What do you mean the whole planet? Is that like "pave the earth" but with solar panels?
Whatever the purchaser wants. If a homeowner in the United States wants his panels on the roof, he can have it. If a land owner in Gobi desert wants panels installed at a dry salt lake, he is welcome. His land - his decision.
Do you plan on closing Microsoft down after you buy it?
No. First, I will just open-source the whole Windows thing:-) and then I will fire people who foisted Vista upon us. The rest will be branded on their foreheads with RMS and Linus's profiles, and tasked to create a complete and 100% working Win32 API for Linux.
IANAAE either, but I read about them in a book; anyhow, none of your (1) and (2) applies. First of all, the proposed "new" engine is not one engine but two very well known and used engines. One is a chemical rocket that oxidizes (burns) the fuel, and the released chemical energy accelerates the molecules of gas and propels the vehicle. Another is an ion drive where an external energy source is used to accelerate molecules of gas. Since this external energy is solar batteries, you can accelerate a molecule to a very high speed, and so get a lot of bang from a given quantity of the reaction mass.
Modern satellites are inserted into orbit using kerosene or hydrogen or hydrazine, with some oxidizer (liquid oxygen for example.) These fuels contain both the energy and the reaction mass, and require nothing but a nozzle and a few pumps to work, and they are very powerful.
Once in the orbit, many satellites can be moved a little using a very limited amount of fuel that is stored in the satellite, and once used up the fuel can't be replenished. Sometimes it may be just compressed gas. It would be very useful to replace these with ion engines; the only trouble with them is that it will take a year to move a satellite from one orbit to another, since the thrust of an ion engine is measured in grams, and typically satellites weigh a ton. Try pushing your car with a feather, gently:-)
Ion engines are efficient because of throwing your precious reaction mass away at low speed it accelerates individual molecules to a very high speed, and saves the reaction mass for future use. The energy for this is provided by an external source; typically, only nuclear sources are sufficiently powerful to provide a reasonable thrust, but of course a solar panel will do as well, if you have plenty of time.
Well, didn't the voyager spacecrafts have solar power too?
There is very little sunlight where Voyager probes were supposed to go:
Voyager probes are powered by three radioisotope thermoelectric generators, which have far outlasted their originally intended lifespan, and are now expected to continue to generate enough power to keep communicating with Earth until at least around the year 2020.
Sounds like a no-brainer to me : use conventional rocket engines to escape earth, and then switch to solar/ion drives.
Here is a real life scenario that occurred to me yesterday. A tech calls:
Tech: "How do I edit the revision number in the title block, in AutoCAD? I went through the book and I clicked on everything, no luck!"
Me: "attedit, then click next"
Tech: "That worked, thanks!"
You say my scenario is contrived. Not so. The tech had the book, about 150 pages, that came with his copy of AutoCAD. He didn't even need to look for it, he had it on his desk. But the book is dense, and it's not obvious where the answer may be. I knew the answer, and it took me less than 10 seconds to reply. Can he find the answer himself? Sure, given several hours. But that's ridiculous, compared to using someone's else knowledge that exists and is available.
I think the naysayers will be put in their place in the next month or so when the press release comes out
It will take more than a press release to convince techies. Something like, maybe, a working product?
I'm a NASD licensed former floor-trader [...] and C-Level Sales Shark, and I "get" the numbers
Whatever. On the other hand, you are not a businessman, because otherwise you would have immediately asked a very simple question. If your company happens to develop such a revolutionary solar panel (cheap, efficient or both), why to bother with homeowners at all? Just make solar panels for the whole planet, and then you can buy Microsoft with your spare change; the whole world will be at your service. Presidents of Kyocera and Sharp would be genuflecting in your lobby, and Secretary General of UN would be begging you to answer his calls (there is plenty of sunlight in Africa, and not much oil.) But no, instead of making the largest transnational corporations its customers CitizenRe picks... homeowners, for $deity's sake! That's ridiculous, assuming CitizenRe's claims -- but totally understandable if CitizenRe's directors are just setting up a pyramid, with homeowners as stupid pawns. That's because Sharp would not move a finger without doing due diligence (and they know how to do it right, working with the technology for decades) but your average Sally and Tom will gladly pay $500 for unsubstantiated claims; indeed, "a sucker is born every minute". Some of such su^H^Hpeople will even sign up as unpaid members of the pyramid in hope to profit. In your case it is absolutely laudable that you chose to set aside your super-profitable career as a trader, licensed and all, and instead spend your expensive time on this free work.
Why would you expect Citizenre to [do] ?
A demo of their solar panel - installed in a standard house - would do a lot. It's not like a black shiny panel will reveal its technology to watching journalists. A mass-produced lot, with a sticker price on it, would remove all the doubts. But as it stands, the company is all hat and no cattle. Anyone with half a brain (or more) should treat them as a scam unless proven otherwise.
IANAL, but the word "theft" probably has a very well defined legal meaning, and so the prosecution would be asked to present the $500,000,000 worth of loot confiscated from the accused, along with the police reports from the scene of theft. Can't do that with a moderate stack of DVD-Rs for which the accused has a store receipt (and who had never been at the "scene of the crime".)
In my opinion if people are able to, or motivated to bypass restrictive security, maybe both they and IT should be sacked. At the very least someone should look into the policies and see if it is costing the company money because IT went overboard.
The last sentence should read "As the very first action,..."
What is a legitimate reason to ban wireless in most environments?
The cost of maintaining a secure and functioning wireless infrastructure. Neither the hardware, nor the software resources (logical subnetting, routers etc.) is free. I can not imagine why a tax preparation office would need a 802.11 network if 20 people are sitting in front of their wired computers and execute only one officially approved software.
If you have to go through official channels to get things done, the chances are the network infrastructure is too brittle and is resulting in greatly slowing down the operation of regular business.
I don't quite understand what you are saying here - do you advocate vigilantism? The "official channels" usually exist for a reason, and you may be not aware of the side effects of a change that you are about to make on your own. Hunting down IP address collisions is such a fun in a large company!
Do It Yourself is wrong in a company where free support is available. Here is why.
Imagine that a common program A has an occasional printing "issue" that is documented in the manual, and a workaround is provided. There are 100 users of this program who either never encountered the bug, or who forgot how to use the workaround. What do you think is more practical?
Have each of 100 users dig up a manual (30 minutes), read it (30 minutes) and experiment with the instructions until they do it just right (10 minutes) - total time wasted 1 hour 10 minutes per user.
Have each of 100 users call the IT (1 minute) and follow precise and detailed instructions over the phone (1 minute), total time wasted 2 minutes.
The reason it's faster to call IT is because IT people know about the problem and either remember the solution, or have it handy. They also will walk the user through the settings, and if the user is confused they will explain more, or in a different way - or, if all else fails, they will remotely login and fix the problem, or just walk to your office. Either way it will be faster. Specialization and division of labor are great time savers.
If your personal use exceeds what is allowed on company's equipment then yes, you must carry two laptops because I don't want your pr0n getting backed up on company's long term storage when you return from the trip. It may also get you fired.
It's much easier than that. A manager can give a complex task to a stupid employee, wait a few weeks and fire him as unfit for the job, with all the documented proof in employee's own status reports.
He must have been a pretty solid employee, but since he's so close to the finish line and redeeming that pension promise we made, let's cook up a bullshit reason to fatten our bottom line, eh?
Extremely unlikely because of one simple reason: his immediate manager (who decides to fire) has all the trouble related to that, so he has every reason to refrain from unnecessary terminations; but that very manager is not paying anyone's pensions from his own pocket, and IBM's pockets are deep enough for that anyway.
In other words, if you are a lowly clerk at a supermarket, would you be cheating every customer for a few cents just because the supermarket company will be richer? I don't think so - too much pain, and zero gain.
I think the guy was fired not because of his age, and not even because of lost time; he was fired because he was a disrupting element in the department. This is the worst effect, and every manager would be triply correct to fire a troublemaker on the spot. You simply can't have such a person in a social structure.
The real question is what is written as company policy at IBM?
I don't know for a fact what IBM has, but IBM would have to be absolutely and unbelievably stupid, stupid beyond recognition even, to have even an implied policy to fire people once they reach certain age. Many, if not most, people learn all the time, and by the time they are ready to retire they know everything, experienced everything and are practically walking encyclopedias in their trade. Many of them are asked, begged, and forced to go to management because they know more than they themselves can use - so the company wants them to teach others. Other doggedly stay as senior engineers just because they like to play with things rather than with people.
But there is another, rather small, group of senior people - those who never wanted to learn, and as result never learned a thing. Their physical and mental faculties haven't become any better with age (assuming they had barely enough to hold onto the job,) and all they do is just warming their chairs and doing whatever they can, without any enthusiasm and without any initiative. Some may even believe that they are entitled to the job, and so they start working less and less, with every day believing in their infallibility more and more.
So it's quite believable that one of those mediocre but senior workers got daring enough to cross the line. IMO, he should have been fired earlier, just because of his performance (which I am sure was going down, fast). But in large companies like IBM there are layers of HR departments, and procedures for dealing with offenders. He was processed all the way, through the warnings to the termination. In a small company he'd be shown the door five minutes after his act was proven, and the manager (or the owner) would not even say a word besides "we do not require your services any longer, let me walk you to the door, and your personal things will be sent to your address."
Owners of hybrid cars know this issue very well, for many years. Some suggest just playing loud music to warn people, especially because on low speeds (such as in parking lots) many hybrids run on electrical power and the engine is stopped. In this mode the car is absolutely silent; you'd be producing more noise if you walk.
Since future cars are supposed to have low power collision avoidance radars, pedestrians can wear tiny receivers which will detect these radars at a good distance, and can beep to warn the wearer. I suspect only older [Koreans] will need these devices, though. Even today a good portion of a vehicle's noise comes from tires, and not from the engine - especially at low speeds. Modern non-hybrid cars are very quiet.
In Siberia, and generally in all northern climates, mosquitoes will gladly bite you even if you bathe in the repellent. The only protection is a fine mosquito net usually attached to the hat, unless you intend to stay indoors or in most polluted city blocks (LA also has a few areas of this type that kill anything alive.)
Another concern for anyone who wants to visit a Siberian forest in the summer is ticks, they often carry deadly diseases. So basically a well-prepared traveler has to wear thick jacket, thick pants, some serious boots, and a hat with a net - or risk catching something bad. That's why I mentioned that the summer is "mercifully short" - winter may be better in comparison.
Win* devices are all but nonexistent for many years, because WinModems just were not good enough when new modulation schemes entered the play. The real problem with "secret" devices is not just in the IP protection - it's usually just because there is no documentation on the device, and the new devices are being designed and sold already, with driver developers just walking up to hardware developers and asking how this and that works. After a year the device, and the driver, will be history in this modern consumer market.
Investing real money into solid documentation for a $10 product that is scheduled for a single factory run in qty. 10,000 (for example) just does not make any sense. Look at the peripherals - they appear and disappear so fast you can't even remember them all. Often there is just one or two driver coders in the company who write the driver, burn it onto a CD and jump onto next hot project. There is nobody to take care of documentation; often there is nobody to even think about Linux, it just is not economically possible.
He didn't pirate the product. The school bought computers with preloaded software, and nobody in the chain is willing to say who loaded the OS. It just magically came into being:-) But the teacher apparently did not install the OS because no premanufactured computer is sold dead, without an OS. He says he just plugged them in, and that's it: "when accused, I did not even know what software was loaded onto the machines." Most likely the computers were assembled in a small shop which did not bother with proper licensing, and then eventually sold to the school.
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Whatever the purchaser wants. If a homeowner in the United States wants his panels on the roof, he can have it. If a land owner in Gobi desert wants panels installed at a dry salt lake, he is welcome. His land - his decision.
Do you plan on closing Microsoft down after you buy it?
No. First, I will just open-source the whole Windows thing :-) and then I will fire people who foisted Vista upon us. The rest will be branded on their foreheads with RMS and Linus's profiles, and tasked to create a complete and 100% working Win32 API for Linux.
Modern satellites are inserted into orbit using kerosene or hydrogen or hydrazine, with some oxidizer (liquid oxygen for example.) These fuels contain both the energy and the reaction mass, and require nothing but a nozzle and a few pumps to work, and they are very powerful.
Once in the orbit, many satellites can be moved a little using a very limited amount of fuel that is stored in the satellite, and once used up the fuel can't be replenished. Sometimes it may be just compressed gas. It would be very useful to replace these with ion engines; the only trouble with them is that it will take a year to move a satellite from one orbit to another, since the thrust of an ion engine is measured in grams, and typically satellites weigh a ton. Try pushing your car with a feather, gently :-)
Ion engines are efficient because of throwing your precious reaction mass away at low speed it accelerates individual molecules to a very high speed, and saves the reaction mass for future use. The energy for this is provided by an external source; typically, only nuclear sources are sufficiently powerful to provide a reasonable thrust, but of course a solar panel will do as well, if you have plenty of time.
There is very little sunlight where Voyager probes were supposed to go:
Sounds like a no-brainer to me : use conventional rocket engines to escape earth, and then switch to solar/ion drives.
Indeed there is little novelty in this.
Tech: "How do I edit the revision number in the title block, in AutoCAD? I went through the book and I clicked on everything, no luck!"
Me: "attedit, then click next"
Tech: "That worked, thanks!"
You say my scenario is contrived. Not so. The tech had the book, about 150 pages, that came with his copy of AutoCAD. He didn't even need to look for it, he had it on his desk. But the book is dense, and it's not obvious where the answer may be. I knew the answer, and it took me less than 10 seconds to reply. Can he find the answer himself? Sure, given several hours. But that's ridiculous, compared to using someone's else knowledge that exists and is available.
It's just many nerds are good at math...
I signed up to be an associate
I think the naysayers will be put in their place in the next month or so when the press release comes out
It will take more than a press release to convince techies. Something like, maybe, a working product?
I'm a NASD licensed former floor-trader [...] and C-Level Sales Shark, and I "get" the numbers
Whatever. On the other hand, you are not a businessman, because otherwise you would have immediately asked a very simple question. If your company happens to develop such a revolutionary solar panel (cheap, efficient or both), why to bother with homeowners at all? Just make solar panels for the whole planet, and then you can buy Microsoft with your spare change; the whole world will be at your service. Presidents of Kyocera and Sharp would be genuflecting in your lobby, and Secretary General of UN would be begging you to answer his calls (there is plenty of sunlight in Africa, and not much oil.) But no, instead of making the largest transnational corporations its customers CitizenRe picks ... homeowners, for $deity's sake! That's ridiculous, assuming CitizenRe's claims -- but totally understandable if CitizenRe's directors are just setting up a pyramid, with homeowners as stupid pawns. That's because Sharp would not move a finger without doing due diligence (and they know how to do it right, working with the technology for decades) but your average Sally and Tom will gladly pay $500 for unsubstantiated claims; indeed, "a sucker is born every minute". Some of such su^H^Hpeople will even sign up as unpaid members of the pyramid in hope to profit. In your case it is absolutely laudable that you chose to set aside your super-profitable career as a trader, licensed and all, and instead spend your expensive time on this free work.
Why would you expect Citizenre to [do] ?
A demo of their solar panel - installed in a standard house - would do a lot. It's not like a black shiny panel will reveal its technology to watching journalists. A mass-produced lot, with a sticker price on it, would remove all the doubts. But as it stands, the company is all hat and no cattle. Anyone with half a brain (or more) should treat them as a scam unless proven otherwise.
Very true, especially if the app costs 20x more than the OS, and your business depends on its well-being.
I wonder if Hans Reiser shares your belief.
IANAL, but the word "theft" probably has a very well defined legal meaning, and so the prosecution would be asked to present the $500,000,000 worth of loot confiscated from the accused, along with the police reports from the scene of theft. Can't do that with a moderate stack of DVD-Rs for which the accused has a store receipt (and who had never been at the "scene of the crime".)
The last sentence should read "As the very first action, ..."
What is a legitimate reason to ban wireless in most environments?
The cost of maintaining a secure and functioning wireless infrastructure. Neither the hardware, nor the software resources (logical subnetting, routers etc.) is free. I can not imagine why a tax preparation office would need a 802.11 network if 20 people are sitting in front of their wired computers and execute only one officially approved software.
If you have to go through official channels to get things done, the chances are the network infrastructure is too brittle and is resulting in greatly slowing down the operation of regular business.
I don't quite understand what you are saying here - do you advocate vigilantism? The "official channels" usually exist for a reason, and you may be not aware of the side effects of a change that you are about to make on your own. Hunting down IP address collisions is such a fun in a large company!
I've been to places where you must leave your phone, camera and other personal electronics at the door.
Imagine that a common program A has an occasional printing "issue" that is documented in the manual, and a workaround is provided. There are 100 users of this program who either never encountered the bug, or who forgot how to use the workaround. What do you think is more practical?
The reason it's faster to call IT is because IT people know about the problem and either remember the solution, or have it handy. They also will walk the user through the settings, and if the user is confused they will explain more, or in a different way - or, if all else fails, they will remotely login and fix the problem, or just walk to your office. Either way it will be faster. Specialization and division of labor are great time savers.
If your personal use exceeds what is allowed on company's equipment then yes, you must carry two laptops because I don't want your pr0n getting backed up on company's long term storage when you return from the trip. It may also get you fired.
Why not to use a simple 120V AC wall charger?
99.9% of non-geeks are confused enough to believe that they are paid to use software applications, not to waste time installing them.
It's much easier than that. A manager can give a complex task to a stupid employee, wait a few weeks and fire him as unfit for the job, with all the documented proof in employee's own status reports.
Extremely unlikely because of one simple reason: his immediate manager (who decides to fire) has all the trouble related to that, so he has every reason to refrain from unnecessary terminations; but that very manager is not paying anyone's pensions from his own pocket, and IBM's pockets are deep enough for that anyway.
In other words, if you are a lowly clerk at a supermarket, would you be cheating every customer for a few cents just because the supermarket company will be richer? I don't think so - too much pain, and zero gain.
I think the guy was fired not because of his age, and not even because of lost time; he was fired because he was a disrupting element in the department. This is the worst effect, and every manager would be triply correct to fire a troublemaker on the spot. You simply can't have such a person in a social structure.
I don't know for a fact what IBM has, but IBM would have to be absolutely and unbelievably stupid, stupid beyond recognition even, to have even an implied policy to fire people once they reach certain age. Many, if not most, people learn all the time, and by the time they are ready to retire they know everything, experienced everything and are practically walking encyclopedias in their trade. Many of them are asked, begged, and forced to go to management because they know more than they themselves can use - so the company wants them to teach others. Other doggedly stay as senior engineers just because they like to play with things rather than with people.
But there is another, rather small, group of senior people - those who never wanted to learn, and as result never learned a thing. Their physical and mental faculties haven't become any better with age (assuming they had barely enough to hold onto the job,) and all they do is just warming their chairs and doing whatever they can, without any enthusiasm and without any initiative. Some may even believe that they are entitled to the job, and so they start working less and less, with every day believing in their infallibility more and more.
So it's quite believable that one of those mediocre but senior workers got daring enough to cross the line. IMO, he should have been fired earlier, just because of his performance (which I am sure was going down, fast). But in large companies like IBM there are layers of HR departments, and procedures for dealing with offenders. He was processed all the way, through the warnings to the termination. In a small company he'd be shown the door five minutes after his act was proven, and the manager (or the owner) would not even say a word besides "we do not require your services any longer, let me walk you to the door, and your personal things will be sent to your address."
Owners of hybrid cars know this issue very well, for many years. Some suggest just playing loud music to warn people, especially because on low speeds (such as in parking lots) many hybrids run on electrical power and the engine is stopped. In this mode the car is absolutely silent; you'd be producing more noise if you walk.
Since future cars are supposed to have low power collision avoidance radars, pedestrians can wear tiny receivers which will detect these radars at a good distance, and can beep to warn the wearer. I suspect only older [Koreans] will need these devices, though. Even today a good portion of a vehicle's noise comes from tires, and not from the engine - especially at low speeds. Modern non-hybrid cars are very quiet.
Another concern for anyone who wants to visit a Siberian forest in the summer is ticks, they often carry deadly diseases. So basically a well-prepared traveler has to wear thick jacket, thick pants, some serious boots, and a hat with a net - or risk catching something bad. That's why I mentioned that the summer is "mercifully short" - winter may be better in comparison.
Here is the semi-official advice.
Investing real money into solid documentation for a $10 product that is scheduled for a single factory run in qty. 10,000 (for example) just does not make any sense. Look at the peripherals - they appear and disappear so fast you can't even remember them all. Often there is just one or two driver coders in the company who write the driver, burn it onto a CD and jump onto next hot project. There is nobody to take care of documentation; often there is nobody to even think about Linux, it just is not economically possible.
It's just too cold there.
He didn't pirate the product. The school bought computers with preloaded software, and nobody in the chain is willing to say who loaded the OS. It just magically came into being :-) But the teacher apparently did not install the OS because no premanufactured computer is sold dead, without an OS. He says he just plugged them in, and that's it: "when accused, I did not even know what software was loaded onto the machines." Most likely the computers were assembled in a small shop which did not bother with proper licensing, and then eventually sold to the school.
Enough to become N+1 protons, recursively?