When you say Technical College, do you mean like ITT/DeVry (sp?).
No not like one of those dodgy operators. In Minnesota as part of one of my state's university systems (MNSCU) we have a number of vocational and technical colleges that offer a number of programs designed to actually educate people in practical skills and trades. In my area the 2 major ones that are part of the MNSCU system are Dakota County Technical College and also Hennepin Technical College. The highest degree offered at either one is an applied associates but they also offer shorter programs for various certifications. We also have another Vo-Tech Dunwoody that is really good even if they are a private institution but unlike the ITT/DeVry they actually educate their students and they do work with Hennepin Tech to share resources. The tuition at Dunwoody is more than at Hennepin but then Dunwoody doesn't get the state aid either. They have to compete for students so it can't be too out of line with what the state schools are charging. All of these are regionally accredited, not nationally, institutions that in most cases have been around for a long time.
MNSCU also operates a large number of community colleges and I think 7 universities that offer bachelors, masters, and PhDs. The community and technical colleges are lumped together tuition wise and the universities are all lumped together. The other nice thing is that credits at any of MNSCU schools will transfer to any other one which is nice as it makes taking classes easier and makes it easier to get your degree. I also know that when I was in high school my school district had a post secondary program and for those who wanted to go learn a trade could go over to Dakota County Tech and get a head start on that program before they graduated high school or if you were planning on going to college you could go and take classes at Inver Hills or Normandale community college. The classes counted towards your high school work but you also got college credit for it and the school district paid for it. I took advantage of it most of my senior year and took a full year of college calculus (no AP test for me), full year of calculus based physics, a world history class, an English composition class, a speech class and a college statistics class (not calculus based). Add in the AP European history, AP biology, and AP chemistry that I had taken my junior year and I started college with sophomore standing at no cost to me. I now wonder if they still have the post secondary program because it really would be a shame if they didn't as it provided a lot of opportunity.
This goes for trade schools as well: we really DO need more welders and machinists, but the classes are half-full. ..
Who was telling you those lies. Every high school teacher and guidance counselor says you will never get ahead if you don't go to a real university and get a 4 year degree. I mean who would want to go to the local Vo-Tech and take a 2 year program and exit it being a journeyman machinists and get paid $150,000+ a year starting likely with multiple job offers as that is just a myth. Same thing with other skilled trades, there is no money in them or jobs to be had. Or that is what all the kids hear when they are in high school.
Sadly that isn't far from how things are in schools, I remember hearing that in the 90s when I was in high school and I doubt it has changed. I run into a lot of smug people who think that they are better than those who have that training. I then like to trot my neighbors as examples, one is a master mechanic and he is making close to $200k a year, another one is semi retired general contractor who will do emergency plumbing repair on Sunday at hourly rates that rival those of a decent lawyer. As the general contractor one is self employed he gets to keep what he charges. Then there is my brother in-law who does restaurant equipment repair who pulls in well of $100k a year as well. I keep telling my kids that once they are done with high school they will need some sort of additional training be it getting an apprenticeship, going to Vo-Tech, going to a trade school, or going and getting a college degree because just having a high school diploma is only good for wiping your ass with now.
My dorm room had 2 "movable" beds, 2 desks, 2 chests of drawers, a sink with a mirror above it and a small closet. By movable I mean you could disassemble them move the parts around and put them back together in another location. The most efficient arrangement we came up with was to loft both beds with one on each side of the room on either side of the window, put a sofa under one, the 2 chests of drawers under the other so you could put a TV on top of them. Then you put your desk between your bed and either the sink or closet. Under the window between the beds there was just enough space for a mini fridge. The rooms were the standard poured concrete walls and were in the 10'x10' or 12'x12' size range. The only way you ended up with only one person in the room was if you were the one guy or girl who there just wasn't someone to put in your room or if you roommate dropped out and left it vacant for the rest of the semester but even then if there are people in overflow they would move them in as spots became available.
Sounds like your food was a similar fare to what was offered when I was there. Every thing was over cooked and mostly under spiced and over salted, unless it was crusted in rosemary in which case it was drowned in it. I still can't stand rosemary to this day. The salad bar was the only respite from overly dry food.
$47/credit is still pretty good. I paid $167/credit at the local technical college, plus associated fees which brought it closer to $190/credit, for the class I finished last December. That is also the same rate that is charged at the community colleges as well as they are part of the same system. I paid some thing similar to your $47/credit when I got my BS in CS and that was back in '01.
The last time I looked up data on this in my state I found the funding info for the University of Minnesota system, for some reason finding this information is almost impossible and what you find is opaque as hell, and the state of Minnesota basically funded it the tune of about $10,000 per student. That was just the total amount from the state divided by students enrolled as it didn't have info on the number of full time students, out of state students, international students, etc. Even recently I looked at what I had paid for classes I took at a MNSCU university (Mankato State) in 2001 and compared it to what I spent taking a course at the local MNSCU technical college (DCTC) and per credit hour DCTC was 4x the cost. Granted there was was inflation over that time (about 35%) so in 2001 dollars DCTC was about 3x as expensive. Now here's the kicker, DCTC tunition is cheaper than Mankato's as the community and technical colleges are the real low cost options as the highest degree they offer is an associates while the universities in the MNSCU system will offer up to a PhD. When I was going to school in 01 I believe the state paid about 1/3 of the tuition cost so unless the state is now charging schools the cost shouldn't have gone up as much as it has.
There are thousands of manufacturing jobs open in my area that go unfilled because they cannot find the people who want to work hard, starting at $10/hr without benefits.
Sounds like those employers are either getting by just fine without those employees or if they do need those employees they better start making better offers to get those positions filled. The other day I drove past a burger king and they had a big banner out front offering $15+/hr to work for them flipping burgers.
That said I agree minimum wage hasn't kept up with inflation but worse than that is that college costs have vastly outstripped inflation so people's ability to better themselves is decreased. For example I compared my tuition for the class I took at the local technical college (DCTC) and compared it to what I paid in 2001 with my last year getting my BS in CS (Mankato State University, Go Mavs!) I paid 4x the amount per credit at DCTC. The interesting part about this is that I DCTC like all community and technical colleges in the MNSCU system have a lower tutition than the Universities, like Mankato, do. I looked quickly and saw that inflation was 35% over that time so in 2001 dollars I still paid about 3x per credit today at DCTC than I did at Mankato in 2001. I do feel sympathy for those who can't afford college and actually are trying as I was able to pay for my BS working at a gas station and later u-haul making $13.25 and $15.50 part time back then which was really good pay then.
Like others I had to look that up but the makers name sounded familar and then I got the this text on wiki:
One of the controversial claims of his last years was that of being able to build a land clock more accurate than any competing design. Specifically, he claimed to have designed a clock capable of keeping accurate to within one second over a span of 100 days.
And I remembered reading about it when someone did finally build his clock and it turned out he was right.
It starts with non-religious elite private schools. If your family can afford college level tuition for a K-12 education, there's a tacit agreement that one of the elite universities will have a spot for you. (Seriously, one school near us charges almost $40K for grade school tuition, but it's in the top 15 or so among elite boarding schools.) If you can get into and graduate from a Harvard, Yale, Princeton or similar, the school and its alumni network will not let you fail.
I've noticed something along this line as well having gotten to know one of my son's friends and his family over the last year or so. From outwards appearances he fits the stereotype of the black kid who is destine to fail. His mom, baby sister, himself, and a couple of cousins live at grandma's house, little sister has a different father than him, and neither dad is around. In actuality he is a really smart kid but hasn't been afforded many opportunities to learn anything other than what is taught at public school. Even comparing him to my kids there was a huge difference as mine have things like music lessons and have a bunch of people who can teach them all sorts of things and take them all sorts of places even if we are not the private tutors and elite school type my kids had a lot more opportunities than he did.
I first met him when his grandmother came over because I was taking a class with her and she wanted me to help her with her class project and he came along. To keep him busy for a while I handed him a planetary gear system similar to that in a car's automatic transmission I built out of legos to show my kids how one works and told my oldest to help him figure out how it works if he gets stuck figuring that it would keep him occupied for a while. That only lasted about 10 minutes before he had a good idea of what was going on and wanted something else so I went and found a lego mechanical clock I had made as well to show my kids how things work for him to figure out. It isn't that mom or grandma didn't want him to not learn things it was just they lacked the knowledge of even how to expose him to things.
Fast forward about a year now and he has gotten involved in cub scouts which exposes him to a bunch of new stuff, likes to come over to be with my oldest and do things he otherwise wouldn't that really are sneaky ways to educate them, and has someone who he can ask about math and science. He is doing better in school and has been placed in the advanced group or regular group instead of the low or regular one and has found that he has an interest in mechanical things. Even last nigh when he was over finishing his pinewood derby car he got to learn something when we went to test it, find piece of masonite to lean up against a wall in the basement for it to roll down and then across the floor, and I pushed some wheels into block of wood that I quickly hollowed out and raced them as we made changes to the block of wood. Now I could show him how putting different amount of weight in the car affected how fast it would reach the other side of the basement. Showed him that putting the weight in a different spot affects it and how aerodynamics also affects it. Stealth learning at its best and seems to work well with boys.
I liked one of my college jobs at the gas station working overnights. Sell the drunks and stoners lotto tickets and smokes occasionally and spend the rest of my time studying.
Heck, it's also useful if you can connect to control it even when weather conditions make it too hazardous to travel on-site
Operators have worked shifts that last longer than a day. If a storm is coming in very often the power company will put a second set of operators up in a hotel within walking distance (often just a couple hundred meters) so that they can rotate people in and out as needed. This would also hold for having a second set of operators at the backup site as well, so there would be 4 sets of operators ready to go in these cases.
[1] You could do that with suitable VPNing over the public internet. That way you benefit from its extensive reach, its cheap price, its resilience, the rapid repair time that ISPs offer. All you need to build is a network connection from each of your grid nodes to the nearest internet.
Not done in the US and not allowed by regulation.
[2] Or you could do it with dedicated leased lines that aren't part of the internet. You'll pay a heck of a lot more, and loads of grid nodes won't have convenient connection.
This is done but usually only between main and backup control centers.
[3] Or you could put up your own network. (You're a power-grid so you're used to putting up networks!) But this isn't your core competence, will suffer from longer outages, and will be most expensive
How do you think they are currently getting the data from substations and other devices. It isn't like DNP, Modbus, and ICCP haven't been around for ages and run just fine over the old serial connections that the power companies put in originally. Often they now have a serial to ethernet aggregators and then run just one line back but the power companies do know how to do this and do it well. For added redundancy you can also have microwave link from substations back to the control center which is often the case.
Bear in mind that every subcontractor who prepares a bid using the public internet will produce a *LOWER* bid with *INCREASED* functionality. The only way that a higher-priced bid will ever win is if they someone demonstrate that the downside costs (in terms of expected cost of future hacks) will be significantly larger than the higher upfront bid. And any such attempted demonstration would be instantly met by the answer "why not use just a secure VPN to get best robustness at the cheapest price?"
Yes a contractor could bid that and it may appeal to some of the dumber upper management at a grid operator. The problem is that there are smart people and regulations that would very quickly stamp that dumbness into the dirt. Bring up that doing so is a NERC CIP violation and carries a $1,000,000/day fine and you are talking real money real fast.
So I think that infrastructure like this *can* and *should* be connected to the internet.
Then it is a good thing that you don't work in that industry as that statement proves. You would have had that drilled out of you in your first NERC CIP annual training.
Between my wife and myself we have done a total of 2 in our lives. I find that there are only a few companies that need the screws put to them but the ones that do really need it. Like when I ended up taking an insurance company to small claims court for the fair market value of a totaled vehicle after trying to resolve it out of court for 6 months as the car sat in storage, paid for by the insurance company. The judge ended up excoriating them for not settling as I presented overwhelming evidence of the fair market value beyond just the KBB and NADA guide value and that their valuation was extremely dodgy as they were triple deducting things and using dissimilar vehicles. It isn't like I was even asking for some silly amount as KBB and NADA valued the car at $3100 and $3150 but insurance was only offering $1200. Then there was the collections agency that screwed the pooch and tried to collect a debt from me where only the person's first name matched mine.
You'd probably be surprised just HOW vulnerable most of the world's critical infrastructure really is.
Concerning power grids, no I wouldn't and people in the US and Canada would actually be surprised how well protected the bulk electrical system is here when compared to what is reported. Even small operators like to follow the security requirements that the large ones have to even if they don't as it does allow them to say that they are following the industry best practices which is a good CYA from lawsuits. Other countries are a different story and vary greatly but even those who hadn't cared much before are coming around after the Dec. 23, 2015 hack of the Ukranian grid caused a lot of European companies to collectively shit themselves.
I'll just leave a fewthingshere for you. In the US and Canada those are either the regulations for cyber security of our power grid or specific requirements being written into contracts for new control systems for our power grid. All of them have to follow NERC CIP with the the other 2 being optional but widely used as a CYA. The Europeans do not have such requirements and it varies from country to country but those that do have regulations they are often very far behind even previous version of NERC CIP. That is not to say that those make you secure but they do offer a good start and following any one of those documents would provide more security than the preferred PCI DSS standard that everyone outside of power grid world thinks is great and the be all end all.
Oh come on it isn't like they could just create some tz data files and update that. How would the system ever know what one to use and how could users be expected to keep them up to date?
Sounds like how we ended up canceling our news paper subscription a couple of months ago. I wonder if most people just don't know about chargebacks so companies think they can just fuck over people and get away with it most of the time or if they just assume most people will just take it. Because of the ability to issue a chargeback and other protections I try to run everything I can through my credit card. It gets paid off in full, current outstanding balance not just previous statement balance, each month so it isn't like it costs me anything to use it.
Use cases like yours and mine where I have a lake property 2.25 hours away where I have to tow stuff to and there isn't electricity on site are not something EVs can meet now in the future maybe but then we are a limited few. That said you have people like my wife who 90% of the time drives 5 miles a day and the rest of the time drives at most 60 miles a day can get by with an EV without issue. My mother, step dad, step mom, sister, mother-in-law, and father-in-law could have their entire driving needs met by just about any EV available now (maybe not the volt without it going to gas mode). So in my immediate family only myself, my father, and my brother-in-law who can't meet all our vehicle needs with an EV. Even then my father would only need a non EV to tow his race car to tracks as he doesn't have a long commute and everything he needs is close by otherwise. So that leaves myself with my 64 mile daily commute plus what ever else I have do that day, and my brother-in-law who fixes commercial restaurant equipment and drives from job to job in a big ass van all day.
The Mona Lisa and the Venus de Milo were really the only spots where there really was a shit ton of people so while I walked by them and "saw" them it was hard to appreciate them because of the number of people. My favorite painting in the Louvre is The Virgin of the Rocks and like most of the other paintings and art all that there is the velvet rope to keep people away. The thought of how much trouble I would I get in if I touched it did cross my mind. If one really wanted to get away from people there is always the early christian section. The Louvre is a wonderful museum to go to but if all you want to do is see the Mona Lisa or Venus de Milo don't bother. It is truly huge so even if there are a lot of people they are spread out there. I took 2 days open to close to check things out and those were hot humid days as the Louvre has air conditioning unlike a lot of buildings in Paris. I lived there at the time so I could afford to take my time at places. Also I highly recommend seeing the Bastille Day parade down the Champs-Élysées and then fireworks at Champ de Mars. If you are into military history I would highly recommend going to Hôtel des Invalides. Instead if one wants to nerd out there is always Musée des Arts et Métiers.
I don't believe the neighbors up at my lake place have AC but then in the summer when it gets oppressive hot and humid (I've been up there when the dew point was in the upper 70s and 80s) the thing to do is go out into the lake and sit in an innertube over the nice cool spring that feeds the lake and just fish and/or drink. There is a nice breeze that comes off the lake most of the time that goes right into our properties as well. A good wood stove + fan can and does provide a lot of heat. As I will be using my property as a recreational one I won't need AC but a couple of ceiling fans, lights, fridge, microwave, hotplate, toaster oven for the electrical things. I would plan on having a nice wood stove for heat up there since that would just make sense given the fuel is free up there.
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When you say Technical College, do you mean like ITT/DeVry (sp?).
No not like one of those dodgy operators. In Minnesota as part of one of my state's university systems (MNSCU) we have a number of vocational and technical colleges that offer a number of programs designed to actually educate people in practical skills and trades. In my area the 2 major ones that are part of the MNSCU system are Dakota County Technical College and also Hennepin Technical College. The highest degree offered at either one is an applied associates but they also offer shorter programs for various certifications. We also have another Vo-Tech Dunwoody that is really good even if they are a private institution but unlike the ITT/DeVry they actually educate their students and they do work with Hennepin Tech to share resources. The tuition at Dunwoody is more than at Hennepin but then Dunwoody doesn't get the state aid either. They have to compete for students so it can't be too out of line with what the state schools are charging. All of these are regionally accredited, not nationally, institutions that in most cases have been around for a long time.
MNSCU also operates a large number of community colleges and I think 7 universities that offer bachelors, masters, and PhDs. The community and technical colleges are lumped together tuition wise and the universities are all lumped together. The other nice thing is that credits at any of MNSCU schools will transfer to any other one which is nice as it makes taking classes easier and makes it easier to get your degree. I also know that when I was in high school my school district had a post secondary program and for those who wanted to go learn a trade could go over to Dakota County Tech and get a head start on that program before they graduated high school or if you were planning on going to college you could go and take classes at Inver Hills or Normandale community college. The classes counted towards your high school work but you also got college credit for it and the school district paid for it. I took advantage of it most of my senior year and took a full year of college calculus (no AP test for me), full year of calculus based physics, a world history class, an English composition class, a speech class and a college statistics class (not calculus based). Add in the AP European history, AP biology, and AP chemistry that I had taken my junior year and I started college with sophomore standing at no cost to me. I now wonder if they still have the post secondary program because it really would be a shame if they didn't as it provided a lot of opportunity.
This goes for trade schools as well: we really DO need more welders and machinists, but the classes are half-full. . .
Who was telling you those lies. Every high school teacher and guidance counselor says you will never get ahead if you don't go to a real university and get a 4 year degree. I mean who would want to go to the local Vo-Tech and take a 2 year program and exit it being a journeyman machinists and get paid $150,000+ a year starting likely with multiple job offers as that is just a myth. Same thing with other skilled trades, there is no money in them or jobs to be had. Or that is what all the kids hear when they are in high school.
Sadly that isn't far from how things are in schools, I remember hearing that in the 90s when I was in high school and I doubt it has changed. I run into a lot of smug people who think that they are better than those who have that training. I then like to trot my neighbors as examples, one is a master mechanic and he is making close to $200k a year, another one is semi retired general contractor who will do emergency plumbing repair on Sunday at hourly rates that rival those of a decent lawyer. As the general contractor one is self employed he gets to keep what he charges. Then there is my brother in-law who does restaurant equipment repair who pulls in well of $100k a year as well. I keep telling my kids that once they are done with high school they will need some sort of additional training be it getting an apprenticeship, going to Vo-Tech, going to a trade school, or going and getting a college degree because just having a high school diploma is only good for wiping your ass with now.
My dorm room had 2 "movable" beds, 2 desks, 2 chests of drawers, a sink with a mirror above it and a small closet. By movable I mean you could disassemble them move the parts around and put them back together in another location. The most efficient arrangement we came up with was to loft both beds with one on each side of the room on either side of the window, put a sofa under one, the 2 chests of drawers under the other so you could put a TV on top of them. Then you put your desk between your bed and either the sink or closet. Under the window between the beds there was just enough space for a mini fridge. The rooms were the standard poured concrete walls and were in the 10'x10' or 12'x12' size range. The only way you ended up with only one person in the room was if you were the one guy or girl who there just wasn't someone to put in your room or if you roommate dropped out and left it vacant for the rest of the semester but even then if there are people in overflow they would move them in as spots became available.
Sounds like your food was a similar fare to what was offered when I was there. Every thing was over cooked and mostly under spiced and over salted, unless it was crusted in rosemary in which case it was drowned in it. I still can't stand rosemary to this day. The salad bar was the only respite from overly dry food.
$47/credit is still pretty good. I paid $167/credit at the local technical college, plus associated fees which brought it closer to $190/credit, for the class I finished last December. That is also the same rate that is charged at the community colleges as well as they are part of the same system. I paid some thing similar to your $47/credit when I got my BS in CS and that was back in '01.
The last time I looked up data on this in my state I found the funding info for the University of Minnesota system, for some reason finding this information is almost impossible and what you find is opaque as hell, and the state of Minnesota basically funded it the tune of about $10,000 per student. That was just the total amount from the state divided by students enrolled as it didn't have info on the number of full time students, out of state students, international students, etc. Even recently I looked at what I had paid for classes I took at a MNSCU university (Mankato State) in 2001 and compared it to what I spent taking a course at the local MNSCU technical college (DCTC) and per credit hour DCTC was 4x the cost. Granted there was was inflation over that time (about 35%) so in 2001 dollars DCTC was about 3x as expensive. Now here's the kicker, DCTC tunition is cheaper than Mankato's as the community and technical colleges are the real low cost options as the highest degree they offer is an associates while the universities in the MNSCU system will offer up to a PhD. When I was going to school in 01 I believe the state paid about 1/3 of the tuition cost so unless the state is now charging schools the cost shouldn't have gone up as much as it has.
There are thousands of manufacturing jobs open in my area that go unfilled because they cannot find the people who want to work hard, starting at $10/hr without benefits.
Sounds like those employers are either getting by just fine without those employees or if they do need those employees they better start making better offers to get those positions filled. The other day I drove past a burger king and they had a big banner out front offering $15+/hr to work for them flipping burgers.
That said I agree minimum wage hasn't kept up with inflation but worse than that is that college costs have vastly outstripped inflation so people's ability to better themselves is decreased. For example I compared my tuition for the class I took at the local technical college (DCTC) and compared it to what I paid in 2001 with my last year getting my BS in CS (Mankato State University, Go Mavs!) I paid 4x the amount per credit at DCTC. The interesting part about this is that I DCTC like all community and technical colleges in the MNSCU system have a lower tutition than the Universities, like Mankato, do. I looked quickly and saw that inflation was 35% over that time so in 2001 dollars I still paid about 3x per credit today at DCTC than I did at Mankato in 2001. I do feel sympathy for those who can't afford college and actually are trying as I was able to pay for my BS working at a gas station and later u-haul making $13.25 and $15.50 part time back then which was really good pay then.
Don't feel bad someone else has ruined the color of the bag on my Kirby vacuum
What the fuck. Now windows will come with its own fucking version of Bonzi Buddy.
So you are implying that the Prince of Darkness Lucas Electric was involved in making these satellites?
One of the controversial claims of his last years was that of being able to build a land clock more accurate than any competing design. Specifically, he claimed to have designed a clock capable of keeping accurate to within one second over a span of 100 days.
And I remembered reading about it when someone did finally build his clock and it turned out he was right.
It starts with non-religious elite private schools. If your family can afford college level tuition for a K-12 education, there's a tacit agreement that one of the elite universities will have a spot for you. (Seriously, one school near us charges almost $40K for grade school tuition, but it's in the top 15 or so among elite boarding schools.) If you can get into and graduate from a Harvard, Yale, Princeton or similar, the school and its alumni network will not let you fail.
I've noticed something along this line as well having gotten to know one of my son's friends and his family over the last year or so. From outwards appearances he fits the stereotype of the black kid who is destine to fail. His mom, baby sister, himself, and a couple of cousins live at grandma's house, little sister has a different father than him, and neither dad is around. In actuality he is a really smart kid but hasn't been afforded many opportunities to learn anything other than what is taught at public school. Even comparing him to my kids there was a huge difference as mine have things like music lessons and have a bunch of people who can teach them all sorts of things and take them all sorts of places even if we are not the private tutors and elite school type my kids had a lot more opportunities than he did.
I first met him when his grandmother came over because I was taking a class with her and she wanted me to help her with her class project and he came along. To keep him busy for a while I handed him a planetary gear system similar to that in a car's automatic transmission I built out of legos to show my kids how one works and told my oldest to help him figure out how it works if he gets stuck figuring that it would keep him occupied for a while. That only lasted about 10 minutes before he had a good idea of what was going on and wanted something else so I went and found a lego mechanical clock I had made as well to show my kids how things work for him to figure out. It isn't that mom or grandma didn't want him to not learn things it was just they lacked the knowledge of even how to expose him to things.
Fast forward about a year now and he has gotten involved in cub scouts which exposes him to a bunch of new stuff, likes to come over to be with my oldest and do things he otherwise wouldn't that really are sneaky ways to educate them, and has someone who he can ask about math and science. He is doing better in school and has been placed in the advanced group or regular group instead of the low or regular one and has found that he has an interest in mechanical things. Even last nigh when he was over finishing his pinewood derby car he got to learn something when we went to test it, find piece of masonite to lean up against a wall in the basement for it to roll down and then across the floor, and I pushed some wheels into block of wood that I quickly hollowed out and raced them as we made changes to the block of wood. Now I could show him how putting different amount of weight in the car affected how fast it would reach the other side of the basement. Showed him that putting the weight in a different spot affects it and how aerodynamics also affects it. Stealth learning at its best and seems to work well with boys.
I liked one of my college jobs at the gas station working overnights. Sell the drunks and stoners lotto tickets and smokes occasionally and spend the rest of my time studying.
Heck, it's also useful if you can connect to control it even when weather conditions make it too hazardous to travel on-site
Operators have worked shifts that last longer than a day. If a storm is coming in very often the power company will put a second set of operators up in a hotel within walking distance (often just a couple hundred meters) so that they can rotate people in and out as needed. This would also hold for having a second set of operators at the backup site as well, so there would be 4 sets of operators ready to go in these cases.
[1] You could do that with suitable VPNing over the public internet. That way you benefit from its extensive reach, its cheap price, its resilience, the rapid repair time that ISPs offer. All you need to build is a network connection from each of your grid nodes to the nearest internet.
Not done in the US and not allowed by regulation.
[2] Or you could do it with dedicated leased lines that aren't part of the internet. You'll pay a heck of a lot more, and loads of grid nodes won't have convenient connection.
This is done but usually only between main and backup control centers.
[3] Or you could put up your own network. (You're a power-grid so you're used to putting up networks!) But this isn't your core competence, will suffer from longer outages, and will be most expensive
How do you think they are currently getting the data from substations and other devices. It isn't like DNP, Modbus, and ICCP haven't been around for ages and run just fine over the old serial connections that the power companies put in originally. Often they now have a serial to ethernet aggregators and then run just one line back but the power companies do know how to do this and do it well. For added redundancy you can also have microwave link from substations back to the control center which is often the case.
Bear in mind that every subcontractor who prepares a bid using the public internet will produce a *LOWER* bid with *INCREASED* functionality. The only way that a higher-priced bid will ever win is if they someone demonstrate that the downside costs (in terms of expected cost of future hacks) will be significantly larger than the higher upfront bid. And any such attempted demonstration would be instantly met by the answer "why not use just a secure VPN to get best robustness at the cheapest price?"
Yes a contractor could bid that and it may appeal to some of the dumber upper management at a grid operator. The problem is that there are smart people and regulations that would very quickly stamp that dumbness into the dirt. Bring up that doing so is a NERC CIP violation and carries a $1,000,000/day fine and you are talking real money real fast.
So I think that infrastructure like this *can* and *should* be connected to the internet.
Then it is a good thing that you don't work in that industry as that statement proves. You would have had that drilled out of you in your first NERC CIP annual training.
Between my wife and myself we have done a total of 2 in our lives. I find that there are only a few companies that need the screws put to them but the ones that do really need it. Like when I ended up taking an insurance company to small claims court for the fair market value of a totaled vehicle after trying to resolve it out of court for 6 months as the car sat in storage, paid for by the insurance company. The judge ended up excoriating them for not settling as I presented overwhelming evidence of the fair market value beyond just the KBB and NADA guide value and that their valuation was extremely dodgy as they were triple deducting things and using dissimilar vehicles. It isn't like I was even asking for some silly amount as KBB and NADA valued the car at $3100 and $3150 but insurance was only offering $1200. Then there was the collections agency that screwed the pooch and tried to collect a debt from me where only the person's first name matched mine.
You'd probably be surprised just HOW vulnerable most of the world's critical infrastructure really is.
Concerning power grids, no I wouldn't and people in the US and Canada would actually be surprised how well protected the bulk electrical system is here when compared to what is reported. Even small operators like to follow the security requirements that the large ones have to even if they don't as it does allow them to say that they are following the industry best practices which is a good CYA from lawsuits. Other countries are a different story and vary greatly but even those who hadn't cared much before are coming around after the Dec. 23, 2015 hack of the Ukranian grid caused a lot of European companies to collectively shit themselves.
I'll just leave a few things here for you. In the US and Canada those are either the regulations for cyber security of our power grid or specific requirements being written into contracts for new control systems for our power grid. All of them have to follow NERC CIP with the the other 2 being optional but widely used as a CYA. The Europeans do not have such requirements and it varies from country to country but those that do have regulations they are often very far behind even previous version of NERC CIP. That is not to say that those make you secure but they do offer a good start and following any one of those documents would provide more security than the preferred PCI DSS standard that everyone outside of power grid world thinks is great and the be all end all.
Then there are used DVD sales, where the studio gets none of the revenue after the first sale.
Oh come on who would ever go down to the pawn shop on Tuesdays and get 2 DVDs for $2.
Mostly just a tongue in cheek comment.
Oh come on it isn't like they could just create some tz data files and update that. How would the system ever know what one to use and how could users be expected to keep them up to date?
So you don't black hole those IPs and hosts at the router/firewall level?
Sounds like how we ended up canceling our news paper subscription a couple of months ago. I wonder if most people just don't know about chargebacks so companies think they can just fuck over people and get away with it most of the time or if they just assume most people will just take it. Because of the ability to issue a chargeback and other protections I try to run everything I can through my credit card. It gets paid off in full, current outstanding balance not just previous statement balance, each month so it isn't like it costs me anything to use it.
Use cases like yours and mine where I have a lake property 2.25 hours away where I have to tow stuff to and there isn't electricity on site are not something EVs can meet now in the future maybe but then we are a limited few. That said you have people like my wife who 90% of the time drives 5 miles a day and the rest of the time drives at most 60 miles a day can get by with an EV without issue. My mother, step dad, step mom, sister, mother-in-law, and father-in-law could have their entire driving needs met by just about any EV available now (maybe not the volt without it going to gas mode). So in my immediate family only myself, my father, and my brother-in-law who can't meet all our vehicle needs with an EV. Even then my father would only need a non EV to tow his race car to tracks as he doesn't have a long commute and everything he needs is close by otherwise. So that leaves myself with my 64 mile daily commute plus what ever else I have do that day, and my brother-in-law who fixes commercial restaurant equipment and drives from job to job in a big ass van all day.
Furthermore, time is needlessly wasted on combating malware attacks that could have been avoided by upgrading to Windows 10.
I assume that they mean all the time and effort people put into preventing Win10 from installing by hook or by crook.
The Mona Lisa and the Venus de Milo were really the only spots where there really was a shit ton of people so while I walked by them and "saw" them it was hard to appreciate them because of the number of people. My favorite painting in the Louvre is The Virgin of the Rocks and like most of the other paintings and art all that there is the velvet rope to keep people away. The thought of how much trouble I would I get in if I touched it did cross my mind. If one really wanted to get away from people there is always the early christian section. The Louvre is a wonderful museum to go to but if all you want to do is see the Mona Lisa or Venus de Milo don't bother. It is truly huge so even if there are a lot of people they are spread out there. I took 2 days open to close to check things out and those were hot humid days as the Louvre has air conditioning unlike a lot of buildings in Paris. I lived there at the time so I could afford to take my time at places. Also I highly recommend seeing the Bastille Day parade down the Champs-Élysées and then fireworks at Champ de Mars. If you are into military history I would highly recommend going to Hôtel des Invalides. Instead if one wants to nerd out there is always Musée des Arts et Métiers.
Also a desktop won't cook your nuts like that laptop that runs into thermal limits shortly after booting.
I don't believe the neighbors up at my lake place have AC but then in the summer when it gets oppressive hot and humid (I've been up there when the dew point was in the upper 70s and 80s) the thing to do is go out into the lake and sit in an innertube over the nice cool spring that feeds the lake and just fish and/or drink. There is a nice breeze that comes off the lake most of the time that goes right into our properties as well. A good wood stove + fan can and does provide a lot of heat. As I will be using my property as a recreational one I won't need AC but a couple of ceiling fans, lights, fridge, microwave, hotplate, toaster oven for the electrical things. I would plan on having a nice wood stove for heat up there since that would just make sense given the fuel is free up there.