Agreed. That means for the foreseeable future (twenty years or more as any substantial breakthrough in efficiency would be apparent now for something that would be productized in the next ten years) rooftops are not enough. Ignore the space required for storage and you still have huge amounts of land being chewed up for energy production that are not available for anything else: agriculture, residential, commercial, manufacturing,...
We have a connected thermostat. The local utility uses access to shift aircon run times out of phase to reduce peak loading. We get a substantial discount on electricity as a result.
So where is this happening? I use a lot of data, working from home, running Netflix all day to keep me company, lots of downloads and uploads... all on Comcast. I certainly have my issues with them but I've never seen a data surcharge (Annapolis MD, near Washington DC and Baltimore MD). Where are the surcharges happening?
Power cables, telecommunications cables, SOSUS arrays - littorals and continental shelves are littered with cables and there are a goodly number in the deep ocean.
Which may well support the position Ian Bogost takes. The iPhone is like a Leatherman. You can put together or take apart nearly anything, but the d*&n thing is a PITA. If it weren't so handy I'd trash it.
Convergence assumes that "handiness" overcomes the greater efficiency of purpose-built tools.
There are several challenges here. 1. Getting agreement from the client (who pays the bills) when you are "done." Complete specifications at some level of detail are the best way I know of to do that. 2. You can meet all the specs in your product and still have an unhappy client; things like logos and colors selected in collaboration with client representatives help with buy-in and ultimately client satisfaction. Working with the client, educating the client, accepting their input, guiding that input away from poor technical choices, and accepting input different from your preconceptions that doesn't affect performance all contribute to real success.
Agile programming can contribute to that success. It can also contribute to programmers and engineers ignoring the client and even the documented specs in preference to doing what they think is right despite the client. Agile is a tool and set of meta-processes; it doesn't guarantee success.
This has been the topic of many dinner conversations at my parent's house during holidays. My Dad is retired Navy and still consults for DoD. I spent years (and years) in government service in the IC and still do contract work for the USG. My sister is a Buddhist nun (actually a Lama in the Karmapa sect). When you consider that the Tibetan Buddhists have been trying to adjudicate their beliefs with the need to defend their country from the Chinese you will understand that Buddhists are themselves often conflicted between policy and practice. Further, the value of a deterent ("I can kill you so many times over that you won't do anything that makes me kill you") is interesting.
Consider how an administration--and the civilian courts--might interpret "giving [enemies] aid." The source code for a guidance system, a targeting algorithm, a damage control response aid, etc. would be 'aid' under most people's definitions once you think it through. What more can you ask for than a clear understanding of the capabilities (and weaknesses) of an adversary?
Some organizational cultures naturally generate new bureaucracies. That could be the case with Rogerborg's counterparts. Or he could be much smarter than they are. Not sarcastic here -- serious. We have built successful products with four people that 200-person teams gave up on. I love to watch those smart guys go. Of course, they hired me by mistake.
I like my VR3. I like the command line. I like telneting into it, rsync, and being able to compile little utilities myself. BUT I don't use it nearly as much as I used to use my Palm IIIx.
1. It eats batteries. It's a good thing data is stored in flash, because the VR3 is dead often. This isn't helped any by the d*** thing turning itself on periodically.
2. The screen contrast is poor. Turning the backlight on makes it worse.
3. It is dog slow. Changing dates on the calendar is interminable, and bringing up the month display is almost useless because it takes so long.
4. Did I mention the battery life?
I'm going to have to replace it, since I've started missing meetings because it was dead when I wanted to enter something in my calendar, or it was dead when I wanted to check it. Too bad. The clear case is tres cool.
I had a contractor do some work on my house recently (a nightmare that is a different, unrelated story). The site supervisors all used Palm VIIs for e-mail connectivity. All kinds of things that would otherwise interrupt work with phone call after phone call could be dealt with on e-mail.
Apparently Nextel costs dropped some, but not enough to pay for the palm.net costs. The 'killer ap' part was the increase in productivity because the supervisors (who are hands on) don't have to keep stopping to answer the phone.
Which I think gets to my point. My personal policy is not to say--particularly in writing--anything I wouldn't want to see on the front page of the local newspaper. Kind of keeps you straight!
since a customer has become very unhappy with us and their version of events makes us a real bad guy. Fortunately, I *do* have every e-mail we exchanged over the last two years, all the documents we delivered, their comments, the schedule material they generated, and other bits of dross and minutia. The timelines and copies of everything (now on CD) have become a gold mine to our counsel and may well help us come to some graceful agreement on the issues without ending up in arbitration.
Get one really spiffy laptop with lots of disk. Run linux or bsd with samba and wireless networking. Buy as many more mid-grade laptops as you can with whatever flavor of Windows sells the most in your communities of interest. Put a disk image on the spiffy laptop so you can copy the OS back to the mid-grade laptops you use for the locals, without having to go through an install per se when it gets hosed. Also buy a Hardigg case to carry it all around in. Sell the bus and buy a pick-up.
Interestingly enough (to me anyway) is that a tonne (or metric ton) is 1,000 kilograms =(ish) 2,205 lbs, very close (and usually considered interchangeable for practical purposes) to a long ton (2,240 lbs). Once again the US is out of wack with our little short tons (2,000 lbs).
I knew that naval architecture degree would come in handy some day.
What about trees? I'm surrounded by a mile or more of 50 - 80 foot trees. I see a significant difference in cell phone performance between summer and winter. Anyone getting wireless that can address green leaf attenuation?
The next time you feel moved to complain about ping times, consider this: --lameness filter won't let me post mtr results, but consider 12% packet loss on 500 pings, average ping of 4766.75ms (best 23.70ms, worst 8128.24ms (yes 8 seconds)).
Cox/Roadrunner in my little corner of Fairfax VA can be rather grim in the afternoon and evening.
Oh yeah?! Well I have a super duper whoosy whatsis.
Actually, my truck has a block heater and battery warmer. Plug it in and when I go out in the morning the battery is perky as summer and the coolant is already warm, so the defroster is blowing warm air. By the time I scrape the back the sides are soft. By the time I scrape the sides the front is clear. No idle law here, but by golly I bet I make the two minute limit!
When I worked for a federal agency they had a lot of programs, but the ones that included education during working hours were very competitive. Most education was on personal time, and reimbursement was tied to grades (100% for A, 75% for B, 50% for C). Degree programs required an employment commitment, but individual courses could be justified as job-related and not require a commitment. I got two masters degrees by getting each course approved on an individual basis.
At Zeta Associates where I work now, we can pay for training out of our individual benefits account (IBA) pre-tax (the ultimate cafeteria-type plan) and unspent funds roll over year to year. For training that benefits a project, we generally build it into the contract and it doesn't come out of the IBA. Sometimes the company will ask someone to take something in particular and pay. Blanket policy of paying for books and journals (our judgement on relevance). Also our responsibility to decide what we can do during the day as support to a project and what to do on our own time. Billable hours are a priority here--we work hard to keep overhead low, and staff charging to overhead hurts twice (increases indirect labor and decreases direct).
20 MHz 386 (bought new for $5,000 in ~1987)
8 MB RAM (maxed out)
6 GB HD
2 3c509 NICs
VGA w/ old 8514 (original monitor smoked years ago)
Linux 2.0.36-07 (Red Hat 5.2)
Tested my cable connection with and without the firewall -- no speed impact on transfers up to 2,500 kbps (although I usually see 800 - 900 kbps).
Unless this is it in the House and the Senate. The House passed the Senate version. I read through the first couple of sections (snore) and didn't see anything horrible. The bill has been sent to the President for signature.
Slashdot Mirror
Agreed. That means for the foreseeable future (twenty years or more as any substantial breakthrough in efficiency would be apparent now for something that would be productized in the next ten years) rooftops are not enough. Ignore the space required for storage and you still have huge amounts of land being chewed up for energy production that are not available for anything else: agriculture, residential, commercial, manufacturing, ...
We have a connected thermostat. The local utility uses access to shift aircon run times out of phase to reduce peak loading. We get a substantial discount on electricity as a result.
I agree. They are just too big. Form factor went down hill with the 5 and has deteriorated substantially with the 6 and 6Plus.
Someone please give the human factors people at Apple some insight into the golden rectangle. These things are too big AND they're ugly.
So where is this happening? I use a lot of data, working from home, running Netflix all day to keep me company, lots of downloads and uploads ... all on Comcast. I certainly have my issues with them but I've never seen a data surcharge (Annapolis MD, near Washington DC and Baltimore MD). Where are the surcharges happening?
Power cables, telecommunications cables, SOSUS arrays - littorals and continental shelves are littered with cables and there are a goodly number in the deep ocean.
Bingo.
Lots of people know how to weld aluminum. It isn't hard at all. Joe shade-tree with a buzz welder will need to buy a TIG welder and a book.
Which may well support the position Ian Bogost takes. The iPhone is like a Leatherman. You can put together or take apart nearly anything, but the d*&n thing is a PITA. If it weren't so handy I'd trash it.
Convergence assumes that "handiness" overcomes the greater efficiency of purpose-built tools.
There are several challenges here. 1. Getting agreement from the client (who pays the bills) when you are "done." Complete specifications at some level of detail are the best way I know of to do that. 2. You can meet all the specs in your product and still have an unhappy client; things like logos and colors selected in collaboration with client representatives help with buy-in and ultimately client satisfaction. Working with the client, educating the client, accepting their input, guiding that input away from poor technical choices, and accepting input different from your preconceptions that doesn't affect performance all contribute to real success.
Agile programming can contribute to that success. It can also contribute to programmers and engineers ignoring the client and even the documented specs in preference to doing what they think is right despite the client. Agile is a tool and set of meta-processes; it doesn't guarantee success.
This has been the topic of many dinner conversations at my parent's house during holidays. My Dad is retired Navy and still consults for DoD. I spent years (and years) in government service in the IC and still do contract work for the USG. My sister is a Buddhist nun (actually a Lama in the Karmapa sect). When you consider that the Tibetan Buddhists have been trying to adjudicate their beliefs with the need to defend their country from the Chinese you will understand that Buddhists are themselves often conflicted between policy and practice. Further, the value of a deterent ("I can kill you so many times over that you won't do anything that makes me kill you") is interesting.
You should hear us at Thanksgiving.
Consider how an administration--and the civilian courts--might interpret "giving [enemies] aid." The source code for a guidance system, a targeting algorithm, a damage control response aid, etc. would be 'aid' under most people's definitions once you think it through. What more can you ask for than a clear understanding of the capabilities (and weaknesses) of an adversary?
Some organizational cultures naturally generate new bureaucracies. That could be the case with Rogerborg's counterparts. Or he could be much smarter than they are. Not sarcastic here -- serious. We have built successful products with four people that 200-person teams gave up on. I love to watch those smart guys go. Of course, they hired me by mistake.
I like my VR3. I like the command line. I like telneting into it, rsync, and being able to compile little utilities myself. BUT I don't use it nearly as much as I used to use my Palm IIIx.
1. It eats batteries. It's a good thing data is stored in flash, because the VR3 is dead often. This isn't helped any by the d*** thing turning itself on periodically.
2. The screen contrast is poor. Turning the backlight on makes it worse.
3. It is dog slow. Changing dates on the calendar is interminable, and bringing up the month display is almost useless because it takes so long.
4. Did I mention the battery life?
I'm going to have to replace it, since I've started missing meetings because it was dead when I wanted to enter something in my calendar, or it was dead when I wanted to check it. Too bad. The clear case is tres cool.
dv
2.
I had a contractor do some work on my house recently (a nightmare that is a different, unrelated story). The site supervisors all used Palm VIIs for e-mail connectivity. All kinds of things that would otherwise interrupt work with phone call after phone call could be dealt with on e-mail.
Apparently Nextel costs dropped some, but not enough to pay for the palm.net costs. The 'killer ap' part was the increase in productivity because the supervisors (who are hands on) don't have to keep stopping to answer the phone.
Which I think gets to my point. My personal policy is not to say--particularly in writing--anything I wouldn't want to see on the front page of the local newspaper. Kind of keeps you straight!
since a customer has become very unhappy with us and their version of events makes us a real bad guy. Fortunately, I *do* have every e-mail we exchanged over the last two years, all the documents we delivered, their comments, the schedule material they generated, and other bits of dross and minutia. The timelines and copies of everything (now on CD) have become a gold mine to our counsel and may well help us come to some graceful agreement on the issues without ending up in arbitration.
Get one really spiffy laptop with lots of disk. Run linux or bsd with samba and wireless networking. Buy as many more mid-grade laptops as you can with whatever flavor of Windows sells the most in your communities of interest. Put a disk image on the spiffy laptop so you can copy the OS back to the mid-grade laptops you use for the locals, without having to go through an install per se when it gets hosed. Also buy a Hardigg case to carry it all around in. Sell the bus and buy a pick-up.
Have a day!
Interestingly enough (to me anyway) is that a tonne (or metric ton) is 1,000 kilograms =(ish) 2,205 lbs, very close (and usually considered interchangeable for practical purposes) to a long ton (2,240 lbs). Once again the US is out of wack with our little short tons (2,000 lbs).
I knew that naval architecture degree would come in handy some day.
What about trees? I'm surrounded by a mile or more of 50 - 80 foot trees. I see a significant difference in cell phone performance between summer and winter. Anyone getting wireless that can address green leaf attenuation?
The next time you feel moved to complain about ping times, consider this: --lameness filter won't let me post mtr results, but consider 12% packet loss on 500 pings, average ping of 4766.75ms (best 23.70ms, worst 8128.24ms (yes 8 seconds)).
Cox/Roadrunner in my little corner of Fairfax VA can be rather grim in the afternoon and evening.
Oh yeah?! Well I have a super duper whoosy whatsis.
Actually, my truck has a block heater and battery warmer. Plug it in and when I go out in the morning the battery is perky as summer and the coolant is already warm, so the defroster is blowing warm air. By the time I scrape the back the sides are soft. By the time I scrape the sides the front is clear. No idle law here, but by golly I bet I make the two minute limit!
dv
When I worked for a federal agency they had a lot of programs, but the ones that included education during working hours were very competitive. Most education was on personal time, and reimbursement was tied to grades (100% for A, 75% for B, 50% for C). Degree programs required an employment commitment, but individual courses could be justified as job-related and not require a commitment. I got two masters degrees by getting each course approved on an individual basis.
At Zeta Associates where I work now, we can pay for training out of our individual benefits account (IBA) pre-tax (the ultimate cafeteria-type plan) and unspent funds roll over year to year. For training that benefits a project, we generally build it into the contract and it doesn't come out of the IBA. Sometimes the company will ask someone to take something in particular and pay. Blanket policy of paying for books and journals (our judgement on relevance). Also our responsibility to decide what we can do during the day as support to a project and what to do on our own time. Billable hours are a priority here--we work hard to keep overhead low, and staff charging to overhead hurts twice (increases indirect labor and decreases direct).
My NAT/firewall/Samba/httpd/ftpd box:
20 MHz 386 (bought new for $5,000 in ~1987)
8 MB RAM (maxed out)
6 GB HD
2 3c509 NICs
VGA w/ old 8514 (original monitor smoked years ago)
Linux 2.0.36-07 (Red Hat 5.2)
Tested my cable connection with and without the firewall -- no speed impact on transfers up to 2,500 kbps (although I usually see 800 - 900 kbps).
Unless this is it in the House and the Senate. The House passed the Senate version. I read through the first couple of sections (snore) and didn't see anything horrible. The bill has been sent to the President for signature.
The link is broken, and 15 minutes searching at www.house.gov turned up nothing. Hello?