for the inverter and adapter, and choosing the most expensive prices for electricity around, I calculated I would have had to be stuck in that airport for more than 11 hours just to cost them a penny. If anyone had confronted me about it, I would have pulled out a penny and told them I was being generous and they could keep the change.
Granted laptops use more power these days with their fancier color displays and more powerful processors, but still actual power usage on these devices is even lower than the ratings printed on the labels.
We short out outlets at work all the time... the outlets in the cubes are mounted sideways so that the hot leg is on top... as a result, if a plug is loose in the outlet (sticking out 1/2" or so) and you kick the metal panel trim panel off (very easy to do), it falls on the hot leg. Since the metal panel is grounded it trips the breaker.
This can't really happen with UK plugs, by the time any metalwork of the Live conductor (or Neutral for that matter) is exposed, the pins will no longer be in contact with the matching contacts in the socket. Even with older plugs which tend to expose the live and neutral pins more, by the time you could easily make contact, the plug is probably about to fall out of the socket due to lack of grip from the contacts.
Actually it is rocket science...
Threat Advisory: Elevated - Significant Risk of Terrorist Attacks
1) You have Firefox as your primary browser, which has modified having Internet Explorer as the default browser. Would you like to restore the settings back to the default? (Highly recommended)
2) You have iTunes as your default MP3 player, circumventing the functionality of Windows Media Player. Your Windows Media Player will not perform correctly without making it the default music player. Would you like to restore the settings back to default? (Highly recommended)
This sig donated to Pater. Long live
You are probably right, but the line in my sig should work if you are neat about your home directory... talk about running the above command as root :)
Let's say my power hungry laptop eats 100W. It doesn't but let's say it did. Googling for some raw data on cost yields a range of 3 to 43 cents per kilowatt hour. That computes to 0.3 to 4.3 cents per hour of laptop use.
There is no business on this planet that wouldn't be willing to fork out 4.3 cents an hour to keep customers happy. Nothing to see here, please move on.
They also prevent you from getting electrocuted.
Sometimes. It detects a ground fault, e.g. a short between the power and the ground in the plug. However if you were to touch a live wire and the ground is through you and down into the real ground it would NOT trip the GFCI. (Disclaimer: IANAE)
The marginal cost of a kWh is less than 10c in most places in the US. Most notebooks are well below 100 W. So you're looking at at most 1 c/hr of use. I think the Starbucks or whatever shop's margin is well above that. Weren't we bashing them just the other day for over-priced coffee?
Lots of places (such as airports and train stations) have electric sockets in the floor, for running vacuum cleaners, floor buffers, and the like. I avail myself of these while traveling. Just find a chair near a socket, pry off the cover, and plug in.
"The advanced societies of the future will be driven by competing systems of psychopathology." -JG Ballard
A laptop user who plugs in his laptop for one hour, consuming 50 W of electricity (pretty high for a laptop actually), will use 0.05 kWh (kilo-Watt-hours). One kWh costs about 8 cents, so he uses less than 1/2 a cent of electricity during the hour.
How about closing the laptop and picking up a book? As an IT Manager I'm as connected as the next guy but with many plane trips under my belt I've given up on the idea of working every second. Maybe I'm getting old but now I never remove my notebook from it's bag on trips any more and I've found no appreciable change in the volume or quantity of work I get done in an average week. Way back when I had a security guard at an airport tell me to unplug my laptop from the wall because those outlets we for "maintenance people only". There's lots of good books out there that need reading.
Our car broke down on a trip. For 4 hours we were in a little gas station / restaurant frequented by truckers and hunters. I found a booth with a power outlet and managed to charge my Gmini XS200 the entire time we were there. I think the complementary coffee cost them more. They more than made the money back on what we bought and it kept me happy.
Everytime you look at porn a devil gets their horns.
In Mountain View, CA's Dana Street Roasting Company the proprieters have the policy of free WiFi ... as long as your battery can support you. This hits a good balance between letting you read Boingboing with your latte -- and getting your seat uncovered so they can stay profitable.
For a business to stay afloat they need to make a certain amount/per seat/per hour. If you order a water and sit for 10 hours, you're hurting their equation.
Back in the New Economy, people used to come and sit at the cafe for hours on end and basically turn the limited number of seats into a mobile office. Very negative proposition.
Nevertheless, customers should be able to work / chat on IM / etc. while enjoying the fine coffee-based beverages. Attracts more customers, attractive proposition.
If every customer were to adhere to a drink / 90 minutes then sitting there all day would be fine. Ultimately it's a lot like the open source community, if you respect the resources in "the commons" and respect the ownership / need to buy food of those involved, everyone can exist in harmony.
Hippie-tastically-yours
steven
I agree with the amenity concept, and see this as similar to the wifi hotspot concept.
I actually had this happen. I was working on some Java code with another student in my graduate program and Baker's Square would not let us plug in his laptop. So we left and went to Perkins who did let us do it.
It's pretty simple: Give me what I want/need and you will get my $$$.
Aren't there some restrictions or regulations on the sale of power?
© 2004 The SCO Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
I booked my family for a flight on Christmas Day on SouthWest Airlines from Orange County, CA to San Antonio, TX. (Xmas day is a great day to fly, BTW). At the airport a woman strung her Dell power cord from the flight attendents' booth across an aisle to her seat. The distance was roughly equal to the length of the cord, which meant the cord was suspended in mid-air as travellers with baggage and children struggled to find a place to wait for the plane.
If only airports didn't ban weapons!
That said, I myself am a heavy user of TMobile HotSpots and frequently will choose my lunch location based on proximity to a Starbucks. The second criteria is a place to plug in for power. Of course, I always ask first, but if power is not provided I, without raising so much as an eyebrow, go elsewhere. They don't want me, that's ok. I can deal with it.
Speaking of leeching: anyone have the reg-free link?
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
Not at all seats, though. Look for the cars with pairs of seats facing tables - there's an outlet underneath the table (which I didn't notice until my fourth ride during a recent visit).
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
IIRC, a GFCI only detects that the circuit is getting ground from somewhere else other than the neutral. Thus, if you grab the hot leg and "real" ground, the GFCI will determine that current going "out" the hot isn't making a curcuit with the "neutral" and trip the circuit.
However, if you take the hot and jam it in your mouth and the neutral and hold it in your hands the GFCI won't do jack and you're going to cook. It does not limit current like a fuse or breaker. It detects ground loops outside the hot/neutral circuit and stops them.
A quick test I suppose would be this. Take a paper clip, and visit your nearest 3 prong GFCI outlet. Short the circut from hot to ground first. The GFCI will trip the circuit. (Do this test first, otherwise your hands will be to burned to complete this scientific experiement!)
Now reset the circuit.
Next, take the same paper clip and short from hot to ground. Your paper clip will heat up and spark very nicely, at least until the breaker/fuse stops the current.
Ground Fault Circuit Interrupter. (yeah, it's probably misspelled too!)
Cheers,
Greg
Should have been...
Next, take the same paper clip and short from hot to neutral. Your paper clip will heat up and spark very nicely, at least until the breaker/fuse stops the current.
There was a very funny piece on NPR by Andrei Codrescu about this phenomenon in 2002 called "'Vampires' at the Airport". It's in the Archives:
o ry Id=860148
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?st
(RealPlayer format only).
The gates were arranged in a circle. In the center of the circle was a round platform with a ledge that could serve as a seat, and a circle of heavy-duty power outlets ringing the platform.
The sign overhead mentioned the "Free Wi-Fi Hot Spot," too.
As discount airlines go, JetBlue clearly knows when NOT to pinch pennies.
Power, wifi acess, etc... seem like (eventually) would become commodities, part of the COGS of retail. I imagine that at one time the same was said of toilet paper. Starbucks made an issue of the toilet paper that they supply being of recycled materials, etc. And Like the guy in Wisconsin, they saw the value to the customer of having these things available to them for free. When you look at actual costs of things like wifi, or power access, etc., it makes pretty good business sense to absorb these things as a means of attracting customres to buy their ACTUAL products. Can you imagine Starbucks having a quarter machine on their restrooms? I think not. Many hotel chains have started offering wifi, and they are certainly getting guests as a result of it.
What kind of cheese?
I mean this sounds like it might work with a good cheddar cheese. But it would probably suck with a gorgonzola or other sharp cheese.
I don't know if the Danish IC3 train was the first train to have power outlets at passenger seats. But even the first units delivered in 1989 did have those, both on business and monkey class.
I once did that. My car battery went out of power while doing some shopping. But I did have a battery charger and a 10 m cable in the car. Unfortunately, the only building within 10 meters was a bank (which I did not have any relations to). So I walked into the bank and asked if I could have some power for my car. No problem. I guess you could say I was being charged without being charged...
They don't bat an eye at helping yourself to serviettes or sugar...
I've worked at and eaten in restaurants (mainly the fast food types) where they care a great deal about how many little packets you get/take. One place I worked for kept all the condiments behind the counter and customers had ask for them. The employees were given guidelines as to how many ketchup packets per order of french fries, etc., we could give out.
Some of these place's profit margins are so small that every penny matters to them, unfortunately.
Sig cancelled due to lack of interest
What kind of braindead beancounter decided that this was a good idea? My "quality of life" in this terminal is being lowered because (as jlehtira pointed out above) they didn't want to pony up the $0.01 to let me avoid fun things like having to stare at my screen accreting photons and compulsively watching my battery meter slowly trickle down.
Thank you DFW, thank you American Airlines, thank you for making my travel experience that much worse (let's not talk about the connection I missed last night because AA had us sitting on the tarmac for 45 minutes after landing waiting for a f'in gate!) because you wanted to save a penny. Of course, due to the high quality experience that I've had here I'll be flying United next time and buying that magazine, lunch and delicious java chip frappuccino in their Chicago, Denver or SFO hubs where you can plug into any goddamn wall outlet in the airport and it works.
Hey, let's do some fun math. DFW handles about 5M passengers per month. Let's say 10% of them plug in to "leech" power and each one stays plugged in for an hour at .6 cents per hour per passenger. That's a whopping $36,000 per year lost to leeches!!!!! How will they possibly absorb that kind of cost with naught but $4 bottles of water and $7 ham sandwiches to serve as a basis for revenue in the terminals?
Hey DFW, stick a fricken crowbar in your wallet and pony up, 100k+ mile fliers like myself are paying attention.
Andrei Codrescu wrote a really cute essay about this phenomenon in 2002; it was picked up for US National Public Radio's "All Things Considered" program.
It seems the truth would be that the sole purpose of women at a strip club is to provide sex. That is the reason the place exists, to turn people on with displays of sexually suggestive dancing, etc.
The sole purpose of women at a strip club is to provide sex. Haven't been to one before?
Actually, that is quite wrong. Nearly all electrical power systems we encounter in our daily lives carry current in a two wire circuit. If everything is operating properly, the current in one wire will exactly equal the current flowing in the opposite direction in the other wire. The GFCI device constantly measures these two currents and compares them.
If, however, any of that current finds an alternate path - perhaps through a hair dryer that has been dropped into a bath tub - the current in each wire will be different. This imbalance causes the GFCI device to trip. Note that if the current flows from one power conductor, through you, and back into the other power conductor, you will still be electrocuted.
Yea, I really get pissed when the theater doesn't have an outlet that I can plug my camcorder into.
Cheddar is a sharp cheese. Guess that's what you get for trying to get all technical about cheeses... =P
1: A longer reach... Between the extension cord and the laptop's cord, I could almost always find a seat 'close' enough at airports etc.
2: No need to deal with the plug count rule. I can power one or two of my own units and still have room to feed someone else. If all the plugs are full, I can still often negotiate to stick my cord in the stack (and add a spare plug to the pool)
Cell phones, on the other hand are an entirely different matter. Makers go so much for small size that you can barely get a full day's use out of their batteries if you do any talking. I solved that by hunting down a used battery, ripping it apart and putting in a voltage regulator and a long spiral cord. The other end gets a 12V car accessory plug that goes into a side carry pouch with a (5 pound) jell cell. With my old motorola analog cell phone, I calculated 2 days standy plus 8 hours talk time.
Digital phones take so little power that I could probably go more than a week withoug recharging (I usually do nightly).
However, I haven't even tried to take that kit on a flight since 9/11. They worried about my jeweler screwdriver, so I figure they'd have a coronary over a 5 pound X-ray proof (lead acid Jell cells) brick with wires sticking out of it.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
Cheddar is what I normally have with it. Though i've also used Edam and Jarlsberg in the past.
"When I grow up, I want to be a weirdo"
Bananas n' cheese, hmmm, now why do I suspect that this is a British innovation?
"OH SHIT, THERE'S A HORSE IN THE HOSPITAL!"
the same as the difference between American 'English' and British 'English'.
All other things being equal, yes, *IF* a geek has availed himself of this information before buying the ticket, AND the layover and total flight time are about the same, then BWI, which has his service, wins. But all other things rarely are equal. What percentage of the (not terribly big) population of Wi-Fi users will choose a laptop-friendly layover of 3 hours over a non-friendly 2-hour one? If your life is your blog and you need that time, you might take that longer layover, but a laptop user who just wants to kill time probably isn't going to use that as the key factor in how he flies.
one hundred twenty
is just enough characters
to write a haiku
(Grin) It's a sad day when I have to add worring about slashdot flashmobs hitting one of my favorate haunts...
Hehe, actually i'm happy this came out here, if more people knew about places like this, the percieved demand would be greater and
more 24x7 shops would open up all over the Silicon valley.
Its not users who are broken, it's systems not taking account their likely behaviour and fixing it technically.
I'll have to check the place out one of these days. ;)
Deadly allergic reactions?! I hear that constantly, but have never... not fucking once... seen effects. If you're allergic, show me some hives, some irregular heartbeat, some labored breathing, nausea, fucking something! Watery eyes are not an effect, I get them too. Neither is the room feeling "stuffy".
Instead, it's "excuse me, I'm allergic to cigarettes". "well, what do they do to you?" "They stink, and I, I, I...."
It appears the symptoms are likely the result of the stick up your ass about other people's habits/ problems. Removeth the log from thine own eye to keep it from watering, beee-otch.