First, the idea that those ancient civilizations don't have to replace infrastructure is stupid. And people keep ignoring the elephant in the room - greed. Greedy capitalists have driven costs so high that wages are high, too. Countries in Asia which have kept greed under control have a much lower cost of living and proportionally lower wages. This allows them to undercut your prices every time. Fix the cost of living imbalance and the trade problems will melt away.
It's worse than that. The energy released by burning hydrogen is less than the energy used to electrolyte it. Rather than take a loss in the conversion, just use that electricity to run an electric car. No need for fancy electrolysis cells ans high pressure hydrogen storage.
Most people can not speed read; it's just not possible for them and they'll never be able to understand what it means. For the fortunate ones - it's not skimming or skipping words or anything like that, it's reading - just faster. I get all the meaning and pleasure from a book, it just takes more books to keep me happy.
If you're running a finger down the page, using cards, or applying any other tricks, you're faking it. And if you can't do it, that's OK. The important thing is being able and willing to read.
And if it's on a BlackBerry, you can't operate the app without several attempts at each button push.
I've had too much experience with those things; I supported them for a major corporation (ugh) and even had one of my own. After a month or so I was ready to trash it; my wife insisted that it was a nice phone and I should give it to her instead. So I did; a month later she was ready to stomp on it.
The only thing they ever had going for them was email - and that required a BES (or BIS) server. Now that other phones do email (very well, actually) there's no reason to put up with that RIM nonsense any longer. They've been circling the drain for a while now and their last hurrah isn't a wise investment. Take it from someone who knows; just say no and get some other kind of phone. You'll be glad you did
I've got a laptop, tablet, and a desktop computer. I've been going back and forth for a couple of years now and I've discovered what matters to me and how I use them
I use the tablet a lot - and the desktop gets used a lot, too. The laptop just sits around collecting dust; it's been powered up once in the last three months - and only because I needed a file from it.
Those who recommend a Chromebook - they don't consider that there will be times when you have no internet connectivity and want to use your tablet. This, and the availability of tablet apps that meet your needs will point your way to the correct tablet device for you.
You might not be aware that fluorescent bulbs (including CFLs) are gas discharge lamps, also. They're low pressure mercury vapor lamps with a phosphor on the inside of the glass to convert the hard ultraviolet from the mercury arc to "fluorescent light".
Parkers are great - but you've got to have a fairly fresh refill to avoid blobbing. Black ink behaves better than the blue does. You can get gel refills for them, too. Their textured ball gets good traction on slick paper and they handle nicely.
You can go with the cheap plastic bodied Parker pens from the office supply superstore, or search out the better grades. The more expensive versions have a nice snug fit between the point and the barrel which gives neater lines, and the additional weight helps them handle better.
My personal choice is the Ciselle style; very nice. Only problem is that you can't set it down and walk away from it; it's liable to walk off while you back is turned. Try one of these on good paper (like a Moleskine notebook) and you'll be well pleased.
You can't imagine how ridiculous this hyperventilating over a miserable tropical storm appears. I live on a tropical island and we have an average of 28 of these storms come our way every year.
Clear the loose items from your yard and put them indoors; lawn furniture, BBQ, garbage cans, etc. That's easier than chasing them down later. And be prepared for some flooding in low lying areas. If you live in one of those low lying areas, consider moving to higher ground.
And if you can't deal with a tropical storm, don't live on the coast. They can be inconvenient, but they're also infrequent. Pop open a cold one and watch nature's show. When it's over, clean up the mess and go on with your life. This isn't a crisis, it's just another day on earth.
And never saw the problem of third-party driver support mentioned. I do some audio work, and have a high-end digital audio PCI card installed. The company that made it was "acquired" a couple of times and this product is no longer even remembered by the current owners.
The last OS that they had working drivers for was XP - and it took a while for those to come out.
To upgrade would require that I replace this audio card - it cost over $1200 when it was new and there are NO new replacements. Without a driver, it'd be useless. So I'm sticking with XP.
The latest and greatest from MS would remove needed functionality and replace it with useless eye candy. No thanks.
So how many hours have you spent staring at a TV screen in your life? Or a computer screen?
The whole "self lit screens hurt your eyes" meme was thought up by companies like Amazon who didn't have a self lit screen to sell
You may have various reasons for preferring a specific device, but if you're going to trot out that tired "self lit hurts" nonsense, how about citing some research that backs up that assertion?
The cost of living in Singapore is very high. Incredibly high, in fact. And while the laws are reasonable, they're quite different from what the European / US people live under and seemingly minor infractions can have significant penalties
If their risk analysis is as good as the ones being touted here, they're in real trouble
I retired to a tropical island a few years back and I'm quite familiar with what a hurricane (we call them typhoons) can do. The winds can be quite destructive, but the real damage comes from the rain. Flooding of near biblical proportion is quite possible.
Altitude isn't going to prevent flooding and unless the building is watertight, the servers are going to drown. Even if it is, those diesel generators - how well do you think they'll work when they're underwater?
When these storms come through, all you can reasonably do is get out of the way and check back later to see what's left. Imagine the most sturdy and secure datacenter around. Now imagine it with 10 feet of flood water on the property. Not so safe and secure, is it?
Want to see what that can look like? Google "quezon city flooding 2012" - that's where I live and it's still going on right now.
That's the best answer out of a whole bunch of bad ones.
Stiction? Yes, this was a problem once upon a time. If you have a hard drive that old that just quit working, that's amazing. Go ahead and bang on it. But if your hard drive was made within the last 15 years - this isn't the problem, don't bother.
Replace the circuit board with one from an identical drive? This works for drives that have controller failures; Maxtor had an issue with a chip on the controller board about 8 years ago; the chip (made by Philips) would fail - usually burning a hole in the top of the chip as it died. I worked in a large corporate IT department, and we saved data from dozens of dead Maxtor drives with controller board swaps. That was an isolated incident; the chances of a hard drive controller board failing these days is somewhere between zip and zero.
The real killer of hard drives today is due to the embedded servo technology they use - there's a servo track written to the platter that the drive uses to find the tracks and sectors; if a write error (usually due to a bug in the drive's firmware that only shows up in edge cases) causes the servo track to be corrupted, the drive becomes totally unreadable. This is unrepairable; even by the data recovery companies.
If the data is valuable - you should have been making backups. If you didn't, data recovery services *may* be able to recover some but probably not all of it. Watch out for the charlatans, though - some big name drive recovery companies just give it a half-hearted try and bill you for their failures. And be aware that a competent drive recovery service will charge you thousands of dollars to recover the data - and they'll earn every penny. There are techniques for reading drive platters, but they require clean rooms, electron microscopes, and a high level of knowledge and skill.
If it's your personal hard drive, then go ahead and futz around with it trying to recover some data; you've got nothing to lose. Whatever you had on there doesn't justify the price of recovery. If it's a drive in a corporate environment with critical data - then it may be worth paying for recovery. Don't mess with it first, give the recovery service the drive untouched so they'll have the best chance to save the data. And if recovering your data is any concern at all - back up your data. Do it regularly. The question of hard drive failure is not "if", it's "when".
They could get a clue. You've listed a whole laundry list of their idea of what the "active" web should be. Executables that your browser automatically downloads and runs on your machine.
Any competent security person could tell you what a bad idea that was - but they did it, and protected it with stupid "secret is secure" trivia. Now your boxes are subject to all kinds of attacks, and that list you gave is the favorite vector. MS provided the way to get the blackhat executables onto people's machines, and the monoculture insured that they'd infect the maximum number of machines with just one simple hack.
Even Flame came in through Windows Update; another "autodownload, autoexecute" security hole that MS built in.
Skeptical of Microsoft? Yes, with very good reason. They've ignored every facet of security and the current flood of spam and hacks is directly traceable to their poor decisions.
Have they learned anything? No. They're busily repeating the same mistakes again and any one who cares can see that.
I'll third that. I've had my Ety 4ps for about four years now and they're great. Those folks who are happy with their $20 Walmart junk don't know what they're missing
Heck, speaker designers use the Ety 4 as their reference monitor. Yes, they're that good - better, in fact. Yes, the price is higher than what you'd get from the big box store - but once you've heard what good sound is really like you'll never go back
Yes, it's a PR stunt. HP is losing market share and income these days and they're looking for some positive buzz to prop it up.
And if it fails, they can blame it on their suppliers, extend the warranty and then deny the warranty claims. I remember the DV2000 / DV6000 fiasco and I'll never buy from HP again. They screwed me on that deal and I'm going to tell everyone I can to avoid their products
Here's a tip for the clueful: on those DV series laptops it was a combination of too small a heatsink and too little cooling that caused the Nvidia chip to desolder itself from the motherboard. It was a HP design problem and they blamed Nvida.
More to their shame, this failure was revealed early in the production run - and they looked at the warehouse full of laptops, thought about the fatal flaw in them - then decided to go ahead and sell them anyway. They KNEW they were defective and sold them. Then they played games with the unfortunate purchasers and denied their warranty claims for any old ridiculous reason. Me? They just hung up on me. Multiple times.
Never, ever again. They screwed me and thousands of other customers; I'm not going to give them a second chance.
Rather than parrot some trendy position or swap anecdotal information, get the facts before you decide.
Google for "essential amino acids" and "essential nutrients"; those are the things that you MUST eat to maintain your health.
It's possible to get everything you need from a strictly vegetarian diet - but it's very, very difficult. Deficiency disorders are no fun at all; know what you're doing.
There's a setting that disables in-app purchases - which you can password protect. Even if that's not set, you need to enter your iTunes password to authorize them.
If this guy failed to turn off in-app purchases AND gave his special snowflake his iTunes password, then she could run up a bill. Anyone see the problem here?
It's just another gold digger looking at Apple as a source of a big payday.
The political bullshit is getting pretty deep in here; I'll reply at the top level and maybe someone will learn something (I have hope).
There's a "situation" in the southern part of the Philippines; there's a large number of Muslims living there and they'd like to break free and form their own country. Of course, there's some terrorist action, too - the US has sent their best to oppose the terrorists and conduct a "hearts and minds" campaign. Show them that the US treats the people much better and they won't follow the Muslims, right?
This "JEEP" program is part of that; give those Mindano youths a good job and they won't be tempted to strap on some dynamite and call Allah's name as they detonate in a public place. Or that's the plan, anyway. You folks in the US are blissfully unaware of troops being deployed in the Philippines - but they're here.
I live here; in the northern part of the country where this sort of stuff doesn't happen. We don't really need help training call center workers; we're the biggest provider of call center services in the world.
Got that? It's to oppose the terrorists, but most of us in the Philippines don't care and don't want the US to interfere.
Sorry, but you're wrong. Yes, you can emigrate to the Philippines (it's very nice here). But you can't set up a call center or manage one; one of the cornerstone principles here is "no foreign ownership or control".
If you emigrate here and become a permanent resident AND acquire a work permit, then you could work at a call center. (Same deal Filipinos get in the US). But only Philippine citizens can own or control businesses or property.
It's a good thing; it's prevented foreign corporations from coming in and taking over the resources and markets.
TIP: don't ever assume that a foreign country works "just like America".
There's an unknown amount of leakage across dirty and cracked insulators, i2r losses at resistive connections, etc. They can't really tell in great detail how much they sell vs. how much they generate and determine anything from it.
What does catch their attention is a sudden significant change; if you're going to steal power, start very small and only ramp it up over a period of many months.
Slashdot Mirror
First, the idea that those ancient civilizations don't have to replace infrastructure is stupid. And people keep ignoring the elephant in the room - greed. Greedy capitalists have driven costs so high that wages are high, too. Countries in Asia which have kept greed under control have a much lower cost of living and proportionally lower wages. This allows them to undercut your prices every time. Fix the cost of living imbalance and the trade problems will melt away.
It's worse than that. The energy released by burning hydrogen is less than the energy used to electrolyte it. Rather than take a loss in the conversion, just use that electricity to run an electric car. No need for fancy electrolysis cells ans high pressure hydrogen storage.
Most people can not speed read; it's just not possible for them and they'll never be able to understand what it means. For the fortunate ones - it's not skimming or skipping words or anything like that, it's reading - just faster. I get all the meaning and pleasure from a book, it just takes more books to keep me happy. If you're running a finger down the page, using cards, or applying any other tricks, you're faking it. And if you can't do it, that's OK. The important thing is being able and willing to read.
Slow slide? You're there already. You've got everything that East Germany had except the wall, and your government is building it as fast as they can.
That applies to prosecutors, too. Consider this when you read these stories and you'll understand what seems not to make sense
And if it's on a BlackBerry, you can't operate the app without several attempts at each button push.
I've had too much experience with those things; I supported them for a major corporation (ugh) and even had one of my own. After a month or so I was ready to trash it; my wife insisted that it was a nice phone and I should give it to her instead. So I did; a month later she was ready to stomp on it.
The only thing they ever had going for them was email - and that required a BES (or BIS) server. Now that other phones do email (very well, actually) there's no reason to put up with that RIM nonsense any longer. They've been circling the drain for a while now and their last hurrah isn't a wise investment. Take it from someone who knows; just say no and get some other kind of phone. You'll be glad you did
I've got a laptop, tablet, and a desktop computer. I've been going back and forth for a couple of years now and I've discovered what matters to me and how I use them
I use the tablet a lot - and the desktop gets used a lot, too. The laptop just sits around collecting dust; it's been powered up once in the last three months - and only because I needed a file from it.
Those who recommend a Chromebook - they don't consider that there will be times when you have no internet connectivity and want to use your tablet. This, and the availability of tablet apps that meet your needs will point your way to the correct tablet device for you.
You might not be aware that fluorescent bulbs (including CFLs) are gas discharge lamps, also. They're low pressure mercury vapor lamps with a phosphor on the inside of the glass to convert the hard ultraviolet from the mercury arc to "fluorescent light".
Parkers are great - but you've got to have a fairly fresh refill to avoid blobbing. Black ink behaves better than the blue does. You can get gel refills for them, too. Their textured ball gets good traction on slick paper and they handle nicely.
You can go with the cheap plastic bodied Parker pens from the office supply superstore, or search out the better grades. The more expensive versions have a nice snug fit between the point and the barrel which gives neater lines, and the additional weight helps them handle better.
My personal choice is the Ciselle style; very nice. Only problem is that you can't set it down and walk away from it; it's liable to walk off while you back is turned. Try one of these on good paper (like a Moleskine notebook) and you'll be well pleased.
You can't imagine how ridiculous this hyperventilating over a miserable tropical storm appears. I live on a tropical island and we have an average of 28 of these storms come our way every year.
Clear the loose items from your yard and put them indoors; lawn furniture, BBQ, garbage cans, etc. That's easier than chasing them down later. And be prepared for some flooding in low lying areas. If you live in one of those low lying areas, consider moving to higher ground.
And if you can't deal with a tropical storm, don't live on the coast. They can be inconvenient, but they're also infrequent. Pop open a cold one and watch nature's show. When it's over, clean up the mess and go on with your life. This isn't a crisis, it's just another day on earth.
You might be surprised to learn that sugar is used in soft drinks everywhere in the world - except for the US, where HFCS is used instead.
And never saw the problem of third-party driver support mentioned. I do some audio work, and have a high-end digital audio PCI card installed. The company that made it was "acquired" a couple of times and this product is no longer even remembered by the current owners.
The last OS that they had working drivers for was XP - and it took a while for those to come out.
To upgrade would require that I replace this audio card - it cost over $1200 when it was new and there are NO new replacements. Without a driver, it'd be useless. So I'm sticking with XP.
The latest and greatest from MS would remove needed functionality and replace it with useless eye candy. No thanks.
So how many hours have you spent staring at a TV screen in your life? Or a computer screen?
The whole "self lit screens hurt your eyes" meme was thought up by companies like Amazon who didn't have a self lit screen to sell
You may have various reasons for preferring a specific device, but if you're going to trot out that tired "self lit hurts" nonsense, how about citing some research that backs up that assertion?
The cost of living in Singapore is very high. Incredibly high, in fact. And while the laws are reasonable, they're quite different from what the European / US people live under and seemingly minor infractions can have significant penalties
That may well be true in Japan, but there's other countries in Asia that treat foreigners very, very well
If their risk analysis is as good as the ones being touted here, they're in real trouble
I retired to a tropical island a few years back and I'm quite familiar with what a hurricane (we call them typhoons) can do. The winds can be quite destructive, but the real damage comes from the rain. Flooding of near biblical proportion is quite possible.
Altitude isn't going to prevent flooding and unless the building is watertight, the servers are going to drown. Even if it is, those diesel generators - how well do you think they'll work when they're underwater?
When these storms come through, all you can reasonably do is get out of the way and check back later to see what's left. Imagine the most sturdy and secure datacenter around. Now imagine it with 10 feet of flood water on the property. Not so safe and secure, is it?
Want to see what that can look like? Google "quezon city flooding 2012" - that's where I live and it's still going on right now.
That's the best answer out of a whole bunch of bad ones.
Stiction? Yes, this was a problem once upon a time. If you have a hard drive that old that just quit working, that's amazing. Go ahead and bang on it. But if your hard drive was made within the last 15 years - this isn't the problem, don't bother.
Replace the circuit board with one from an identical drive? This works for drives that have controller failures; Maxtor had an issue with a chip on the controller board about 8 years ago; the chip (made by Philips) would fail - usually burning a hole in the top of the chip as it died. I worked in a large corporate IT department, and we saved data from dozens of dead Maxtor drives with controller board swaps. That was an isolated incident; the chances of a hard drive controller board failing these days is somewhere between zip and zero.
The real killer of hard drives today is due to the embedded servo technology they use - there's a servo track written to the platter that the drive uses to find the tracks and sectors; if a write error (usually due to a bug in the drive's firmware that only shows up in edge cases) causes the servo track to be corrupted, the drive becomes totally unreadable. This is unrepairable; even by the data recovery companies.
If the data is valuable - you should have been making backups. If you didn't, data recovery services *may* be able to recover some but probably not all of it. Watch out for the charlatans, though - some big name drive recovery companies just give it a half-hearted try and bill you for their failures. And be aware that a competent drive recovery service will charge you thousands of dollars to recover the data - and they'll earn every penny. There are techniques for reading drive platters, but they require clean rooms, electron microscopes, and a high level of knowledge and skill.
If it's your personal hard drive, then go ahead and futz around with it trying to recover some data; you've got nothing to lose. Whatever you had on there doesn't justify the price of recovery. If it's a drive in a corporate environment with critical data - then it may be worth paying for recovery. Don't mess with it first, give the recovery service the drive untouched so they'll have the best chance to save the data. And if recovering your data is any concern at all - back up your data. Do it regularly. The question of hard drive failure is not "if", it's "when".
They could get a clue. You've listed a whole laundry list of their idea of what the "active" web should be. Executables that your browser automatically downloads and runs on your machine.
Any competent security person could tell you what a bad idea that was - but they did it, and protected it with stupid "secret is secure" trivia. Now your boxes are subject to all kinds of attacks, and that list you gave is the favorite vector. MS provided the way to get the blackhat executables onto people's machines, and the monoculture insured that they'd infect the maximum number of machines with just one simple hack.
Even Flame came in through Windows Update; another "autodownload, autoexecute" security hole that MS built in.
Skeptical of Microsoft? Yes, with very good reason. They've ignored every facet of security and the current flood of spam and hacks is directly traceable to their poor decisions.
Have they learned anything? No. They're busily repeating the same mistakes again and any one who cares can see that.
I'll third that. I've had my Ety 4ps for about four years now and they're great. Those folks who are happy with their $20 Walmart junk don't know what they're missing
Heck, speaker designers use the Ety 4 as their reference monitor. Yes, they're that good - better, in fact. Yes, the price is higher than what you'd get from the big box store - but once you've heard what good sound is really like you'll never go back
Yes, it's a PR stunt. HP is losing market share and income these days and they're looking for some positive buzz to prop it up.
And if it fails, they can blame it on their suppliers, extend the warranty and then deny the warranty claims. I remember the DV2000 / DV6000 fiasco and I'll never buy from HP again. They screwed me on that deal and I'm going to tell everyone I can to avoid their products
Here's a tip for the clueful: on those DV series laptops it was a combination of too small a heatsink and too little cooling that caused the Nvidia chip to desolder itself from the motherboard. It was a HP design problem and they blamed Nvida.
More to their shame, this failure was revealed early in the production run - and they looked at the warehouse full of laptops, thought about the fatal flaw in them - then decided to go ahead and sell them anyway. They KNEW they were defective and sold them. Then they played games with the unfortunate purchasers and denied their warranty claims for any old ridiculous reason. Me? They just hung up on me. Multiple times.
Never, ever again. They screwed me and thousands of other customers; I'm not going to give them a second chance.
Rather than parrot some trendy position or swap anecdotal information, get the facts before you decide.
Google for "essential amino acids" and "essential nutrients"; those are the things that you MUST eat to maintain your health.
It's possible to get everything you need from a strictly vegetarian diet - but it's very, very difficult. Deficiency disorders are no fun at all; know what you're doing.
There's a setting that disables in-app purchases - which you can password protect. Even if that's not set, you need to enter your iTunes password to authorize them.
If this guy failed to turn off in-app purchases AND gave his special snowflake his iTunes password, then she could run up a bill. Anyone see the problem here?
It's just another gold digger looking at Apple as a source of a big payday.
The political bullshit is getting pretty deep in here; I'll reply at the top level and maybe someone will learn something (I have hope).
There's a "situation" in the southern part of the Philippines; there's a large number of Muslims living there and they'd like to break free and form their own country. Of course, there's some terrorist action, too - the US has sent their best to oppose the terrorists and conduct a "hearts and minds" campaign. Show them that the US treats the people much better and they won't follow the Muslims, right?
This "JEEP" program is part of that; give those Mindano youths a good job and they won't be tempted to strap on some dynamite and call Allah's name as they detonate in a public place. Or that's the plan, anyway. You folks in the US are blissfully unaware of troops being deployed in the Philippines - but they're here.
I live here; in the northern part of the country where this sort of stuff doesn't happen. We don't really need help training call center workers; we're the biggest provider of call center services in the world.
Got that? It's to oppose the terrorists, but most of us in the Philippines don't care and don't want the US to interfere.
Sorry, but you're wrong. Yes, you can emigrate to the Philippines (it's very nice here). But you can't set up a call center or manage one; one of the cornerstone principles here is "no foreign ownership or control".
If you emigrate here and become a permanent resident AND acquire a work permit, then you could work at a call center. (Same deal Filipinos get in the US). But only Philippine citizens can own or control businesses or property.
It's a good thing; it's prevented foreign corporations from coming in and taking over the resources and markets.
TIP: don't ever assume that a foreign country works "just like America".
There's an unknown amount of leakage across dirty and cracked insulators, i2r losses at resistive connections, etc. They can't really tell in great detail how much they sell vs. how much they generate and determine anything from it.
What does catch their attention is a sudden significant change; if you're going to steal power, start very small and only ramp it up over a period of many months.