I bet a lot of people will be saying that right about now.
All without realising that, if you had done so, you could have saved them.
At the time I looked at it and decided that $7500 buys me a lot of tools - and access to them in my garage is a lot more convenient. And I didn't have any projects planned for the next year that I'd be able to transport to there.
I am sad to see them go. Just as I was sad when I heard that the Sawdust Shop had gone out of business. (Not I lost/wasted $7500 sad - but still sad)
Considering the high cost of these vehicles (especially Teslas), the effect of the current subsidy system is to transfer tax dollars to the already well-off. There are no middle or low-income families that drive these vehicles, only upper-class.
You only need $56,200 of taxable income (MFJ) to have $7500 in tax liability. That's middle income by most definitions. (slightly above $46k median of all US households, slightly below $67k median of dual-earner households)
A Pacifica Hybrid costs $44k (plus tax, registration, etc). Take out $7k of that, and you're at $37k for a nice minivan. $37k is a reasonable price for a minivan.
I have seen 'middle income' defined as being the middle three quintiles of income. I've also seen it as currently people in US are 29% lower, 51% middle, 20% upper. (not sure how they determined that) By either definition I am definitely middle income - and I have been planning to buy a Pacifica Hybrid and use the $7.5k tax credit. And I know I'm not the only family that's right in that middle-income category and looking at buying one.
So does "public power" work better? No, not really.
Well where I live it does indeed work better. My city owns the "power company" that provides electric power to the people/businesses that are here. And it's significantly cheaper (and from anecdotes, better service) than the investor-owned utility that operates in the cities surrounding mine. The IOU in the cities next door is Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E). For a similar house in PG&E area vs. in my city - the house using PG&E will spend more than 2x for electricity because they charge more.
And I haven't seen any evidence that my city subsidizes the electric rates or electric infrastructure via property tax (or other tax) proceeds.
One side-effect of this cracking-down on working by 'gig' by the various governments, is how it may affect your average gigging musician/band playing the local bar/club. If local bars/clubs have to treat bands/musicians as employees, I think that it only extends to a musician if the musician band ONLY works for one club owner. Or the musician works for multiple club owners, but all their contracts are through one booking agent and the booking agent sets the prices/compensation.
I think that most musicians playing multiple clubs, etc will continue to be independent contractors. They aren't really in a grey area, unlike Uber drivers or other similar jobs. And I am sure there are some musicians who are regular W-2 employees in the US - they aren't the ones playing gigs at multiple clubs, they're working for one employer consistently. (ex. DJ that works at a club every night. Or instrumentalist working for a symphony or possibly even a studio. Those are more in that grey-area, and might be employees)
More seriously, the Bay Area no longer looks like a tech hub. I remember in the 90s, when I lived there, wherever I drove around Santa Clara, Milpitas or Sunnyvale, a company that I may have read about or whose ad I may have seen in BYTE or PC Magazine would suddenly pop out of nowhere. That's what would scream out tech to me. If you drove up the Bayshore Freeway near Lawrence Expressway, you could see the S3 headquarters and Microcenter right from the freeway.
Microcenter closed a while ago - they always seemed pretty empty when I went there - I think internet shopping really took it's toll on that type of business and there was already Fry's as an entrenched competitor pretty close by. I never really noticed S3. But the building that has KPMG shares that space with Broadcom. The next tower has CA technologies and then one next to that is Sophos. And a little farther south-east you can see Intel.
Across the highway from KPMG is Ericsson and (soon) AMD.
Between KPMG and Microcenter are EMC and Intel Security (I think Yahoo was in one of those buildings too a while ago) I'm not sure that those names are actually visible from 101 though.
If you go off on some of the sidestreets near there you see lots and lots of other tech companies. nVidia has big construction a mile away, Apple's spaceship is only a few miles. Those I think are bigger names now. Some are still around that I think were bigger names years ago - like namco or applied materials.
But all in all, I find it still looks very much the tech hub.
The Intel Museum is at 2200 Mission College Blvd., Santa Clara, CA. It's essentially through the front door of the headquarters building and off to the left. It has some stuff about Intel, some about semiconductors in general, some about computers. Some of the displays are somewhat interactive. Others are more typical museum with a group of objects and some text about the objects.
I think the "bunny suit" is something people find interesting. And (hopefully) here's a video clip with the bunny suit in the museum: http://video.foxbusiness.com/v...
"A rig hauling 80,000 lbs is going to have a constant power requirement of about 150HP to maintain 65MPH on flat, level ground. No help from aerodynamics or bearing drag"
That is nonsense. If there is no drag: then there is no power requirement at all as soon as the car/truck has reached its speed.
He didn't say no drag, he just explicitly removed 2 of the components. By my calculations using http://ecomodder.com/forum/too... show 62HP needed for.0045 rolling resistance of 40 tons at 65mph. (.0045 is based on lower end of range for truck tires from wikipedia)
100HP or even 150HP is within the range of possible requirements. I'd expect even significantly more than 150HP needs to be available for when going up a long hill.
But I dont' see why the math doesn't "add up" - even if we use 150HP. Even with 150HP, and a range (on just battery) of 190miles, the article says "travel up to 1,200 miles with the natural gas range extender" The point isn't that it doesn't run on fossil fuels (it explicitly does) The point is that it can run 1200 miles between refueling and do so at much lower fuel costs. 1200 miles would be 18 hours at 65mph; and truck drivers can only drive for 11 hours within a 24 hour period, so that's more than enough from that perspective - and 1200 miles will get you pretty far - enough that you wouldn't have to have the refueling points be completely ubiquitous.
A friend of mine had her eggs frozen because she was going to go through chemo.
She was married, one kid and diagnosed with breast cancer. Before she started chemo, the doctors told them that there was a chance of infertility afterward. So she had her eggs frozen (after fertilizing them - apparently they do better that way) She had a masectomy and chemo. And now she's had a 2nd kid. (I don't know if they used a frozen egg or not. I don't think there's a polite way to ask that question, and it doesn't matter)
My understanding is that this policy would have helped her pay for the procedures. I think that a lot of other insurance coverage plans it wouldn't be covered. And instead the family would have to look at how to pay for it out of their pocket.
how to apply the "disable the broken feature" fix - without installing windows
I would do some searches for updating BIOS from linux - ex: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Flashing_BIOS_from_Linux
Or doing a microcode update: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Microcode
Until there is a chip for sale that really supports TSX I wouldn't expect anyone to be distributing software that uses it. So I wouldn't be too worried about it yet.
Though, one thing I don't get about this challenge - they're using they want 2kVA output, but then demanding 50W/in^3 with a max size of 40in^3, meaning you have to provide 2000W.
What is it you don't get? Requirements are >=50W/in^3 and <= 40in^3. I would expect some of the entrants will exceed those requirements - doing more W/in^3 and/or less space.
Covenants are usually imposed by someone else, usually the local government, to allow the project to go forward. If they were easily changeable by the HOA it would be a bylaw not a covenant.
Covenants are usually created by the HOA - usually by the developer who is creating the homes and has 100% control of the HOA at it's beginning. If the local government wants to impose a restriction, they create ordinances.
To change covenants usually isn't "easy" - but it's doable. The problem is getting everyone to agree to the change. (or at least a lot of the people). For example here's an article on doing it in CO: http://www.cohoalaw.com/your-governing-documents-should-your-covenants-be-amended.html
The difference between by-laws and covenants is that the bylaws are for the group of people - they specify how often meetings should be, how many people on the HOA board, etc. And those bylaws are often more easily modified. Covenants are attached to the property and are just about what can be done with the properties (ex. no raising farm animals on the property, all utilities must be buried, etc)
As for the OP - I'd try a letter to the cable company from all the homeowners who are interested - give the cable company the names and addresses of the 15 properties who are planning to sign up, and most likely that'll get them to consider it. If not - paying for it yourself seems like a good option...
No-till doesn't mean RoundUp Ready seeds. It's common to do no-till planting with same seeds that have been used before in modern tillage planting methods. If using Roundup, the field is sprayed before planting, or before the seeds emerge from the ground (same as modern tillage method) And postemergence other herbicides are used (ex. a broadleaf killing herbicide on corn fields) Here's a list of "do's" for notill that came up in a very quick google search: http://www.extension.purdue.edu/extmedia/AY/AY-313.pdf
There are other studies looking at how no-till allows for use of fewer herbicides.
Are body shops going to be able to fix the composite panels? Corvette body shops have been doing fixes for fiberglass panels for years. I would expect carbon fiber repairs to be very very similar. Possibly even using fiberglass cloth in non-visible areas to repair the carbon fiber. Sure fiberglass might be a little heavier, but no one's going to care about the extra 3 ounces when it's an extra pound of epoxy on that crack/hole. And if it's $50 cheaper, probably the body shop will take the cheaper method.
You don't even have to go non-flammable - large transformers that you might see next to buildings have been using oil as a coolant and insulation for decades. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transformer_oil
I can understand if TSMC, or anyone else, were moving from 8" to 12" wafers. This is going to 18" wafers. (~17.7 inch - close enough that I'd assume it'd be called "18 inch") 300mm wafer are sometimes called 12" wafers. And is what many/most use now. If someone were moving from 8" to 12" (200mm to 300mm) it's not news at this point - they're years behind others in moving.
get a program to disable the keyboard. For example: http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/11570/disable-the-keyboard-with-a-keyboard-shortcut-in-windows/
It won't solve problem of her hitting the power button - but depending on the model, you may be able to disable the functionality of the power button in a separate program.
So as long as she is just mashing keys, not popping keys off the keyboard, that should solve your problem.
If you really want a separate machine, so you can read a recipe for dinner on your laptop (or whatever) while she interacts with grandma/grandpa, there have been other suggestions that look like good options.
You don't seem to realize how the economics of this really works out. Nobody will set up a production run before hand and say "this line only needs to produce 3 usable cores". Nobody will do this because no fabrication process has 100 % yield... in fact, most cutting-edge runs have far less.
I don't think you realize how this works out in practice.
In practice there are multiple stages to testing. And a part may be down-binned for numerous reasons. 1> Frequency - ie. some part of the chip doesn't function at the freq./voltage specified. 2> Power - ie. the part would function but it would consume more power than spec. 3> Functional - ie. some portion just doesn't work (ex. part of the cache is so messed up that the repairing mechanisms can't compensate, and have to disable that section of cache completely, so a part that has patterns for a 8M cache is used as a 4M cache. Or maybe one core doesn't have it's branch prediction operate properly or maybe one opcode doesn't give the right result in a certain corner-case, so one core is disabled.) 4> Supply/demand - ie. the actual yield is higher than the actual demand at the top bins, so parts have to be down-binned to meet the demand in the lower bins. This may mean that certain lots of parts - or parts with certain characteristics get run through a test program that automatically jumps to a lower bin if there is already more than enough supply at the top bins. (Testing is expensive, and if you can shorten test time by an average of 10% because on 30% of the parts shipped you shortened the test time by 30% it's a multi-million dollar benefit.)
If the parts get downbinned in an earlier stage of testing (because there are normally multiple stages) normally that portion that's disabled won't be tested at the later stages. For example, if you test at the wafer level, and determine that you need to downbin some parts because they're almost certainly going to consume too much power, you only test those parts at the lower frequency/core-count once they're in packages. Then Joe Q Hacker gets the part and re-enables a disabled core - he doesn't know how much that part was tested. It is quite possible that the core he re-enabled wasn't tested as thoroughly as the ones that were enabled when he got it. Since he's got a liquid cooled setup though, he doesn't have issues with the power dissipation - but maybe there was some other latent issue that was never even encountered.
Or maybe it gets disabled when it's socketted in a Credence Sapphire ATE (Automated Test Equipment) but the next stage is a more PC-like environment, and at that stage it already has a core disabled, so the 4th core doesn't get the full testing in that PC-like environment.
In your example you didn't put what the demand was - if the demand is 10% four-core, and 90% two-core, it makes sense that you meet demand by skipping over the four-core testing 3/4 of the time, and jump right to the 2-core testing. It'll save time, and that means it saves money because maybe you can get by with 8 ATE platforms instead of 10. And the code to implement that took maybe a month of engineering effort to implement and test (spread across 2-5 people), which is much much cheaper than even 1 ATE.
Without knowing the actual test-flow AMD uses and the yields, (neither of which will be revealed to the public) it's impossible to know how likely a core that was sold disabled is actually good, and how thoroughly that (disabled) core was tested before it was shipped out to customers.
Places like Marshall's and Kohl's have conditioned customers to expect slightly-flawed merchandise and deep discounts,
That is somewhat accurate for Marshall's but not for Kohl's. (Marshall's uses over-stocked / past-season merchandise - not so much flawed things) Kohl's is pretty much a normal department store. They have decent prices, but nothing I would call 'deep discounts'. And they don't have 'slightly flawed merchandise' as a mainstay of their store. For those not familiar with Kohl's, it is trying to fit somewhere between higher end department stores (Macy's, Nordstrom, etc.) and Target/Walmart.
I think outlet malls are really where people expect deep discounts on slightly flawed merchandise.
there's not a terribly good reason for anyone to buy one.
If they price it between dual-core and quad-core, it will be marketable IMO.
Personally, I would sell them at dual-core prices and get rid of the whole lot pronto. Sell them at dual-core prices, and you will get orders for them instead of for dual-core. This business isn't a retail shop where you can say "if it's not on the floor we don't have it - sorry" Dell/IBM/HP/whoever orders thousands of these months in advance. Why would their purchasers order dual-cores if they can get better specs for the same price? So now AMD has to use fab capacity for quad-core chips instead of dual-core chips. And that would create significant increase in their costs.
I would expect that AMD has someone looking at models of demand vs price points and what their yields are and making a pricing decision that they think makes them the most money. That might be high enough that they wind up with a little extra supply of 3core rejects than just don't get sold. Or it might be low enough that they have to make some perfectly good 4-core into 3-core. (I'd bet on the latter - they'll probably have only a little demand for quad-core, and they expect more demand for 3core - but the natural production is probably the reverse of that.)
Where I live, when you fire someone, you have to do it for cause, but you don't have to give notice or pay in lieu of notice; When you lay someone off, you can do it for any reason (or no reason), but you have to give notice or pay in lieu of notice.
Many places you do not have to fire someone for cause - you can fire them for no reason at all (but you can't fire them for a discriminatory reason - ex. age, sex, marital status, etc.)
A "lay off" usually means they are firing enough people that they have to worry about keeping themselves legal under the WARN act. http://www.doleta.gov/layoff/warn.cfm
Most companies that are possibly going to be hitting the conditions of the WARN act (closing a plant or laying off significant number of people at a given site) are going to give employees enough to stay legal under it. (60 days notice or 60 days pay/benefits) A lot of companies will even give more than that, as the managers recognize that they want to not alienate people - they want people to be willing to come back if/when things pick up again. And sometimes the severance package has additional money in it but with the condition that you do not sue. (Which gives the company a definitive cost vs. the potential of an unknown cost of a court case.)
Slashdot Mirror
I bet a lot of people will be saying that right about now.
All without realising that, if you had done so, you could have saved them.
At the time I looked at it and decided that $7500 buys me a lot of tools - and access to them in my garage is a lot more convenient.
And I didn't have any projects planned for the next year that I'd be able to transport to there.
I am sad to see them go.
Just as I was sad when I heard that the Sawdust Shop had gone out of business.
(Not I lost/wasted $7500 sad - but still sad)
But maybe if you had, they wouldn't have run out of money. Did you think of that? DID YOU!?
I know you're joking.
But I'll answer anyway.
It was $7500 for "lifetime" membership.
or $5k for 5-year pre-paid membership
https://web.archive.org/web/20...
Another article said something about them losing $30k/month in Pittsburgh.
I don't think my $7.5k would have helped much.
I am *so* glad I didn't buy a membership a year ago when they were trying to raise funds for moving the San Jose shop.
Considering the high cost of these vehicles (especially Teslas), the effect of the current subsidy system is to transfer tax dollars to the already well-off. There are no middle or low-income families that drive these vehicles, only upper-class.
You only need $56,200 of taxable income (MFJ) to have $7500 in tax liability.
That's middle income by most definitions. (slightly above $46k median of all US households, slightly below $67k median of dual-earner households)
A Pacifica Hybrid costs $44k (plus tax, registration, etc).
Take out $7k of that, and you're at $37k for a nice minivan.
$37k is a reasonable price for a minivan.
I have seen 'middle income' defined as being the middle three quintiles of income.
I've also seen it as currently people in US are 29% lower, 51% middle, 20% upper. (not sure how they determined that)
By either definition I am definitely middle income - and I have been planning to buy a Pacifica Hybrid and use the $7.5k tax credit.
And I know I'm not the only family that's right in that middle-income category and looking at buying one.
So does "public power" work better? No, not really.
Well where I live it does indeed work better.
My city owns the "power company" that provides electric power to the people/businesses that are here.
And it's significantly cheaper (and from anecdotes, better service) than the investor-owned utility that operates in the cities surrounding mine.
The IOU in the cities next door is Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E). For a similar house in PG&E area vs. in my city - the house using PG&E will spend more than 2x for electricity because they charge more.
And I haven't seen any evidence that my city subsidizes the electric rates or electric infrastructure via property tax (or other tax) proceeds.
I have it on good authority that it'll be Feb. 29th.
One side-effect of this cracking-down on working by 'gig' by the various governments, is how it may affect your average gigging musician/band playing the local bar/club. If local bars/clubs have to treat bands/musicians as employees,
I think that it only extends to a musician if the musician band ONLY works for one club owner.
Or the musician works for multiple club owners, but all their contracts are through one booking agent and the booking agent sets the prices/compensation.
I think that most musicians playing multiple clubs, etc will continue to be independent contractors. They aren't really in a grey area, unlike Uber drivers or other similar jobs.
And I am sure there are some musicians who are regular W-2 employees in the US - they aren't the ones playing gigs at multiple clubs, they're working for one employer consistently. (ex. DJ that works at a club every night. Or instrumentalist working for a symphony or possibly even a studio. Those are more in that grey-area, and might be employees)
More seriously, the Bay Area no longer looks like a tech hub. I remember in the 90s, when I lived there, wherever I drove around Santa Clara, Milpitas or Sunnyvale, a company that I may have read about or whose ad I may have seen in BYTE or PC Magazine would suddenly pop out of nowhere. That's what would scream out tech to me. If you drove up the Bayshore Freeway near Lawrence Expressway, you could see the S3 headquarters and Microcenter right from the freeway.
Microcenter closed a while ago - they always seemed pretty empty when I went there - I think internet shopping really took it's toll on that type of business and there was already Fry's as an entrenched competitor pretty close by.
I never really noticed S3.
But the building that has KPMG shares that space with Broadcom.
The next tower has CA technologies and then one next to that is Sophos.
And a little farther south-east you can see Intel.
Across the highway from KPMG is Ericsson and (soon) AMD.
Between KPMG and Microcenter are EMC and Intel Security (I think Yahoo was in one of those buildings too a while ago) I'm not sure that those names are actually visible from 101 though.
If you go off on some of the sidestreets near there you see lots and lots of other tech companies. nVidia has big construction a mile away, Apple's spaceship is only a few miles. Those I think are bigger names now. Some are still around that I think were bigger names years ago - like namco or applied materials.
But all in all, I find it still looks very much the tech hub.
The Intel Museum is at 2200 Mission College Blvd., Santa Clara, CA.
It's essentially through the front door of the headquarters building and off to the left.
It has some stuff about Intel, some about semiconductors in general, some about computers.
Some of the displays are somewhat interactive. Others are more typical museum with a group of objects and some text about the objects.
I think the "bunny suit" is something people find interesting. And (hopefully) here's a video clip with the bunny suit in the museum:
http://video.foxbusiness.com/v...
"A rig hauling 80,000 lbs is going to have a constant power requirement of about 150HP to maintain 65MPH on flat, level ground. No help from aerodynamics or bearing drag"
That is nonsense.
If there is no drag: then there is no power requirement at all as soon as the car/truck has reached its speed.
He didn't say no drag, he just explicitly removed 2 of the components. .0045 rolling resistance of 40 tons at 65mph.
By my calculations using http://ecomodder.com/forum/too... show 62HP needed for
(.0045 is based on lower end of range for truck tires from wikipedia)
100HP or even 150HP is within the range of possible requirements.
I'd expect even significantly more than 150HP needs to be available for when going up a long hill.
But I dont' see why the math doesn't "add up" - even if we use 150HP.
Even with 150HP, and a range (on just battery) of 190miles, the article says "travel up to 1,200 miles with the natural gas range extender"
The point isn't that it doesn't run on fossil fuels (it explicitly does)
The point is that it can run 1200 miles between refueling and do so at much lower fuel costs. 1200 miles would be 18 hours at 65mph; and truck drivers can only drive for 11 hours within a 24 hour period, so that's more than enough from that perspective - and 1200 miles will get you pretty far - enough that you wouldn't have to have the refueling points be completely ubiquitous.
"Dr. Ames and his coworkers" should be "Dr. King and his coworkers"
A friend of mine had her eggs frozen because she was going to go through chemo.
She was married, one kid and diagnosed with breast cancer.
Before she started chemo, the doctors told them that there was a chance of infertility afterward.
So she had her eggs frozen (after fertilizing them - apparently they do better that way)
She had a masectomy and chemo.
And now she's had a 2nd kid. (I don't know if they used a frozen egg or not. I don't think there's a polite way to ask that question, and it doesn't matter)
My understanding is that this policy would have helped her pay for the procedures.
I think that a lot of other insurance coverage plans it wouldn't be covered. And instead the family would have to look at how to pay for it out of their pocket.
Can anyone tell us a simple way to check?
Intel has on their website info on the processors.
For example, for yours (i7-4700mq) you would look at:
http://ark.intel.com/products/75117/Intel-Core-i7-4700MQ-Processor-6M-Cache-up-to-3_40-GHz
Or you can look for all products that were "formerly haswell":
http://ark.intel.com/products/codename/42174/Haswell#@All
how to apply the "disable the broken feature" fix - without installing windows
I would do some searches for updating BIOS from linux - ex:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Flashing_BIOS_from_Linux
Or doing a microcode update:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Microcode
Until there is a chip for sale that really supports TSX I wouldn't expect anyone to be distributing software that uses it. So I wouldn't be too worried about it yet.
Though, one thing I don't get about this challenge - they're using they want 2kVA output, but then demanding 50W/in^3 with a max size of 40in^3, meaning you have to provide 2000W.
What is it you don't get?
Requirements are >=50W/in^3 and <= 40in^3.
I would expect some of the entrants will exceed those requirements - doing more W/in^3 and/or less space.
You killed my father, prepare to die.
Oh - wait, you've got 7 fingers and not 6?
Oh, OK then, nevermind.
Slashdot's Beta has proved that it is possible for information to be sucked in and never get out.
WTF is up with article titles that only the first 3 words are visible because of the huge font used?
Slashdot beta - the artificial blackhole created by Dice that Slashdot will be sucked into
Covenants are usually imposed by someone else, usually the local government, to allow the project to go forward. If they were easily changeable by the HOA it would be a bylaw not a covenant.
Covenants are usually created by the HOA - usually by the developer who is creating the homes and has 100% control of the HOA at it's beginning. If the local government wants to impose a restriction, they create ordinances.
To change covenants usually isn't "easy" - but it's doable. The problem is getting everyone to agree to the change. (or at least a lot of the people).
For example here's an article on doing it in CO: http://www.cohoalaw.com/your-governing-documents-should-your-covenants-be-amended.html
The difference between by-laws and covenants is that the bylaws are for the group of people - they specify how often meetings should be, how many people on the HOA board, etc. And those bylaws are often more easily modified.
Covenants are attached to the property and are just about what can be done with the properties (ex. no raising farm animals on the property, all utilities must be buried, etc)
As for the OP - I'd try a letter to the cable company from all the homeowners who are interested - give the cable company the names and addresses of the 15 properties who are planning to sign up, and most likely that'll get them to consider it.
If not - paying for it yourself seems like a good option...
No-till doesn't mean RoundUp Ready seeds.
It's common to do no-till planting with same seeds that have been used before in modern tillage planting methods.
If using Roundup, the field is sprayed before planting, or before the seeds emerge from the ground (same as modern tillage method)
And postemergence other herbicides are used (ex. a broadleaf killing herbicide on corn fields)
Here's a list of "do's" for notill that came up in a very quick google search:
http://www.extension.purdue.edu/extmedia/AY/AY-313.pdf
There are other studies looking at how no-till allows for use of fewer herbicides.
Are body shops going to be able to fix the composite panels?
Corvette body shops have been doing fixes for fiberglass panels for years. I would expect carbon fiber repairs to be very very similar. Possibly even using fiberglass cloth in non-visible areas to repair the carbon fiber. Sure fiberglass might be a little heavier, but no one's going to care about the extra 3 ounces when it's an extra pound of epoxy on that crack/hole. And if it's $50 cheaper, probably the body shop will take the cheaper method.
One example of non-flammable oil is Silicone Oil
You don't even have to go non-flammable - large transformers that you might see next to buildings have been using oil as a coolant and insulation for decades.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transformer_oil
I can understand if TSMC, or anyone else, were moving from 8" to 12" wafers.
This is going to 18" wafers. (~17.7 inch - close enough that I'd assume it'd be called "18 inch")
300mm wafer are sometimes called 12" wafers. And is what many/most use now.
If someone were moving from 8" to 12" (200mm to 300mm) it's not news at this point - they're years behind others in moving.
get a program to disable the keyboard.
For example:
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/11570/disable-the-keyboard-with-a-keyboard-shortcut-in-windows/
It won't solve problem of her hitting the power button - but depending on the model, you may be able to disable the functionality of the power button in a separate program.
So as long as she is just mashing keys, not popping keys off the keyboard, that should solve your problem.
If you really want a separate machine, so you can read a recipe for dinner on your laptop (or whatever) while she interacts with grandma/grandpa, there have been other suggestions that look like good options.
I don't think you realize how this works out in practice.
In practice there are multiple stages to testing.
And a part may be down-binned for numerous reasons.
1> Frequency - ie. some part of the chip doesn't function at the freq./voltage specified.
2> Power - ie. the part would function but it would consume more power than spec.
3> Functional - ie. some portion just doesn't work (ex. part of the cache is so messed up that the repairing mechanisms can't compensate, and have to disable that section of cache completely, so a part that has patterns for a 8M cache is used as a 4M cache. Or maybe one core doesn't have it's branch prediction operate properly or maybe one opcode doesn't give the right result in a certain corner-case, so one core is disabled.)
4> Supply/demand - ie. the actual yield is higher than the actual demand at the top bins, so parts have to be down-binned to meet the demand in the lower bins. This may mean that certain lots of parts - or parts with certain characteristics get run through a test program that automatically jumps to a lower bin if there is already more than enough supply at the top bins. (Testing is expensive, and if you can shorten test time by an average of 10% because on 30% of the parts shipped you shortened the test time by 30% it's a multi-million dollar benefit.)
If the parts get downbinned in an earlier stage of testing (because there are normally multiple stages) normally that portion that's disabled won't be tested at the later stages. For example, if you test at the wafer level, and determine that you need to downbin some parts because they're almost certainly going to consume too much power, you only test those parts at the lower frequency/core-count once they're in packages. Then Joe Q Hacker gets the part and re-enables a disabled core - he doesn't know how much that part was tested. It is quite possible that the core he re-enabled wasn't tested as thoroughly as the ones that were enabled when he got it. Since he's got a liquid cooled setup though, he doesn't have issues with the power dissipation - but maybe there was some other latent issue that was never even encountered.
Or maybe it gets disabled when it's socketted in a Credence Sapphire ATE (Automated Test Equipment) but the next stage is a more PC-like environment, and at that stage it already has a core disabled, so the 4th core doesn't get the full testing in that PC-like environment.
In your example you didn't put what the demand was - if the demand is 10% four-core, and 90% two-core, it makes sense that you meet demand by skipping over the four-core testing 3/4 of the time, and jump right to the 2-core testing. It'll save time, and that means it saves money because maybe you can get by with 8 ATE platforms instead of 10. And the code to implement that took maybe a month of engineering effort to implement and test (spread across 2-5 people), which is much much cheaper than even 1 ATE.
Without knowing the actual test-flow AMD uses and the yields, (neither of which will be revealed to the public) it's impossible to know how likely a core that was sold disabled is actually good, and how thoroughly that (disabled) core was tested before it was shipped out to customers.
Places like Marshall's and Kohl's have conditioned customers to expect slightly-flawed merchandise and deep discounts,
That is somewhat accurate for Marshall's but not for Kohl's. (Marshall's uses over-stocked / past-season merchandise - not so much flawed things)
Kohl's is pretty much a normal department store. They have decent prices, but nothing I would call 'deep discounts'. And they don't have 'slightly flawed merchandise' as a mainstay of their store. For those not familiar with Kohl's, it is trying to fit somewhere between higher end department stores (Macy's, Nordstrom, etc.) and Target/Walmart.
I think outlet malls are really where people expect deep discounts on slightly flawed merchandise.
there's not a terribly good reason for anyone to buy one.
If they price it between dual-core and quad-core, it will be marketable IMO.
Personally, I would sell them at dual-core prices and get rid of the whole lot pronto.
Sell them at dual-core prices, and you will get orders for them instead of for dual-core.
This business isn't a retail shop where you can say "if it's not on the floor we don't have it - sorry"
Dell/IBM/HP/whoever orders thousands of these months in advance.
Why would their purchasers order dual-cores if they can get better specs for the same price?
So now AMD has to use fab capacity for quad-core chips instead of dual-core chips. And that would create significant increase in their costs.
I would expect that AMD has someone looking at models of demand vs price points and what their yields are and making a pricing decision that they think makes them the most money. That might be high enough that they wind up with a little extra supply of 3core rejects than just don't get sold. Or it might be low enough that they have to make some perfectly good 4-core into 3-core. (I'd bet on the latter - they'll probably have only a little demand for quad-core, and they expect more demand for 3core - but the natural production is probably the reverse of that.)
Where I live, when you fire someone, you have to do it for cause, but you don't have to give notice or pay in lieu of notice; When you lay someone off, you can do it for any reason (or no reason), but you have to give notice or pay in lieu of notice.
Many places you do not have to fire someone for cause - you can fire them for no reason at all (but you can't fire them for a discriminatory reason - ex. age, sex, marital status, etc.)
A "lay off" usually means they are firing enough people that they have to worry about keeping themselves legal under the WARN act.
http://www.doleta.gov/layoff/warn.cfm
Most companies that are possibly going to be hitting the conditions of the WARN act (closing a plant or laying off significant number of people at a given site) are going to give employees enough to stay legal under it. (60 days notice or 60 days pay/benefits)
A lot of companies will even give more than that, as the managers recognize that they want to not alienate people - they want people to be willing to come back if/when things pick up again. And sometimes the severance package has additional money in it but with the condition that you do not sue. (Which gives the company a definitive cost vs. the potential of an unknown cost of a court case.)