Hey everyone. I'm a software engineer at Meraki (mentioned earlier in the thread by dotwaffle) and wanted to chime in and offer what I can. Our gear is commonly used at conferences, including the most recent LeWeb, a conference in Paris with about 2,000 attendees and VERY heavy WiFi use (social media types that are tweeting, blogging, posting photos and accessing WiFi from their cell phones and laptops). We covered a 12,000 square foot room and other areas without any downtime or customer complaints. This was a huge improvement over the 2008 conference, when poor WiFi topped the list of attendee complaints.
Dotwaffle posted a link to our blog post about LeWeb which is worth re-linking. That photo was taken when the speaker asked everyone to hold up their iPhone.
We used MR14 access points with channel spreading and band steering enabled. This allowed us to use the entire wireless spectrum and avoid congestion on a single frequency (both of these are 1-click options when configuring your network). I'm happy to answer any technical questions you might have, or you can visit our website to learn more.
Actually, the house we have is pretty prime in terms of location. Supermarket is a 5 minute walk away, which means no car when we're not buying a ton. My dad's office is within biking distance, so on nice days he can do that.
I appreciate your "back to the basics" approach, but I don't see the harm in modernization. There are lots of reasons to use computers, and only one way to power them. I don't suppose yours is powered by a hand crank?
Point taken, but I fear that you're comparing apples and oranges. While the logic in waiting to make a computer purchase is questionable, the logic in waiting for new solar technologies (in this case) could be legitimate.
In computing terms, this could be the equivalent of jumping from a Pentium 1 to a Pentium 4 in only a year or two.
I think it comes down to who you believe. The AC who started this line of discussion, or the twostudies that have been cited.
I guess I'm inclined to believe the panels pay themselves off eventually (the web sites say 2 years, our contractor says 12). I'm also inclined to believe that before the panels die their net environmental impact would be positive.
But from what others are saying, it looks like solar water, new appliances, and home insulation should take precedence.
Excuse me for jumping in, but allow me to play devil's advocate.
Perhaps the inconsistency is the price of energy the PV factory pays and the price of energy a homeowner pays. Let's throw out some (fake) numbers. The PV panel is built using 100kW and will produce 80kW over its lifetime. The factory, buying bulk energy from a nearby hydro-electric plant is charged 50cents per kW.
The company takes the panel and sells it to my dad. Our power comes from far-off nuclear, coal, and hydro plants and costs 1.00 per kW.
So you see, the PV factory cost is 100 *.5 = 50 dollars. The device, once installed on my house, saves us 80 * 1.00 = 80 dollars. So the company picks a price between 50 and 80 dollars and both parties benefit. In fact, this is even before government incentives.
So please correct me if I've made a mistake, but I believe it is theoretically possible for these panels to use more energy than they save.
Theory aside, I have no clue if this is actually the case. It seems people in this thread are divided.
Parent is very informative. I hope the mods take notice.
I wonder if other roof-installed solar applications suffer from the same drawbacks as you mentiod (solar water heaters, for instance).
Although, most water heaters today are powered by natural gas. It would probably be more dollar-efficient to reduce consumption of other combustables (oil, coal, etc.).
I thought of this too. With regard to getting a return, one might be able to sell them on the open market in 12 years. If enviro-groups continue buying credits at the current rate, supply will have shifted inward and the price will be higher.
Of course, then you're allowing companies to pollute again. But at least mother nature got a 12 year break.
This sounds like it works great for you, but a lot of people like to sit down at their couch and operate the controls by remote control. By refusing an abstraction you are limiting your television experience to sitting directly in front of your screen with a mouse and keyboard.
I see no problem with the MythTV abstraction. It's a clean front-end that works like Tivo in most respects (if you have a problem with Tivo, let's talk about that seperately). It just so happens to play DVDs and music as well. That is, instead of seeing a list of television shows, you also get a list of movies, music, etc.
People today are very familiar with windows, icons, menus, and pointers. You are absolutely correct. But people are also familiar with Tivo-like interfaces. The latter has the benefit of easy remote-control access. Not to mention average guys like me don't need to write complicated scripts like yours.
HUGE difference. And USC is NOT "Southern Cal". It drives me up the wall when people say that (sports announcers do it all the time).
"Cal" is a name given to UC Berkeley because it was the first university in California (1868). A person listing the UC's would say "UCSB, UCLA, UCSC, Cal, UCSD..."
University of Southern California was founded 12 years after UC Berkeley. Other than being in the same conference (Pac10), the schools have no affiliation with each other. USC is a private school. Cal is public.
I have to agree. All the networking guys I know love these things.
I've even talked to one guy who was using one at a remote radio tower which serviced an entire town of wireless users. He had a cheap solar panel hooked up to a little battery, both of which powered the soekris for years without problems.
Since everyone is skeptical, I would like to chime in and say that I'm having the exact same problem (same Dell monitor, too). Perhaps the addition of my specs will shed some light on the culprit.
So far I've tried two different video card setups (both MacOS X on a dual 1GHz g4 power mac). The first was the GeForce 4MX card that shipped with the computer. I was using analog output to analog monitor input. Thinking the lag could be the result of analog to digital conversion, I purchased the ATI Radeon 9000 with digital output.
I'm currently using the digital video output to digital monitor input. The problem is still there. Both cards are AGP, and I never experienced a lag before buying the Dell.
Hopefully this helps. If I've left out something important, let me know.
Not to refute your prediction, but on a recent trip to Turkey I too caught a movie. I also was surprised to see an intermission, but they didn't show any ads.
I think it's standard to have intermissions there. I doubt they stopped the film to show ads. They probably just took advantage of the break. Anybody more familiar with the region have extra insight?
As a fellow FreeBSD nerd, I gotta back up tempest303. In my experience with installing both *BSD and Linux, I've found that although *BSD might be less self-explanatory, this only results in more published documentation.
I pull my hair out every time I install a new copy of linux. What happens is they invest so much time making the installer easy that they neglect to account for people who don't understand. BSD distros assume users will have questions, and thus put out rockin' documentation. It's my personal preference, of course, but I take for granted that I'll have a problem at some point. I'd rather have the authors spending their time explaining the nuts and bolts, rather than hiding them.
Re:Or maybe....
on
G5 in an iMac
·
· Score: 4, Informative
You're kidding, right? Every G5 I've used was incredibly quiet, much more so than my G4 tower. Unless the side of the case is off and the fans turn to full, my impression of these computers has always been that they are very quiet.
Slashdot community, bear witness: two individuals settled a misunderstanding WITHOUT need of obscenities OR yelling. See what happens when you keep a level head?
Why, exactly, is this karma whoring? Unless I'm mistaken, which could be a possibility, he didn't copy any text from your URL. He was merely writing what he knew about the Kensington Studioboard.
I'm not trying to confrontational. I'm merely curious.
Slashdot Mirror
Hey everyone. I'm a software engineer at Meraki (mentioned earlier in the thread by dotwaffle) and wanted to chime in and offer what I can. Our gear is commonly used at conferences, including the most recent LeWeb, a conference in Paris with about 2,000 attendees and VERY heavy WiFi use (social media types that are tweeting, blogging, posting photos and accessing WiFi from their cell phones and laptops). We covered a 12,000 square foot room and other areas without any downtime or customer complaints. This was a huge improvement over the 2008 conference, when poor WiFi topped the list of attendee complaints.
Dotwaffle posted a link to our blog post about LeWeb which is worth re-linking. That photo was taken when the speaker asked everyone to hold up their iPhone.
We used MR14 access points with channel spreading and band steering enabled. This allowed us to use the entire wireless spectrum and avoid congestion on a single frequency (both of these are 1-click options when configuring your network). I'm happy to answer any technical questions you might have, or you can visit our website to learn more.
True, but what Microsoft adds in a service pack pales in comparison to what Apple adds in a major release. You really can't compare the two.
Actually, the house we have is pretty prime in terms of location. Supermarket is a 5 minute walk away, which means no car when we're not buying a ton. My dad's office is within biking distance, so on nice days he can do that.
I appreciate your "back to the basics" approach, but I don't see the harm in modernization. There are lots of reasons to use computers, and only one way to power them. I don't suppose yours is powered by a hand crank?
Point taken, but I fear that you're comparing apples and oranges. While the logic in waiting to make a computer purchase is questionable, the logic in waiting for new solar technologies (in this case) could be legitimate.
In computing terms, this could be the equivalent of jumping from a Pentium 1 to a Pentium 4 in only a year or two.
I think it comes down to who you believe. The AC who started this line of discussion, or the two studies that have been cited.
I guess I'm inclined to believe the panels pay themselves off eventually (the web sites say 2 years, our contractor says 12). I'm also inclined to believe that before the panels die their net environmental impact would be positive.
But from what others are saying, it looks like solar water, new appliances, and home insulation should take precedence.
Excuse me for jumping in, but allow me to play devil's advocate.
Perhaps the inconsistency is the price of energy the PV factory pays and the price of energy a homeowner pays. Let's throw out some (fake) numbers. The PV panel is built using 100kW and will produce 80kW over its lifetime. The factory, buying bulk energy from a nearby hydro-electric plant is charged 50cents per kW.
The company takes the panel and sells it to my dad. Our power comes from far-off nuclear, coal, and hydro plants and costs 1.00 per kW.
So you see, the PV factory cost is 100 * .5 = 50 dollars. The device, once installed on my house, saves us 80 * 1.00 = 80 dollars. So the company picks a price between 50 and 80 dollars and both parties benefit. In fact, this is even before government incentives.
So please correct me if I've made a mistake, but I believe it is theoretically possible for these panels to use more energy than they save.
Theory aside, I have no clue if this is actually the case. It seems people in this thread are divided.
Parent is very informative. I hope the mods take notice.
I wonder if other roof-installed solar applications suffer from the same drawbacks as you mentiod (solar water heaters, for instance).
Although, most water heaters today are powered by natural gas. It would probably be more dollar-efficient to reduce consumption of other combustables (oil, coal, etc.).
I thought of this too. With regard to getting a return, one might be able to sell them on the open market in 12 years. If enviro-groups continue buying credits at the current rate, supply will have shifted inward and the price will be higher.
Of course, then you're allowing companies to pollute again. But at least mother nature got a 12 year break.
This sounds like it works great for you, but a lot of people like to sit down at their couch and operate the controls by remote control. By refusing an abstraction you are limiting your television experience to sitting directly in front of your screen with a mouse and keyboard.
I see no problem with the MythTV abstraction. It's a clean front-end that works like Tivo in most respects (if you have a problem with Tivo, let's talk about that seperately). It just so happens to play DVDs and music as well. That is, instead of seeing a list of television shows, you also get a list of movies, music, etc.
People today are very familiar with windows, icons, menus, and pointers. You are absolutely correct. But people are also familiar with Tivo-like interfaces. The latter has the benefit of easy remote-control access. Not to mention average guys like me don't need to write complicated scripts like yours.
HUGE difference. And USC is NOT "Southern Cal". It drives me up the wall when people say that (sports announcers do it all the time).
"Cal" is a name given to UC Berkeley because it was the first university in California (1868). A person listing the UC's would say "UCSB, UCLA, UCSC, Cal, UCSD..."
University of Southern California was founded 12 years after UC Berkeley. Other than being in the same conference (Pac10), the schools have no affiliation with each other. USC is a private school. Cal is public.
Same success here. Crashes as soon as it opens. I saved a crash report for the developers.
Me too. I live in Berkeley, about a mile away from the border. It would be nice to have wifi when I take the bus to Safeway.
I have to agree. All the networking guys I know love these things.
I've even talked to one guy who was using one at a remote radio tower which serviced an entire town of wireless users. He had a cheap solar panel hooked up to a little battery, both of which powered the soekris for years without problems.
I've run the mouse directly from the CPU. In the past I've run it from the display, but I notice no difference in performance either way.
I'm working on a video like the other fellow had. The problem is I don't have a camera.
Since everyone is skeptical, I would like to chime in and say that I'm having the exact same problem (same Dell monitor, too). Perhaps the addition of my specs will shed some light on the culprit.
So far I've tried two different video card setups (both MacOS X on a dual 1GHz g4 power mac). The first was the GeForce 4MX card that shipped with the computer. I was using analog output to analog monitor input. Thinking the lag could be the result of analog to digital conversion, I purchased the ATI Radeon 9000 with digital output.
I'm currently using the digital video output to digital monitor input. The problem is still there. Both cards are AGP, and I never experienced a lag before buying the Dell.
Hopefully this helps. If I've left out something important, let me know.
You're right. I forgot all about it.
Smoking has been called the "national sport" of the Turks. That's exactly what the break is for.
Not to refute your prediction, but on a recent trip to Turkey I too caught a movie. I also was surprised to see an intermission, but they didn't show any ads.
I think it's standard to have intermissions there. I doubt they stopped the film to show ads. They probably just took advantage of the break. Anybody more familiar with the region have extra insight?
Just curious, did EarthLink indeed have a block on your IP? When you eventually talked to the right person, was it easy to get things fixed?
Do you have GarageBand installed? It'll only show on Auto Update if it's in the Applications folder.
As a fellow FreeBSD nerd, I gotta back up tempest303. In my experience with installing both *BSD and Linux, I've found that although *BSD might be less self-explanatory, this only results in more published documentation.
I pull my hair out every time I install a new copy of linux. What happens is they invest so much time making the installer easy that they neglect to account for people who don't understand. BSD distros assume users will have questions, and thus put out rockin' documentation. It's my personal preference, of course, but I take for granted that I'll have a problem at some point. I'd rather have the authors spending their time explaining the nuts and bolts, rather than hiding them.
You're kidding, right? Every G5 I've used was incredibly quiet, much more so than my G4 tower. Unless the side of the case is off and the fans turn to full, my impression of these computers has always been that they are very quiet.
Oh! Gotcha. Thanks for clearing things up.
Slashdot community, bear witness: two individuals settled a misunderstanding WITHOUT need of obscenities OR yelling. See what happens when you keep a level head?
Why, exactly, is this karma whoring? Unless I'm mistaken, which could be a possibility, he didn't copy any text from your URL. He was merely writing what he knew about the Kensington Studioboard.
I'm not trying to confrontational. I'm merely curious.
Lemme help you out. First of all, SlickDeals is selling it for 225, not 255. There's a direct link to the deal, which uses an anchor.
No, I'm not affiliated with slickdeals or target. I just think it's cool that an EDU-priced deal is available to the masses.
I'll see your GHz and raise you a quarter.