Why? What other processor(s) should have been used, and what would have been the benefits? No, not trolling. Just interested in what you said and would like more information.
The fundamental problem with Intel's instruction set architecture for the 8088/8086 line was that it was complex and intricate. To perform some instructions, the arguments had to be in very specific registers. Every register was, in some way or another, special purpose. The contemporary Motorola architecture, based on the 6800 and extended into the 68000 line, was completely the opposite: every register was, more-or-less, general purpose.
Writing a compiler for the Intel architecture is an exercise in masochism. Writing one for the Motorola architecture is one of simplicity and elegance. The Motorola instruction set documentation of the era was simple, clean, and definitive: it molded the way instruction sets were documented for generations afterward. The Intel documentation was difficult to understand at best.
One of the stark differences in the two instruction sets was the difference in instruction length variability. Intel instructions could be almost arbitrarily long. Motorola instructions were one or two bytes, with the one byte instructions being the ones most frequently used (inspired brilliance, that was). Also, for very related reasons, the number of cycles to execute an instruction was highly variable for Intel architectures, and more-or-less fixed for Motorola architectures.
I wrote assembly code for both architectures, back in the day. I hated, hated, hated writing for Intel chips, and breathed a sigh of relief whenever writing for Motorola chips. The inherent beauty in the Motorola instruction set created a certain kind of transparency making it possible --- seriously --- to see programmer intent when reading assembly code. With Intel chips, that was just not possible. With Motorola chips, you could reverse engineer code pretty easily; with Intel chips, it was painful.
The world would be a better place if IBM had selected Motorola.
Yes, I've acknowledged that - as I said the pathologist will have been presented with many many samples, turned into slides, looking for a few, if any, granulomata, which are tiny in size. I even said "Now do you start to see why a pathologist may miss it?" It is very hard, if not impossible, to scan every single slide in its entirity, for a granuloma. Fortunately this girl found it, when the pathologist didn't. Props to her,
Absolutely. Agreed.
We must remember that, unlike computers that are often highly deterministic, biology is often non-deterministic, and any given test has a certain rate of accuracy that is rarely 100%. Any given test especially includes ones where there's a human who must interpret observations. Unlike with computers, false positive and negative rates on biological tests are rarely zero.
Jessica had a false negative on an intestinal biopsy for a test that has a poor false negative rate. Not a big deal.
Also, recall that Jessica is far more highly motivated to look for long times at her slides than a pathologist is. A pathologist cannot afford to spend hours gazing at slides, but a high school student can. Not surprising at all, then, that a difficult-to-detect granuloma would, at some point in modern human history, be detecetd by a student and not a pathologist.
This is an interesting story because of initiative shown by the student, but not a very provocative one because of implied medical ineptitude.
While looking under a microscope at slides of her own intestinal tissue in her AP science class
That's what I wondered as well, until I read the article:
In her Advanced Placement high school science class, she was looking under the microscope at slides of her own intestinal tissue -- slides her pathologist had said were completely normal -- and spotted an area of inflamed tissue called a granuloma, a clear indication that she had Crohn's disease.
The logical inference is that some doctor had suspected Crohn's, ordered a biopsy (which, for intestinal tissue, is a non-trivial procedure) and had slides made up for pathological evaluation. Somehow young Jessica managed to get the slides, probably because she had good relationships with the doctor and pathologist on the case. She even had (or was able to discover) the email address of the pathologist so as to send him an image from the slide.
I'm thinking the story isn't quite one of such significant medical ineptitude as the article makes it out to be.
But, in any case, it really does help to read the article before asking questions that are answered in it.
For eight years her doctors were unable to diagnose Crohn's Disease? Shit, that's appalling. It's not exactly an obscure condition requiring House MD's staggering intellect, is it? It's been known about for at least a century, and while it's known to be difficult to diagnose with certainty, you'd think someone would have considered it... Still, kudos to her.
Yes, kudos to her.
I have a hard time believing that her doctors were unable to diagnose such a common, and often hereditary disease. I'm highly suspicious. The pathologist involved (read the article) must not have done a very good job --- but the fact that they took an intestinal biopsy means that Crohn's was suspected. Perhaps the real lesson here is to remember that nearly every medical test has a certain rate of accuracy, and the rate is rarely 100%.
I have two distance cousins with Crohn's, and it isn't quite as bad as the article makes it out to be, at least in their cases. It's often highly treatable with stomach acid inhibitors (prilosec and the like) and controlled diet.
Natural selection will take care of it eventually.
Just keep murdering birds with airplanes until all the ones that don't get out of the way of planes have been removed from the gene pool off.
Not a real quick fix, you understand, but probably incredibly effective!
And develop planes that are better suited to simply take a duck in the face at 150 knots. If as a result, the bird strike does no serious damage to the plane, then you can let my previous proposal work.
Brilliant!
Except that, let's see, birds have typical generational periods of 1-2 years, and there's been commercial aviation for about 100 years, heavy aviation for perhaps 50 years, so there's been plenty of time for natural selection already, and it hasn't worked.
And except that planes are already designed to take bird strikes. There are limits as to what can be done, engineering-wise, without making the planes unacceptably heavy or costly. Do you really, honestly, think that you can come up with a simple solution in 30 seconds that wasn't thought of already by legions of professional aeronautical engineers?
Bird strikes are a difficult problem. There is no easy, simple solution. One of the issues is that many bird strikes happen in open air, where airfield abatement procedures are irrelevant. Another of the issues is that birds quickly learn what is a real threat and what is a, forgive me, straw man, so that even at the airfield, abatement procedures lose their impact pretty quickly.
I am also an astronomer. On any given day, many tens of thousands of meteors enter our atmosphere. These were extensively studied using radio scatter off of meteor trains, and they have been used for meteor burst communications. Nearly all of these burn up in the atmosphere before hitting the earth. Common sense tells you that if thousands of these fell to earth each hour, then we'd all have holes in our roofs.
I agree that a meteor could have hit flight 447, but it is extremely unlikely. What much more likely event could have caused the 6 second burst of light? The same thing that brought down Flight 800: an explosion. The two most likely sources of an explosion? The fuel tank (as in flight 800), or a bomb.
Anecdotes are not data, but I've never seen an airplane crash, and yet I've seen two fireball meteors (those are the ones that are big enough to make it well into the atmosphere and leave smoke trails), one daytime, one nighttime, both in the LA basin. And I've never seen a bomb explode (that I didn't make as a kid, I mean). Bombs are pretty rare. Meteors are quite common. How common? You can buy them on eBay for some dollars per ounce. The vast majority burn up in the atmosphere, but the larger ones do hit the earth pretty frequently. Most of the meteorites (the ones that hit the earth) are too small to do any damage upon impact. However, I would speculate that there's serious aerodynamic breaking that happens below 30,000 ft, so that even small ones might pack a punch at cruising altitude.
Because it works in KDE 3? Because the retarded idea of plasma containers inside a virtual desktop adds a useless layer of crap that does nothing except make it a pain configuring your environment the way you want it?
OHMYGOD yes, exactly. I use KDE 4.2, with tremendous reluctance and pain. All that KDE4 did was to introduce a COMPLETELY USELESS ADDITIONAL LAYER OF WINDOWING THAT HAS A SEPARATE, IMMATURE, AND INCOMPATIBLE CONFIGURATION SYSTEM. Frelling stupid idea. Huge, huge step backwards. Now instead of having a nice, unified way of making all of my desktop things (widgets and applications) look and act the same, I have to adjust one set of parameters for my applications, and there's AN ENTIRELY DIFFERENT set of controls, themes, etc., for this one special class of applications called Plasma widgets that, as far as I can tell, ARE JUST APPLICATIONS. And, for whatever misguided reason, THE TWO SETS OF CONTROLS ARE ENTIRELY DIFFERENT. Ease of use means FEWER things to learn, not more. There is no reason to have TWO windowing systems that run concurrently.
And the KDE4 architecture's idea of virtual desktops (the Plasma desktops) just does not play well with the much more highly useful and easy-to-learn traditional idea of desktop. Why do I have to have a special widget TO SHOW MY FRELLING DESKTOP ICONS (and one that performs that task badly at that)? It's a new, unnecessary, layer of STUFF of which Linux needs LESS not more. KDE4 is a total, utter intellectual failure at the very core no matter how many bugs are fixed: The basic architectural ideas are bad ones.
Hucking fell, It was if KDE fired all of the experienced developers and hired teenagers.
Baker told Register Hardware today that each triangular key has significantly more dead space around it than youâ(TM)d find on a standard Qwerty layout.
Assuming the keys have the same pitch, then that means the active triangular zones are SMALLER than normal keys occupying the same overall keyboard area, making it even HARDER to type accurately, or, in other words, this trains the user to be more careful with their finger placements. It isn't magic (like standard rollover logic in keyboards), it's behavioral modification.
Funny, I was always taught that programs and computers should be designed to make things easier for the user, not harder.
He's an artist. A fairly techy one but an artist nonetheless. Therefore, acting like a rabid dog every time anyone glances at his computer is probably not a valid option for him, because in his quality matrix, interacting with other people has a decidedly positive weight.
This is perhaps the most insightful comment on this thread.
And it leads to the real issue: the OP, out of his or her own good heart, is sharing a valuable resource with others. Kudos to them. But the burden of this altruism is becoming worrisome. Fundamentally, this person is providing a service that the institution provides, but badly. The OP needs to speak not with Slashdot, but with the host institution to work out an equitable solution, likely including more readily available institution-owned hardware that resists physical attack (read: theft).
I had a similar situation when in college, as I had a van. One of those huge full-sized vans without windows, a big sliding door, and nothing in the cargo compartment but a thin carpet on the floor. Everyone wanted to borrow my van. Refusing wasn't a morally acceptable option for me. So, what I did was to charge a nominal fee that benefited me, was not onerous to the borrower, and was well below market rates, so I could still feel good about being nice to my friends. For the van, the rate was either one case of beer, or a full tank of gas upon return (depending on the gas level and anticipated travel involved).
If the OP cannot convince the institution to pony up to provide a necessary service for its students, then he should start charging some nominal fee for use of his laptop. Better if it is a barter-based fee, rather than a monetary one. Say, lunch the next day. Or the price of a couple of beers after school. Or a dollop of some important art supply (guache or something). My advice to the OP is to be creative in figuring out what to charge, but charge SOMETHING for the service they are providing, even if only a nominal, token amount.
Finally, since someone is borrowing something of value, the OP also needs to be entirely explicit about the rules surrounding what happens when something goes wrong and the item returns broken. For my van, it was simple: the borrower agreed to cover all costs of repair or damage, period, fully understanding that it was an old van with a relatively high probability of failure. For a laptop, repair usually means replacement, so the borrower needs to understand the liability they are undertaking when borrowing a delicate and expensive bit of kit and explicitly acknowledge it. If not on paper, then verbally, in front of witnesses.
Guo's laser unleashes as much power as the entire grid of North America onto a spot the size of a needle point.
So, by only using as much power as the entire grid of North America, we can make a "less than 60 watt" bulb as bright as a 100 watt bulb? Perhaps it operates more efficiently, but it doesn't sound like it is so efficient to produce. Unless I'm misunderstanding or misrepresenting the verbiage from the summary.
What the summary fails to convey accurately is that femtosecond lasers while often delivering a paltry average power of a few (hundred) milliwats, have the mentioned immense bursts of power for almost unimaginably short periods of time with unmentioned comparatively long periods of quiescence. Peak illumination levels that approach or exceed levels at the surface of the sun are not unheard of; the filaments in question are certainly undergoing microscopic explosive plasma ablation. But, remember, such laser pulses last a very, very, very brief period of time and there's no laser illumination to speak of between these pulses, so that the average power is reasonably low.
Think of it this way: take a 5 mW continuous laser, like your favorite laser pointer. Turn it on for 1 second. Now imagine taking the gazillion photons that were emitted during that entire second and emitting them all in 1 femtosecond (remember, milli-, micro-, nano-, pico-, femto-). You still have 5 mW-seconds worth of photons, but the peak photon flux will be a thousand times a thousand times a thousand times a thousand times a thousand times brighter (that's 10^15 X brighter). That's more-or-less what femtosecond lasers do.
I work for a newspaper company and we are going through this exact thing right now. The newspaper industry has gotten used to seemingly endless financing and now sites like Craigslist and Google are doing a better job at what makes newspapers money.
There is no money in journalism. The money comes from classifieds and sponsorship. Now that people can easily get their news from just about anywhere companies are not as willing to shell out major payments for newspaper ads.
Don't get me wrong, a paywall is a TERRIBLE idea but the news industry isn't cheap and people take it for granted. What other ideas are out there to keep news journalism profitable?
I've often thought that providing newspaper subscribers (people who get the physical paper delivered to their door, like me) the option of NOT getting the classified, automotive, and home listings would be a huge win. It would (a) save money on printing costs, (b) deliver the advertisements to only those people who use them, allowing the paper to charge higher advertising rates, (c) allow the newspapers to charge opt-out subscribers a premium for having their paper delivered in a custom-tailored way.
I would gladly pay $1, maybe $2 a day for a combination of stories from the Washington Post, NYT, LA Times, my local newspaper, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and on occasion some random others that I learned about from some blogger.
The International Herald Tribune (once independent, now owned by the NYT) was, at one point, precisely that. It still has a far, far higher fraction of editorial content than any other paper I've seen in the US, and I gladly pay the equivalent of USD 3 per day at the news stand to read it. That paper, in one 20-odd page section, has more information and content than almost anything else.
But I'm a luddite when it comes to on-line news. I want my news on paper. In an easy-to-read font. With limited advertising and no animations. If I'm going to pay anything close to that for on-line service without the physical object, then I want no advertising whatsoever. None. Clear presentation without one-click-per-paragraph layouts. Unfortunately, I don't think that's the way the on-line news industry is headed.
And then there's this book I use pretty regularly. Haley's "Handbook for Machine Designers, Shop Men and Draftsmen" from 1916 that has a wonderful gem of a screed against the Metric System on page 495 that I quote below:
That monument to the scientific zeal combined with ignorance of practical requirements --- the metric system --- is unfortunately present in the world and cannot be ignored.
[... ]
The metric system is, at best, a complete subordination of the greater to the lesser --- of the function of measuring to that of calculation. Its advocates forget "that the chief function of a system of weights and measures is to weigh and measure, not to make calculations," Because of this some of its units are ill adapted to many of the purposes of life, while the decimal division of units is far inferior to binary divisions for the purposes of commerce and manufacture.
The handbook contains a wealth of information of how to design machines. Very, very useful, despite being printed 92 years ago.
I regularly use pens (fountain pens) that I purchased 25 years ago. They're working just fine still. Every now and then they get a proper bath in the ultrasonic cleaner and continue to write like new.
Before he retired a handful of years ago, my father, a research engineer, regularly used a custom computerized debugging and test rack that he built in the early 1980s based on a Southwest Technical Products MC6809-class computer.
In my laboratory, I use oscilloscopes that are 20-30 years old (Tektronix, and periodically recalibrated). And my supply of platinum wire is from the 1940s (inherited from another laboratory). I have bench power supplies from the early 1970s that are in regular use as well (Lambdas never go bad). And a custom-made 6-channel differential amplifier that looks to be from the 1960s. I have a custom-made wire twisting apparatus that I built 15 years ago. My office stereo is about 20 years old (Proton 300). For laboratory work, I use monitors that are 7 or 8 years old (big honking CRTs), but my computers are all 3 years old or younger, with data being migrated from older to newer at each upgrade.
Leaving beta as a part of the name of a given service well beyond the normal limit was a marketing ploy. It generated lots of press and ardent discussion. The tact has run its course. They're removing it as another marketing ploy. That will generate another wave of press and ardent discussion. Ho hum.
Where we live a light colored roof would be high maintenance. They always get black mold. For that reason most people prefer dark or black.
In places where it rains frequently, wouldn't the whitewash just run off?
There are fungicides that can be added to paint to control mildew growth in areas with higher rainfall. I'm not familiar with them or how effective they are, but am aware that they exist.
The paint isn't whitewash, but a thick, heavy paint that's applied at minimum thicknesses of 1mm. While it does suffer UV damage over time and requires refreshing every 5-10 years, it isn't quite running off as you suggest.
Where whitewash is used to keep flat roofs white, like in Middle Eastern and Mediterranean countries, the paint needs refreshing every year because it does run off during the rainy months.
That's nice for the hot countries. What about cold countries? Maybe we like having black roofs and roads to melt the snow faster if there's a little opening?
Yes. Or nearly so. I just happened to be doing some research on roof treatments. There are basically two types -- for flat roofs. Angled roofs are a different story since they're angled for snow and rain shedding. The two types of flat-roof coatings are white paint and aluminum paint.
White paint coatings use titanium dioxide as a pigment (very, very white) and reflect 70-80 percent of incident light. That means they keep the roof cool in the summer. They are, however, reasonably transparent to IR from below, so unfortunately do nothing to hold heat in during the winter.
Aluminum paint coatings use little flakes of alumnimum and reflect about 50-60 percent of incident light. That means they also keep the roof cool in the summer. They are, however, much less transparent to IR from below, so help keep in heat during the winter by reflecting it back down.
Then again, nothing stops you from painting your flat roof white or aluminum and unrolling black sheeting during the winter to help absorb heat from the sun.
This is definitely a cool idea, but is readily detectable as others have already pointed out because the transmitted and retransmitted packets will obviously differ, and it is easy for someone to detect such a transmission and recover the steganographic message.
But, if you reverse the roles of sender and receiver, a much harder to detect mechanism can be embedded in the occurrence of each retransmission request. In the simplest scheme (which is easily detectable, so I would not recommend it), Alice wants to send a message to Bob. So, through a pre-arranged mechanism, Bob starts sending Alice a file. As each packet arrives, if Alice sends and ACK, she is sending Bob a 1, if Alice sends a re-transmission request, she is sending Bob a 0. The file being transmitted is acting as a carrier and has nothing to do with the steganographic message, which is encoded in the sequence of ACK / retransmit replies. To make this scheme less easily detectable, most packets will have to be handled normally (not encoding a reverse flow message), and only a relative few will be used to encode steganographic bits. And since TCP/IP is lossy, multi-failure CRC will have to be layered on top.
Polaroid film had some unusual properties. For one thing, it's grainless. Unlike silver-based films, Polaroid film itself potentially has detail down to the molecular level.
Huh? Polaroid film was, like nearly every other film, based on silver halide particles. The major difference between Polaroid's instant film cameras and standard 126 / 35mm / etc cameras was that the imaging surface was the same as the viewing surface so that there was no enlargement process. With 126 / 35mm / etc cameras, the imaging surface is smaller, often much smaller, than the viewing surface, so that as the negatives are enlarged when printed, the grain is made visible. If you view a 35mm negative without enlargement (for the sake of argument, let's say you view a 35mm positive, or slide, which has a conceptually easier image to understand) it will appear grainless. If you take a medium format camera and put slide film in it, you can take wonderful shots that are viewable without magnification that also appear grainless. Conversely, if you optically enlarge a Polaroid instant print you will most definitely see grain.
It has nothing to do with the graininess of the film, but whether it is enlarged before viewing. Polaroids are a large enough imaging surface that they do not require enlargement. That's why Polaroids lack apparent grain.
[ Polaroid developed some awe-inspiring technology to make the instant color print possible and a heapful of associated patents. Is it me, or are the patents we hear about these days -- say a regex to validate SSNs -- pitiful in comparison? ]
Ah, yes, SouthCoastToday, clear evidence of non-natives invading New England where terms like "Southeastern Mass," "Southern New England," "Cape Cod and the Islands," "Bristol and Barnstable Counties," and are used rather than the Kalifornikated doubleplusungood "SouthCoast". Things still have character here in New England, thank you very much.
(Excuse me? Oh, well, yes, I suppose I do have Karma to burn. Why do you ask?)
Interpreted languages, in general, are not faster than compiled languages. Period.
This "faster than C" canard keeps getting trotted out and shot down every time.
And someday we'll all understand the fact that interpreted languages stopped being interpreted a long time ago and are now compiled before execution, rendering the only difference between a classic compiled language (like, say, C) and an interpreted language (like, say Lisp) is that there's a read-eval-print loop (REPL) interface to the latter. Every time you type an expression into a REPL the compiler gets fired up to process that input into the target language that then gets sent to an execution engine. For modern systems, there really isn't much of a difference between interpreted and compiled languages.
To paraphrase one snarky comment to twist it into another, this "interpretated languages are slower than compiled languages" canard keeps getting trotted out and shot down every time.
Surely it's possible for an individual to spend a few hours away from an internet connection?
Even for a "business" user, you should be well enough organised that your employer can afford to be out of touch with you for a short period, without suffering catastrophic business failure (if not, they should fire you immediately as you are obviously a single point of failure and as such a total liability to the organisation).
If you do suffer symptoms of stress or anxiety when disconnected from the 'net this sounds a lot like a personality disorder - even if you do use the old line: "No, really, I just like the internet. I could give up any time".
Sometimes, you just don't have a choice as to whether you need to take a trip, and whether you need to have a deliverable (report, email, presentation) delivered. Or, sometimes, you find that on the first leg of your N leg outbound journey that you've been able to make room for Important Graph 14 in your presentation, or you call your assistant back in the office and they've been able to dig up Important Table 3. These are just a couple of scenarios where, between flights, connectivity is, in fact, important.
The idea that there's any idle time left at all in the business day is archaic. Lean staffing means everyone is carrying two or three times the normal workload, and, in turn, that means that any available moment needs to be used to advantage, including the ability to connect to the net for 5 to 10 minutes before, between, or after, flights. This is one of the primary reasons airlines are eyeing in-flight connectivity --- although personally, I relish the imposed isolation on airplanes.
My business travel includes about 10 trips per year. More than most of the flying public but definitely not as much as many of the frequent flyers I meet, and not as many as the people in the study who traveled 20 more more trips per year (if you don't travel much, that is A LOT of travel; these are road warriors). I don't always need airport internet connectivity, but I use it on nearly every trip. Then again, if all of the airport televisions in the world were to inexplicably vanish, I'd applaud the event.
Getting back to the parent post: the idea that an organization should fire someone because they're a single point of failure is self-defeating. It not so much guarantees failure as causes it. The appropriate reaction for a company when a single point of failure is recognzied is to plan for multiple support paths where resources allow. For a small company, though, just about everyone becomes a single point of failure. That's the nature of efficient allocation of resources and the resultant concentration of skill.
But, the parent also is missing the point that many other posters have brought up: food is generally available at airports (as are bathrooms, ticket counters, etc.) and you rarely have to search very hard for it. We don't think about food at airports very much. Until network access is similarly omnipresent, it will be more important. In addition, many -- definitely not all -- business travelers are treading a path that's slightly different than the general public, one that often includes airport lounges or upgraded seating in the planes. These often come with better-than-usual food options.
That said, the real issue here is that the study was done by American Airlines and HP. Does, perchance, AA offer in-flight internet access on US domestic flights? You betcha. Does, perhaps HP offer business connectivity solutions? Yep. Think it was really news? The source article is from PR News Wire -- it's a frelling PRESS RELEASE. The chances that this was a carefully constructed, objective study are quite small indeed.
It takes two to do this, the ersatz Dentist and the willing patient.
The Patient needed to endure a lot of pain, no Novocain in those days, and no one would go thru this, and no one would PRACTICE this Medicine or Magic (as the case may be) without some perceived social benefit.
How can one say 2500 years after the fact that these were not marks of a Social Class? It seem far more likely the anthropologist's understanding of the social class structure is seriously flawed.
So we have a reasonably sophisticated practioner who has well-developed tools appropriate for dental work. One paragraph further down in the article after this quotation suggests that they had reasonably good knowledge of dental anatomy and function. For the day, I'd put good money they were that society's dentists, rather than an "ersatz dentist." They were, indeed, dentists.
Also, we have speculation that an herb based (read: coca based) anesthetic would have been used. Knowing how painful drug-free dentistry can be, therefore how motivated people would be to find alleviation from said pain, and knowing the ready availability of an excellent anesthetic, I am reasonably certain that while perhaps not without discomfort, it was a relatively pain-free operation.
Now, as to knowing whether precious stones on your teeth convey social status, read the quote from the article carefully. That assertion came from an email interview conducted in Spanish. While the author of the study, based on his name and professional affiliation might well be assumed to speak Spanish fluently, the author of the linked article's name is John Roach. Although names don't give complete information, it is a fair guess that Spanish is less likely to be his first language. Reading the quoted article, it seems a better interpretation might be that tooth modifications were a counter-indicator of royal or ruling social class. Just as we have in present-day society. Yes, it conveys a particular social class, and perhaps even an increased relative social status, but not necessarily high social status on an absolute scale. I can readily imagine that subtleties of that kind of assertion would be lost in email, when the language of communication is not primary, and especially when the information is being condensed into a 350-word summary.
More-or-less when you think of accusing someone who is a professional academician that their understanding of something smack-dab in their field is, "seriously flawed," when you are not a fluent practitioner in the field, you should stop and reconsider. There are probably more reasonable explanations than an expert in the field has a basic assumption wrong, and, after a mere 30 seconds of contemplation, you have profound insight that they never considered.
Our current home network setup has my wife and I primarily using laptops. Our printer, however, is shared out by a desktop computer upstairs. The desktop computer also acts as a file server. (For example, keeping years' worth of photos that we wouldn't keep on the individual laptops.) While the monitor is shut off unless the desktop computer is actively being used (rarely), we would definitely save power by turning the desktop computer off. This would mean, however, that we would need to go upstairs and turn it on whenever we wanted to print or retrieve a file.
I wonder how much energy these wall wart servers draw. If it's less than a standard desktop PC (which I build back in 2002), then it might be worth it to buy one, hook up a large USB HDD and the printer and share those out. Anyone know if this is possible (laptop & desktop computers currently run Windows XP)? If it is possible, any ideas how much power (if any) I would save?
In the New England region of the US, one desktop computer, left on 24 hours per day but idle most of the time, costs about $20 per month, in very rough figures. This is with the monitor powered down.
I have no doubt that this varies by region, and it certainly varies with the class of hardware. If you're concerned about running costs, I would think seriously about undervolting / underclocking your server, ensuring that all disks spin down, and that it has a high-efficiency power supply. And, generally, more modern disks are more efficient per drive, and vastly more efficient per GB, especially for laptop-class disk drives.
In fact, a laptop isn't a bad idea for this sort of server at all. I have one doing just about the same thing, consuming between 7W (idle) and 15W (active), with the display turned off.
Mainly? Meaning they actually *will* want to do preview at occasions? That's a no brainer: Mac OS X. If they only want to communitacte and use the web, that's a no-brainer aswell: Get some cheap-ass netbooks that are cheap, small, light and don't break that easy. If you're going into warzones, deserts or rainforests that's also - guess what? - a no-brainer: Get Panasonic Toughbooks. And some solar panels.
Another thing: If you're going on a 18 month tour as the prime IT guy and you have to ask this question I'd actually presume you're maybe the wrong guy for this sort of thing, no?
There are many issues here, but the conclusions is mostly the same, I'd warrant. On the road, support is difficult-to-nonexistent. If the documentary is going to be shot in remote locations, then the OP is not only the IT guy, but the network guy, the power supply guy, the spare parts guy, the software update guy, etc. If the documentary is going to be shot in not so remote areas, then much of the support can be purchased in larger cities, so less extreme planning is required.
Either way, the OP should be thinking not only about providing good service to his employer / collaborator, but also in maximizing his ability to provide that service. OSX is the way to go, IMO.
The greater issue, though, is planning for failures, rather than providing the best user experience. Everyone, neophyte or road-warrior, more-or-less can use WinXP / OSX / Ubuntu these days to use the web or send email or view documents. But what happens when things don't work? What happens when the laptop power supplies all get fried in a thunderstorm? What happens when you need data recovery after a laptop gets dropped onto hard pavement? What happens when the network stops working? What happens when one user's laptop gets a virus and it spreads to all the others? What happens when the director's laptop gets stolen with all of the shot notes on it?
Actually, that's the biggest nightmare the OP has to worry about: data loss due to theft. Not just the intellectual property losses, but the loss of time and expense of the crew, and perhaps loss of opportunity to re-shoot one-time events. Daily (hourly?) backup solutions with multiple layers of recovery and no single point of failure (like the IT guy -- what happens if the OP gets sick, or needs medical evacuation?) are required.
Also, my experience, with a fair bit of domestic US and international travel, is that Linux does not do well at all compared with WinXP at connecting to public wireless networks. The OP does not have time to tweak settings for a full team with each relocation in order to get service from the closest wireless network provider. For that reason alone, I would stay completely away from Linux in this application.
And another thing: the OP might want to think about getting everyone the same hardware, or, at most, 2 different configurations. More configurations, more problems, more headaches. Keep it simple.
Slashdot Mirror
Why? What other processor(s) should have been used, and what would have been the benefits? No, not trolling. Just interested in what you said and would like more information.
The fundamental problem with Intel's instruction set architecture for the 8088/8086 line was that it was complex and intricate. To perform some instructions, the arguments had to be in very specific registers. Every register was, in some way or another, special purpose. The contemporary Motorola architecture, based on the 6800 and extended into the 68000 line, was completely the opposite: every register was, more-or-less, general purpose.
Writing a compiler for the Intel architecture is an exercise in masochism. Writing one for the Motorola architecture is one of simplicity and elegance. The Motorola instruction set documentation of the era was simple, clean, and definitive: it molded the way instruction sets were documented for generations afterward. The Intel documentation was difficult to understand at best.
One of the stark differences in the two instruction sets was the difference in instruction length variability. Intel instructions could be almost arbitrarily long. Motorola instructions were one or two bytes, with the one byte instructions being the ones most frequently used (inspired brilliance, that was). Also, for very related reasons, the number of cycles to execute an instruction was highly variable for Intel architectures, and more-or-less fixed for Motorola architectures.
I wrote assembly code for both architectures, back in the day. I hated, hated, hated writing for Intel chips, and breathed a sigh of relief whenever writing for Motorola chips. The inherent beauty in the Motorola instruction set created a certain kind of transparency making it possible --- seriously --- to see programmer intent when reading assembly code. With Intel chips, that was just not possible. With Motorola chips, you could reverse engineer code pretty easily; with Intel chips, it was painful.
The world would be a better place if IBM had selected Motorola.
Yes, I've acknowledged that - as I said the pathologist will have been presented with many many samples, turned into slides, looking for a few, if any, granulomata, which are tiny in size. I even said "Now do you start to see why a pathologist may miss it?" It is very hard, if not impossible, to scan every single slide in its entirity, for a granuloma. Fortunately this girl found it, when the pathologist didn't. Props to her,
Absolutely. Agreed.
We must remember that, unlike computers that are often highly deterministic, biology is often non-deterministic, and any given test has a certain rate of accuracy that is rarely 100%. Any given test especially includes ones where there's a human who must interpret observations. Unlike with computers, false positive and negative rates on biological tests are rarely zero.
Jessica had a false negative on an intestinal biopsy for a test that has a poor false negative rate. Not a big deal.
Also, recall that Jessica is far more highly motivated to look for long times at her slides than a pathologist is. A pathologist cannot afford to spend hours gazing at slides, but a high school student can. Not surprising at all, then, that a difficult-to-detect granuloma would, at some point in modern human history, be detecetd by a student and not a pathologist.
This is an interesting story because of initiative shown by the student, but not a very provocative one because of implied medical ineptitude.
While looking under a microscope at slides of her own intestinal tissue in her AP science class
That's what I wondered as well, until I read the article:
In her Advanced Placement high school science class, she was looking under the microscope at slides of her own intestinal tissue -- slides her pathologist had said were completely normal -- and spotted an area of inflamed tissue called a granuloma, a clear indication that she had Crohn's disease.
The logical inference is that some doctor had suspected Crohn's, ordered a biopsy (which, for intestinal tissue, is a non-trivial procedure) and had slides made up for pathological evaluation. Somehow young Jessica managed to get the slides, probably because she had good relationships with the doctor and pathologist on the case. She even had (or was able to discover) the email address of the pathologist so as to send him an image from the slide.
I'm thinking the story isn't quite one of such significant medical ineptitude as the article makes it out to be.
But, in any case, it really does help to read the article before asking questions that are answered in it.
For eight years her doctors were unable to diagnose Crohn's Disease? Shit, that's appalling. It's not exactly an obscure condition requiring House MD's staggering intellect, is it? It's been known about for at least a century, and while it's known to be difficult to diagnose with certainty, you'd think someone would have considered it...
Still, kudos to her.
Yes, kudos to her.
I have a hard time believing that her doctors were unable to diagnose such a common, and often hereditary disease. I'm highly suspicious. The pathologist involved (read the article) must not have done a very good job --- but the fact that they took an intestinal biopsy means that Crohn's was suspected. Perhaps the real lesson here is to remember that nearly every medical test has a certain rate of accuracy, and the rate is rarely 100%.
I have two distance cousins with Crohn's, and it isn't quite as bad as the article makes it out to be, at least in their cases. It's often highly treatable with stomach acid inhibitors (prilosec and the like) and controlled diet.
Natural selection will take care of it eventually.
Just keep murdering birds with airplanes until all the ones that don't get out of the way of planes have been removed from the gene pool off.
Not a real quick fix, you understand, but probably incredibly effective!
And develop planes that are better suited to simply take a duck in the face at 150 knots. If as a result, the bird strike does no serious damage to the plane, then you can let my previous proposal work.
Brilliant!
Except that, let's see, birds have typical generational periods of 1-2 years, and there's been commercial aviation for about 100 years, heavy aviation for perhaps 50 years, so there's been plenty of time for natural selection already, and it hasn't worked.
And except that planes are already designed to take bird strikes. There are limits as to what can be done, engineering-wise, without making the planes unacceptably heavy or costly. Do you really, honestly, think that you can come up with a simple solution in 30 seconds that wasn't thought of already by legions of professional aeronautical engineers?
Bird strikes are a difficult problem. There is no easy, simple solution. One of the issues is that many bird strikes happen in open air, where airfield abatement procedures are irrelevant. Another of the issues is that birds quickly learn what is a real threat and what is a, forgive me, straw man, so that even at the airfield, abatement procedures lose their impact pretty quickly.
As one of the commenters in TFA said...
Anecdotes are not data, but I've never seen an airplane crash, and yet I've seen two fireball meteors (those are the ones that are big enough to make it well into the atmosphere and leave smoke trails), one daytime, one nighttime, both in the LA basin. And I've never seen a bomb explode (that I didn't make as a kid, I mean). Bombs are pretty rare. Meteors are quite common. How common? You can buy them on eBay for some dollars per ounce. The vast majority burn up in the atmosphere, but the larger ones do hit the earth pretty frequently. Most of the meteorites (the ones that hit the earth) are too small to do any damage upon impact. However, I would speculate that there's serious aerodynamic breaking that happens below 30,000 ft, so that even small ones might pack a punch at cruising altitude.
Because it works in KDE 3? Because the retarded idea of plasma containers inside a virtual desktop adds a useless layer of crap that does nothing except make it a pain configuring your environment the way you want it?
OHMYGOD yes, exactly. I use KDE 4.2, with tremendous reluctance and pain. All that KDE4 did was to introduce a COMPLETELY USELESS ADDITIONAL LAYER OF WINDOWING THAT HAS A SEPARATE, IMMATURE, AND INCOMPATIBLE CONFIGURATION SYSTEM. Frelling stupid idea. Huge, huge step backwards. Now instead of having a nice, unified way of making all of my desktop things (widgets and applications) look and act the same, I have to adjust one set of parameters for my applications, and there's AN ENTIRELY DIFFERENT set of controls, themes, etc., for this one special class of applications called Plasma widgets that, as far as I can tell, ARE JUST APPLICATIONS. And, for whatever misguided reason, THE TWO SETS OF CONTROLS ARE ENTIRELY DIFFERENT. Ease of use means FEWER things to learn, not more. There is no reason to have TWO windowing systems that run concurrently.
And the KDE4 architecture's idea of virtual desktops (the Plasma desktops) just does not play well with the much more highly useful and easy-to-learn traditional idea of desktop. Why do I have to have a special widget TO SHOW MY FRELLING DESKTOP ICONS (and one that performs that task badly at that)? It's a new, unnecessary, layer of STUFF of which Linux needs LESS not more. KDE4 is a total, utter intellectual failure at the very core no matter how many bugs are fixed: The basic architectural ideas are bad ones.
Hucking fell, It was if KDE fired all of the experienced developers and hired teenagers.
From the article:
Baker told Register Hardware today that each triangular key has significantly more dead space around it than youâ(TM)d find on a standard Qwerty layout.
Assuming the keys have the same pitch, then that means the active triangular zones are SMALLER than normal keys occupying the same overall keyboard area, making it even HARDER to type accurately, or, in other words, this trains the user to be more careful with their finger placements. It isn't magic (like standard rollover logic in keyboards), it's behavioral modification.
Funny, I was always taught that programs and computers should be designed to make things easier for the user, not harder.
He's an artist. A fairly techy one but an artist nonetheless. Therefore, acting like a rabid dog every time anyone glances at his computer is probably not a valid option for him, because in his quality matrix, interacting with other people has a decidedly positive weight.
This is perhaps the most insightful comment on this thread.
And it leads to the real issue: the OP, out of his or her own good heart, is sharing a valuable resource with others. Kudos to them. But the burden of this altruism is becoming worrisome. Fundamentally, this person is providing a service that the institution provides, but badly. The OP needs to speak not with Slashdot, but with the host institution to work out an equitable solution, likely including more readily available institution-owned hardware that resists physical attack (read: theft).
I had a similar situation when in college, as I had a van. One of those huge full-sized vans without windows, a big sliding door, and nothing in the cargo compartment but a thin carpet on the floor. Everyone wanted to borrow my van. Refusing wasn't a morally acceptable option for me. So, what I did was to charge a nominal fee that benefited me, was not onerous to the borrower, and was well below market rates, so I could still feel good about being nice to my friends. For the van, the rate was either one case of beer, or a full tank of gas upon return (depending on the gas level and anticipated travel involved).
If the OP cannot convince the institution to pony up to provide a necessary service for its students, then he should start charging some nominal fee for use of his laptop. Better if it is a barter-based fee, rather than a monetary one. Say, lunch the next day. Or the price of a couple of beers after school. Or a dollop of some important art supply (guache or something). My advice to the OP is to be creative in figuring out what to charge, but charge SOMETHING for the service they are providing, even if only a nominal, token amount.
Finally, since someone is borrowing something of value, the OP also needs to be entirely explicit about the rules surrounding what happens when something goes wrong and the item returns broken. For my van, it was simple: the borrower agreed to cover all costs of repair or damage, period, fully understanding that it was an old van with a relatively high probability of failure. For a laptop, repair usually means replacement, so the borrower needs to understand the liability they are undertaking when borrowing a delicate and expensive bit of kit and explicitly acknowledge it. If not on paper, then verbally, in front of witnesses.
So, by only using as much power as the entire grid of North America, we can make a "less than 60 watt" bulb as bright as a 100 watt bulb? Perhaps it operates more efficiently, but it doesn't sound like it is so efficient to produce. Unless I'm misunderstanding or misrepresenting the verbiage from the summary.
What the summary fails to convey accurately is that femtosecond lasers while often delivering a paltry average power of a few (hundred) milliwats, have the mentioned immense bursts of power for almost unimaginably short periods of time with unmentioned comparatively long periods of quiescence. Peak illumination levels that approach or exceed levels at the surface of the sun are not unheard of; the filaments in question are certainly undergoing microscopic explosive plasma ablation. But, remember, such laser pulses last a very, very, very brief period of time and there's no laser illumination to speak of between these pulses, so that the average power is reasonably low.
Think of it this way: take a 5 mW continuous laser, like your favorite laser pointer. Turn it on for 1 second. Now imagine taking the gazillion photons that were emitted during that entire second and emitting them all in 1 femtosecond (remember, milli-, micro-, nano-, pico-, femto-). You still have 5 mW-seconds worth of photons, but the peak photon flux will be a thousand times a thousand times a thousand times a thousand times a thousand times brighter (that's 10^15 X brighter). That's more-or-less what femtosecond lasers do.
I work for a newspaper company and we are going through this exact thing right now. The newspaper industry has gotten used to seemingly endless financing and now sites like Craigslist and Google are doing a better job at what makes newspapers money.
There is no money in journalism. The money comes from classifieds and sponsorship. Now that people can easily get their news from just about anywhere companies are not as willing to shell out major payments for newspaper ads.
Don't get me wrong, a paywall is a TERRIBLE idea but the news industry isn't cheap and people take it for granted. What other ideas are out there to keep news journalism profitable?
I've often thought that providing newspaper subscribers (people who get the physical paper delivered to their door, like me) the option of NOT getting the classified, automotive, and home listings would be a huge win. It would (a) save money on printing costs, (b) deliver the advertisements to only those people who use them, allowing the paper to charge higher advertising rates, (c) allow the newspapers to charge opt-out subscribers a premium for having their paper delivered in a custom-tailored way.
I would gladly pay $1, maybe $2 a day for a combination of stories from the Washington Post, NYT, LA Times, my local newspaper, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and on occasion some random others that I learned about from some blogger.
The International Herald Tribune (once independent, now owned by the NYT) was, at one point, precisely that. It still has a far, far higher fraction of editorial content than any other paper I've seen in the US, and I gladly pay the equivalent of USD 3 per day at the news stand to read it. That paper, in one 20-odd page section, has more information and content than almost anything else.
But I'm a luddite when it comes to on-line news. I want my news on paper. In an easy-to-read font. With limited advertising and no animations. If I'm going to pay anything close to that for on-line service without the physical object, then I want no advertising whatsoever. None. Clear presentation without one-click-per-paragraph layouts. Unfortunately, I don't think that's the way the on-line news industry is headed.
And then there's this book I use pretty regularly. Haley's "Handbook for Machine Designers, Shop Men and Draftsmen" from 1916 that has a wonderful gem of a screed against the Metric System on page 495 that I quote below:
That monument to the scientific zeal combined with ignorance of practical requirements --- the metric system --- is unfortunately present in the world and cannot be ignored.
[ ... ]
The metric system is, at best, a complete subordination of the greater to the lesser --- of the function of measuring to that of calculation. Its advocates forget "that the chief function of a system of weights and measures is to weigh and measure, not to make calculations," Because of this some of its units are ill adapted to many of the purposes of life, while the decimal division of units is far inferior to binary divisions for the purposes of commerce and manufacture.
The handbook contains a wealth of information of how to design machines. Very, very useful, despite being printed 92 years ago.
I regularly use pens (fountain pens) that I purchased 25 years ago. They're working just fine still. Every now and then they get a proper bath in the ultrasonic cleaner and continue to write like new.
Before he retired a handful of years ago, my father, a research engineer, regularly used a custom computerized debugging and test rack that he built in the early 1980s based on a Southwest Technical Products MC6809-class computer.
In my laboratory, I use oscilloscopes that are 20-30 years old (Tektronix, and periodically recalibrated). And my supply of platinum wire is from the 1940s (inherited from another laboratory). I have bench power supplies from the early 1970s that are in regular use as well (Lambdas never go bad). And a custom-made 6-channel differential amplifier that looks to be from the 1960s. I have a custom-made wire twisting apparatus that I built 15 years ago. My office stereo is about 20 years old (Proton 300). For laboratory work, I use monitors that are 7 or 8 years old (big honking CRTs), but my computers are all 3 years old or younger, with data being migrated from older to newer at each upgrade.
Leaving beta as a part of the name of a given service well beyond the normal limit was a marketing ploy. It generated lots of press and ardent discussion. The tact has run its course. They're removing it as another marketing ploy. That will generate another wave of press and ardent discussion. Ho hum.
Where we live a light colored roof would be high maintenance. They always get black mold. For that reason most people prefer dark or black.
In places where it rains frequently, wouldn't the whitewash just run off?
There are fungicides that can be added to paint to control mildew growth in areas with higher rainfall. I'm not familiar with them or how effective they are, but am aware that they exist.
The paint isn't whitewash, but a thick, heavy paint that's applied at minimum thicknesses of 1mm. While it does suffer UV damage over time and requires refreshing every 5-10 years, it isn't quite running off as you suggest.
Where whitewash is used to keep flat roofs white, like in Middle Eastern and Mediterranean countries, the paint needs refreshing every year because it does run off during the rainy months.
That's nice for the hot countries. What about cold countries? Maybe we like having black roofs and roads to melt the snow faster if there's a little opening?
Yes. Or nearly so. I just happened to be doing some research on roof treatments. There are basically two types -- for flat roofs. Angled roofs are a different story since they're angled for snow and rain shedding. The two types of flat-roof coatings are white paint and aluminum paint.
Here's the link: http://eetd.lbl.gov/coolroof/coating.htm
White paint coatings use titanium dioxide as a pigment (very, very white) and reflect 70-80 percent of incident light. That means they keep the roof cool in the summer. They are, however, reasonably transparent to IR from below, so unfortunately do nothing to hold heat in during the winter.
Aluminum paint coatings use little flakes of alumnimum and reflect about 50-60 percent of incident light. That means they also keep the roof cool in the summer. They are, however, much less transparent to IR from below, so help keep in heat during the winter by reflecting it back down.
Then again, nothing stops you from painting your flat roof white or aluminum and unrolling black sheeting during the winter to help absorb heat from the sun.
This is definitely a cool idea, but is readily detectable as others have already pointed out because the transmitted and retransmitted packets will obviously differ, and it is easy for someone to detect such a transmission and recover the steganographic message.
But, if you reverse the roles of sender and receiver, a much harder to detect mechanism can be embedded in the occurrence of each retransmission request. In the simplest scheme (which is easily detectable, so I would not recommend it), Alice wants to send a message to Bob. So, through a pre-arranged mechanism, Bob starts sending Alice a file. As each packet arrives, if Alice sends and ACK, she is sending Bob a 1, if Alice sends a re-transmission request, she is sending Bob a 0. The file being transmitted is acting as a carrier and has nothing to do with the steganographic message, which is encoded in the sequence of ACK / retransmit replies. To make this scheme less easily detectable, most packets will have to be handled normally (not encoding a reverse flow message), and only a relative few will be used to encode steganographic bits. And since TCP/IP is lossy, multi-failure CRC will have to be layered on top.
Polaroid film had some unusual properties. For one thing, it's grainless. Unlike silver-based films, Polaroid film itself potentially has detail down to the molecular level.
Huh? Polaroid film was, like nearly every other film, based on silver halide particles. The major difference between Polaroid's instant film cameras and standard 126 / 35mm / etc cameras was that the imaging surface was the same as the viewing surface so that there was no enlargement process. With 126 / 35mm / etc cameras, the imaging surface is smaller, often much smaller, than the viewing surface, so that as the negatives are enlarged when printed, the grain is made visible. If you view a 35mm negative without enlargement (for the sake of argument, let's say you view a 35mm positive, or slide, which has a conceptually easier image to understand) it will appear grainless. If you take a medium format camera and put slide film in it, you can take wonderful shots that are viewable without magnification that also appear grainless. Conversely, if you optically enlarge a Polaroid instant print you will most definitely see grain.
It has nothing to do with the graininess of the film, but whether it is enlarged before viewing. Polaroids are a large enough imaging surface that they do not require enlargement. That's why Polaroids lack apparent grain.
[ Polaroid developed some awe-inspiring technology to make the instant color print possible and a heapful of associated patents. Is it me, or are the patents we hear about these days -- say a regex to validate SSNs -- pitiful in comparison? ]
Ah, yes, SouthCoastToday, clear evidence of non-natives invading New England where terms like "Southeastern Mass," "Southern New England," "Cape Cod and the Islands," "Bristol and Barnstable Counties," and are used rather than the Kalifornikated doubleplusungood "SouthCoast". Things still have character here in New England, thank you very much.
(Excuse me? Oh, well, yes, I suppose I do have Karma to burn. Why do you ask?)
Interpreted languages, in general, are not faster than compiled languages. Period.
This "faster than C" canard keeps getting trotted out and shot down every time.
And someday we'll all understand the fact that interpreted languages stopped being interpreted a long time ago and are now compiled before execution, rendering the only difference between a classic compiled language (like, say, C) and an interpreted language (like, say Lisp) is that there's a read-eval-print loop (REPL) interface to the latter. Every time you type an expression into a REPL the compiler gets fired up to process that input into the target language that then gets sent to an execution engine. For modern systems, there really isn't much of a difference between interpreted and compiled languages.
To paraphrase one snarky comment to twist it into another, this "interpretated languages are slower than compiled languages" canard keeps getting trotted out and shot down every time.
Surely it's possible for an individual to spend a few hours away from an internet connection?
Even for a "business" user, you should be well enough organised that your employer can afford to be out of touch with you for a short period, without suffering catastrophic business failure (if not, they should fire you immediately as you are obviously a single point of failure and as such a total liability to the organisation).
If you do suffer symptoms of stress or anxiety when disconnected from the 'net this sounds a lot like a personality disorder - even if you do use the old line: "No, really, I just like the internet. I could give up any time".
Sometimes, you just don't have a choice as to whether you need to take a trip, and whether you need to have a deliverable (report, email, presentation) delivered. Or, sometimes, you find that on the first leg of your N leg outbound journey that you've been able to make room for Important Graph 14 in your presentation, or you call your assistant back in the office and they've been able to dig up Important Table 3. These are just a couple of scenarios where, between flights, connectivity is, in fact, important.
The idea that there's any idle time left at all in the business day is archaic. Lean staffing means everyone is carrying two or three times the normal workload, and, in turn, that means that any available moment needs to be used to advantage, including the ability to connect to the net for 5 to 10 minutes before, between, or after, flights. This is one of the primary reasons airlines are eyeing in-flight connectivity --- although personally, I relish the imposed isolation on airplanes.
My business travel includes about 10 trips per year. More than most of the flying public but definitely not as much as many of the frequent flyers I meet, and not as many as the people in the study who traveled 20 more more trips per year (if you don't travel much, that is A LOT of travel; these are road warriors). I don't always need airport internet connectivity, but I use it on nearly every trip. Then again, if all of the airport televisions in the world were to inexplicably vanish, I'd applaud the event.
Getting back to the parent post: the idea that an organization should fire someone because they're a single point of failure is self-defeating. It not so much guarantees failure as causes it. The appropriate reaction for a company when a single point of failure is recognzied is to plan for multiple support paths where resources allow. For a small company, though, just about everyone becomes a single point of failure. That's the nature of efficient allocation of resources and the resultant concentration of skill.
But, the parent also is missing the point that many other posters have brought up: food is generally available at airports (as are bathrooms, ticket counters, etc.) and you rarely have to search very hard for it. We don't think about food at airports very much. Until network access is similarly omnipresent, it will be more important. In addition, many -- definitely not all -- business travelers are treading a path that's slightly different than the general public, one that often includes airport lounges or upgraded seating in the planes. These often come with better-than-usual food options.
That said, the real issue here is that the study was done by American Airlines and HP. Does, perchance, AA offer in-flight internet access on US domestic flights? You betcha. Does, perhaps HP offer business connectivity solutions? Yep. Think it was really news? The source article is from PR News Wire -- it's a frelling PRESS RELEASE. The chances that this was a carefully constructed, objective study are quite small indeed.
And he knows this HOW?
It takes two to do this, the ersatz Dentist and the willing patient.
The Patient needed to endure a lot of pain, no Novocain in those days, and no one would go thru this, and no one would PRACTICE this Medicine or Magic (as the case may be) without some perceived social benefit.
How can one say 2500 years after the fact that these were not marks of a Social Class? It seem far more likely the anthropologist's understanding of the social class structure is seriously flawed.
You didn't read the one-page article, did you?
I'm quoting directly from it:
But it's clear that peopleâ"mostly menâ"from nearly all walks of life opted for the look, noted José ConcepciÃn Jiménez, an anthropologist at the institute, which recently announced the findings.
"They were not marks of social class" but instead meant for pure decoration, he commented in an e-mail interview conducted in Spanish.
In fact, the royals of the dayâ"such as the Red Queen, a Maya mummy found in a temple at Palenque in what is now Mexicoâ"don't have teeth decorations, Jiménez said.
Other evidence of early Mesoamerican dentistryâ"including a person who had received a ceremonial dentureâ"has also been found.
Knowledgeable Dentists
The early dentists used a drill-like device with a hard stone such as obsidian, which is capable of puncturing bone.
"It's possible some type of [herb based] anesthetic was applied prior to drilling to blunt any pain," Jiménez said.
So we have a reasonably sophisticated practioner who has well-developed tools appropriate for dental work. One paragraph further down in the article after this quotation suggests that they had reasonably good knowledge of dental anatomy and function. For the day, I'd put good money they were that society's dentists, rather than an "ersatz dentist." They were, indeed, dentists.
Also, we have speculation that an herb based (read: coca based) anesthetic would have been used. Knowing how painful drug-free dentistry can be, therefore how motivated people would be to find alleviation from said pain, and knowing the ready availability of an excellent anesthetic, I am reasonably certain that while perhaps not without discomfort, it was a relatively pain-free operation.
Now, as to knowing whether precious stones on your teeth convey social status, read the quote from the article carefully. That assertion came from an email interview conducted in Spanish. While the author of the study, based on his name and professional affiliation might well be assumed to speak Spanish fluently, the author of the linked article's name is John Roach. Although names don't give complete information, it is a fair guess that Spanish is less likely to be his first language. Reading the quoted article, it seems a better interpretation might be that tooth modifications were a counter-indicator of royal or ruling social class. Just as we have in present-day society. Yes, it conveys a particular social class, and perhaps even an increased relative social status, but not necessarily high social status on an absolute scale. I can readily imagine that subtleties of that kind of assertion would be lost in email, when the language of communication is not primary, and especially when the information is being condensed into a 350-word summary.
More-or-less when you think of accusing someone who is a professional academician that their understanding of something smack-dab in their field is, "seriously flawed," when you are not a fluent practitioner in the field, you should stop and reconsider. There are probably more reasonable explanations than an expert in the field has a basic assumption wrong, and, after a mere 30 seconds of contemplation, you have profound insight that they never considered.
Our current home network setup has my wife and I primarily using laptops. Our printer, however, is shared out by a desktop computer upstairs. The desktop computer also acts as a file server. (For example, keeping years' worth of photos that we wouldn't keep on the individual laptops.) While the monitor is shut off unless the desktop computer is actively being used (rarely), we would definitely save power by turning the desktop computer off. This would mean, however, that we would need to go upstairs and turn it on whenever we wanted to print or retrieve a file.
I wonder how much energy these wall wart servers draw. If it's less than a standard desktop PC (which I build back in 2002), then it might be worth it to buy one, hook up a large USB HDD and the printer and share those out. Anyone know if this is possible (laptop & desktop computers currently run Windows XP)? If it is possible, any ideas how much power (if any) I would save?
In the New England region of the US, one desktop computer, left on 24 hours per day but idle most of the time, costs about $20 per month, in very rough figures. This is with the monitor powered down.
I have no doubt that this varies by region, and it certainly varies with the class of hardware. If you're concerned about running costs, I would think seriously about undervolting / underclocking your server, ensuring that all disks spin down, and that it has a high-efficiency power supply. And, generally, more modern disks are more efficient per drive, and vastly more efficient per GB, especially for laptop-class disk drives.
In fact, a laptop isn't a bad idea for this sort of server at all. I have one doing just about the same thing, consuming between 7W (idle) and 15W (active), with the display turned off.
Mainly? Meaning they actually *will* want to do preview at occasions?
That's a no brainer: Mac OS X.
If they only want to communitacte and use the web, that's a no-brainer aswell: Get some cheap-ass netbooks that are cheap, small, light and don't break that easy.
If you're going into warzones, deserts or rainforests that's also - guess what? - a no-brainer: Get Panasonic Toughbooks. And some solar panels.
Another thing: If you're going on a 18 month tour as the prime IT guy and you have to ask this question I'd actually presume you're maybe the wrong guy for this sort of thing, no?
There are many issues here, but the conclusions is mostly the same, I'd warrant. On the road, support is difficult-to-nonexistent. If the documentary is going to be shot in remote locations, then the OP is not only the IT guy, but the network guy, the power supply guy, the spare parts guy, the software update guy, etc. If the documentary is going to be shot in not so remote areas, then much of the support can be purchased in larger cities, so less extreme planning is required.
Either way, the OP should be thinking not only about providing good service to his employer / collaborator, but also in maximizing his ability to provide that service. OSX is the way to go, IMO.
The greater issue, though, is planning for failures, rather than providing the best user experience. Everyone, neophyte or road-warrior, more-or-less can use WinXP / OSX / Ubuntu these days to use the web or send email or view documents. But what happens when things don't work? What happens when the laptop power supplies all get fried in a thunderstorm? What happens when you need data recovery after a laptop gets dropped onto hard pavement? What happens when the network stops working? What happens when one user's laptop gets a virus and it spreads to all the others? What happens when the director's laptop gets stolen with all of the shot notes on it?
Actually, that's the biggest nightmare the OP has to worry about: data loss due to theft. Not just the intellectual property losses, but the loss of time and expense of the crew, and perhaps loss of opportunity to re-shoot one-time events. Daily (hourly?) backup solutions with multiple layers of recovery and no single point of failure (like the IT guy -- what happens if the OP gets sick, or needs medical evacuation?) are required.
Also, my experience, with a fair bit of domestic US and international travel, is that Linux does not do well at all compared with WinXP at connecting to public wireless networks. The OP does not have time to tweak settings for a full team with each relocation in order to get service from the closest wireless network provider. For that reason alone, I would stay completely away from Linux in this application.
And another thing: the OP might want to think about getting everyone the same hardware, or, at most, 2 different configurations. More configurations, more problems, more headaches. Keep it simple.