We might be one of SCO's biggest remaining licensees, but I can't wait until we turn that shit off for good.
McDonalds? I seem to remember them basically being the ones keeping SCO afloat.
I HATED being a SCO admin in this millennia. In the past they weren't as much of a joke, but they didn't keep-up AT ALL. Their USB support was a nightmare that kept crashing servers. Their boot-disk support was a nightmare I never entirely rangled into working, because floppy disks became too small and their boot CD support was too damn messy, and merging the right drivers just didn't work out.
SCO made sense for one reason... They were the first Unix on x86. Once FreeBSD / Linux was decent, they should have been dumped, EVERYWHERE in a second. Instead, far too many companies clung to the crufty old platform, and just kept raising the pain threshold.
Fortunately, I walked away from the only company I've seen still using it extensively, and haven't had to touch it since.
Out of context, I admit my promotion of propane must seem quite odd. However, if you do some reading on some camping websites for a while, you'll completely understand why I phrased things as I did...
You see, backpackers heavily promote their preferred fuels that have huge drawbacks, all for some TINY benefit. Little or no thought is given to those who aren't interested in spending hundreds of dollars to save an oz of weight in their pack, or are not interested in terrible food prep methods, and living on the very edge (packing BARELY enough fuel to get by, and using dangerous methods to shave tiny bits of weight).
Common stove types being promoted include ethanol/methanol, gasoline/kerosene/naphtha, several types of incompatible isobutane mixes in various canisters, etc.
Now just imagine THOUSANDS of "experts" offering similar advice spread all over the internet, often the writeup is FAR more verbose and involved than that one.
Now imagine it's all a huge waste of time, and propane beats them all in convenience, price, availability, compatibility, efficiency, emissions, isn't much heavier than the lightest-weight options, and performs great both in hot and cold weather down to -40 degrees. It's the best of almost all worlds, and I see no reason for practically anyone to bother with any of the other options, except in very few *extreme* fringe cases. And those same propane canisters can be used for lamps, torches, and other accessories, so they have a second life in residential use as well.
For vehicles and stationary (home/business/industrial) use, I much prefer (compressed) natural gas over propane for many reasons. I also prefer to BBQ/grill with charcoal. And I never could stand to watch King of the Hill.
Wiring and plumbing is easy enough to do, and fairly inexpensive. Building a whole new house costs several orders of magnitude more than fixing even extensive damage, and can be VERY cheap depending on how much of the work you can do yourself.
Work from home blurs the lines between home life and work life to the point where you are always on call.
Depending on where you work, the line between work life and home life has been blurred for years, or it never will be no matter what.
I've had work-from-home jobs where I worked 8-5, never any overtime nor after-hours calls. I've also had jobs where remote work wasn't aloud, yet I'd be on-call once a month, and get several calls, and need to drive-in to the office. The work environment, not your location, dictates how much it'll suck your time.
I like how you play fast and loose with the facts, like arbitrarily switching back and forth between absolute values and per-capita values, depending on which one puts the US at the top...
1) The US is only #1 in incarcerations because China is #1 in executions...
2) Obesity is falling slightly in the US, while other countries are rising. Some reports say the UK has surpassed the US, but in a few years the US will definitely lose it's #1 spot.
3) Divorce and marriage laws could use some reforms.
4) TV is NOT A BAD THING. The US/UK might be #1 just because we have more leisure hours. Or perhaps because we have the best entertainment, news, and documentary industries.
5) Only if you emphasize the "illegal" part of it. Legalizing drug use like other countries doesn't make the behavior better or worse.
6) We have nice cars. We have more cars total, and per-capita, than anywhere else in the world, so it only makes sense that thefts would be higher in absolute terms.
7) "Reported" crimes are a GOOD thing. That means you have a working police and court system, and people are more likely to report crimes. It's the unreported ones that are a sign of your country going horribly wrong.
8) See above.
9) See above.
10) See above.
11) US heath care is always better in some ways than other systems around the world. And recent reforms (see: Obamacare) are going to bring prices down in the next few years.
12) We get all the best pharmaceuticals, our doctors correctly diagnose medical issues, and our insurance pays for them.
13) Keeping suicide rates down is a good thing. We're not #1 there, are we?
14) We have good, expensive schools, and we get good, higher paying jobs than elsewhere, so we can afford to incur and later pay off that debt.
15) Sounds like a strong entertainment industry is bringing-in more jobs to California, and exports are strong.
16) "Largest" everything (in absolute terms) happens a LOT when you have the largest economy (by far). And a lot of the reason for it is one of the strongest consumer economies in the world, which is also NOT a bad thing.
17) The US provides military services for more than 7 countries. NATO countries all depend on the US to some degree. The US maintaining a large blue-water navy is protecting the trade routes all other countries use, but don't spend the money to defend.
18) See above.
19) Simplification of the tax system would be good, but companies are managing, and the economy is doing just fine.
20) See #16. "Largest..." everything happens a lot when you've got the biggest economy. The US also has the best credit worthiness rating in the world, so you really can't claim there's a problem with the amount of debt.
Why is it possible today for me to install a personal power generation system that will completely pay for itself in five years and then keep delivering free energy for decades to come? That's a symptom of some grade A jumbo market inefficiencies right there.
Because the government subsidizes consumer PV solar installations heavily, while NOT giving the same benefits to producers.
There are the up-front purchasing subsidizes the state and federal government pays you to keep that payback time low. Then there are the regulations that require power companies to pay full retail price your the PV power you inject back into the grid, rather than wholesale price they pay big producers, so your 5 year payback time is being borne by higher prices paid by everyone else who doesn't have rooftop solar panels.
So the market inefficiency is the government forcing your solar panel investment to work out, when it would otherwise never be profitable.
There's also other issues, such as a large power plan needing to pay for the land the solar panels take up, while you use your free rooftop space. And a power plant needing to pay someone to clean those solar panels like you do for free, and maintaining electric lines out of the panels, which you pay for with your monthly bill.
Should have mentioned AM/MW, FM & SW/HF radios as a must-have item for entertainment and information during a power outage, with minimal power draw.
Also a camping water filter is a good addition. Both the immersion heater and the propane stove can boil water to decontaminate it, but a filter is quicker, easier, cheaper, and tastes better as it removes chlorine, bacteria, and other suspended solids. Only about $30 if you look for Sawyer on Walmart.com
We had no gas for almost 2 weeks. Many houses here are gas hot water, gas stove tops and gas ovens. Cold showers for 2 weeks was no fun.
You should look into camping gear... Because of moving around a lot, and not having utilities for the first few days, I've done the same, and found I can carry EVERY convenience I could want.
Camp showers cost $5-10 (USD) and work better than you could ever have hoped for. Dump one cup of boiling water in, and fill up the other 5 gallons with cool tap water, and you'll have a warm show for one or two people, before you have to do it again.
Small propane cylinders cost $5/ea, are tiny enough to barely take any space, and are just incredible. They sell tiny burners/stoves, lanterns, torches, and heaters that can screw-on to the canister for $5-20/ea, and will work for weeks of use with a single canister. Very easy to cook with. Very cheap, and no temperature limitations like butane or other gas.
Immersion heaters cost $7-15, are tiny enough to fit in your pocket, and will boil a cup of water in 1-2 minutes. Even if you don't have a microwave, you can cook many foods and drinks with electricity. Avoid anything thick, but everything from ramen to macaroni and spaghetti, hot dogs, hard-boiled eggs, mashed potatoes, stuffing, vegetables, stews, soups, and packages/cans/tins of just about anything that can semi-submerged in boiling water can be cooked with this tiny item.
Solar battery charger... Keep your cell phone going in a power outage, as well as your room lights (because nothing else matches the efficiency and convenience of LEDs), and any other small entertainment devices. But be aware of your power usages, as it'll take 1-2 days to charge 4 AAs with a pocket-sized solar panel/charger.
12V ice chest / mini fridges can keep a small amount of food refrigerated for about $50. If you've got an existing ice chest, a 12V/60W Peltier/TEC can be had on Amazon for $4, then you just need to add some large heat-sinks and 12V computer fans, and mount it in the enclosure.
It's a bit too much to ask a cooler to run on solar power, as you're looking at a large panel for $150+ just for under-powered daytime-only use. But you can always start-up your car every day, using gasoline to charge the 12V car battery, or hooking-up a 12V UPS battery to charge and power your cooler if you've got one. Have to be careful not to leave it plugged-in and drain your car battery, as that's your only means to start up your vehicle and recharge it.
The cost of natural gas will soar through the stratosphere once these become widespread
That's complete nonsense. Fracking has resulted in such a boom in cheap natural gas production, that we're going to have to start exporting it in the coming years. And using it in a fuel cell will be about 50% MORE EFFICIENT than burning it to turn a turbine, perhaps more if the waste heat is used to also heat your home (for free).
What MAY need to happen is improving the nation-wide natural gas pipeline. When there's a spike in demand, LNG tankers have to be dispatched to the east coast to put more supply into the pipeline. A couple more pipes would eliminate this added expense during cold winters.
The switch to digital might make drive-ins MORE VIABLE, rather than less. Movie theatres save money because they can have one or two projectionists managing dozens of screens, dealing with all the broken films and whatnot. Drive-ins can't even have half a dozen screens due to size constraints and limited demand, so one projectionist getting paid for one or two screens is expensive.
But with digital, you don't need to know how to splice film, or change reels quickly. The idiot who scoops the popcorn can hit the button to start playing the movie, and drive-ins might suddenly be cheap enough to become viable again.
And the march of technology is making it cheap and easy for even an amateur to set-up their own theatre. DLP projections are cheap and bright, and Blu-ray discs are 1920x1080, higher resolution than worn-out old films... And with some good old public domain films coming to Blu-ray, the disc costs a couple bucks to pay for a highdef film transfer, and you don't need any license for public performances: http://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread.php?t=161511 Hell, it wouldn't even be illegal for you to download a TORRENT of a Blu-ray rip of these public domain movies.
I have no doubt the expense of Hollywood's blessed projectors with DRM up the wazoo is quite expensive, but a lower-cost drive-in with older films, you can practically start your own on an absolute shoestring budget.
You can always go further afield and cut off the electricity to a house, even if it'll kill the neighbors' as well.
And firefighters are well versed in dealing with tanks of flammable gas... It's easy enough AS LONG AS THEY KNOW ITS THERE. If you keep spraying it with water, you'll keep it cool even in a raging fire, and it won't explode. Tanks also have mandatory pressure relief valves to prevent such things in less extreme circumstances. And firefighters face these issues all the time. Trailers all have propane tanks. Houses and business away from gas lines have big propane tanks in the back. City buses have CNG tanks. Cars and trucks have tens of gallons of gasoline or kerosene. And refineries catch on fire often enough...
Your numbers are a bit optimistic. I've never seen manufacturers claiming more than 98%. But in any case, it's still not "100%" as claimed, which was my point.
One of these and a Sat dish and you can stay connected while being far, far away.
That's true today, too. You'd just be generating electricity by burning that propane/kerosene/etc. in an engine, rather than a fuel cell.
Hell, except for internet service, it was true many, many decades ago, when humans pulled TV channels right out of the air, and all you "packets" of information got batch delivered to a small box you had to periodically poll...
There's no question that fuel cells, that can run on the same fossil fuels we use now, would be a huge step forward, if they could be made cheaply enough. They exceed Carnot efficiency, so a fuel cell that ran on unleaded gasoline would instantly double even the best hybrid vehicle fuel efficiency. Large natural gas power plants would get perhaps a 50% improvement in efficiency. Fuel cells running on methanol are quite popular in forklifts because they are zero emissions, lower maintenance and get more run-time than batteries, according to the DoE.
They'd be a great replacement for generators as well. Imagine a fuel cell in every cellular tower, with a CNG tank on-site in case both the power and gas lines fail (and can be refilled by truck). Imagine your central heating boiler being for home and water heating was generating free electricity as well as heat for a combined ~80% efficiency (almost as good as condensing boiler). Imagine every city block has a fuel cell the size of a utility cabinet, reducing transmission losses and easing strain on the power grid.
High efficiency, plus fuel flexibility, plus almost zero maintenance (and nearly no noise), and little pollution, makes these things possible, where they aren't all that practical with conventional heat/combustion engines.
BTW, noticing your.sig I think I should mention that pretty much all discussion of politics and religion is off-limits in interviews, resumes, and mostly verboten even in the office once you are hired. Those are the two big hot-buttons you want to stay away from. Work life and personal life are best kept separate, anyhow.
I chalk it up to graduating at the dot com bust when they only hired people with experience, and then having not getting any experience, no one ever was interested in me. I'm a 90-120k+ yr quality software engineer, and I'd be willing to work for 35k/yr since my family isn't rich, but I can't find anyone in the world to give me the time of day.
That timing makes it harder, but that's a low enough salary requirement that you should be able to get in, somewhere.
I've only had 7 interviews in the past 10 years, but sent out about 5000 resumes and had about 250 recruiters looking for positions for me.
Less than 1 interview per year is quite bad. Either your in a terrible location (high-tech jobs dramatically pool in a few cities around the US), or you need to put a LOT of work into your resume. You can go find sample resumes out there, and if yours doesn't fit the standard format, you won't get anywhere with recruiters. To show some job experience, sign-up for some poorly-paying contract gigs from some place like donanza.com, and cultivate a bare minimum of 2-3 gushing references. And you can always be a bit more vague with your resume if it sounds better.
But... what happened with those 7 interviews? An interview is a good sign of serious interest, so after maybe 3 you should be able to get a job. Are your personality/interview skills really terrible? Do you have a criminal record? Do you have no good career-relevant professional references?
All things you can work on at home, by investing a decent bit of time, and saving yourself YEARS. I hate the tedious nature of that stuff too, but you've got to at least minimally get it down to fit into the workplace anywhere, no matter how much experience you've got.
If Yahoo has no respect for the law or its customers, it should at least show some respect to a dude's last wish.
Actually, Yahoo might be breaking the law by hosting the site. Free speech law goes pretty far in the US, but encouraging suicide, or any other major illegal activity could get them in trouble. I also assume there's something in their TOS that forbids such content, so they're all good.
And someone's "last wish" isn't legally binding for good reason... Just because you're dying doesn't mean your motives are free of decades of bias, prejudice, etc. Dying declarations tend to be treated specially, but not "wishes".
"I have a friend who, when he gets out of college, has been promised a job at well known electronics company with a salary around $70k. However, he wants to instead go work for Blizzard or some other game company as a game programmer."
This is NOT an "either-or" situation. He's not going to die in two years, he's not committed to the job offer for life, and a gaming company isn't going to see electronics work on his resume and blacklist him.
Entry-level is HARD, and a college degree is worth very little without some job experience to back it up. Some jobs, like "manager" are assumed to transfer from one industry to another pretty easily, so aiming low might work out better in the long-term.
Developing a small pile of cash quickly is worthwhile. You have a LOT more freedom to do what you want when you have several thousand dollars in the bank, and can afford to pay your bills for a year if other positions don't work out. Or you may find you suddenly need a pile of cash to quickly relocate for the next available job.
Money can't buy happiness, but I've never seen people with a solid savings nearly as unhappy as those with lots of debt hanging over their head, and suffering through a job that makes them miserable because one missed paycheck is going to destroy their house of cards.
something comes up, you don't know how to solve it off the top of your head. quick research yields nothing. your company is losing revenue. you don't have time to post a question on a forum and wait a day or so for a solution.
If you're deploying software that you really don't understand, you've already lost. If you run into a problem, you can track it down to a very fine level with lovely tools like strace. Unlike proprietary OSes, if you're getting some cryptic error message, you can go through the source code and find EXACTLY what causes it to be printed. In general, I find support contracts to sap money that would have been better spent on more or higher-paid IT staff, or redundant equipment.
for that system you pay the 4 hour or less support costs so that if you need it, you call the vendor and get someone on the phone NOW.
...so that the 3rd level tech can scratch his head, and eventually struggle to remotely debug the problem like any Linux admin would, except without the benefit of context and years working in the environment that salaried staff have...
where i work we pay Cisco and other vendors for support for this reason
I've resorted to Cisco support a number of times, and every time they've been a huge drain on my time, instead of helping at all. It's a lot like hiring a part-time, Jr Network Admin with poor English skills, on a short-term contract. You spend a lot of time getting them up to speed, and telling them you've already tried the basic methods they keep suggesting.
And that's the GOOD PART. The bad part is when it's easy for them to quickly close your case by saying the hardware isn't capable of doing anything more than the most basic operations. And yet, being a moron that works for Cisco gives their idiotic statements much more weight than yours. Something of a logical fallacy about being willing to put a stranger up on a pedestal, and assume they're infallible, while knowing the imperfections of your local staff all too well...
I can see why it's so popular (extensively validated rock-stable code), but these very same attributes make it very poorly suited for our needs (scientific computing - often using bleeding-edge software features and needing to squeeze the last bit of power out of bleeding-edge hardware).
If you want bleeding-edge, use Fedora instead... I can't think of anything that bleeds more than Fedora Rawhide. Then you're still staying RHEL compatible, just ahead of the curve.
But personally, I recommend a much more reliable strategy of using the latest RHEL, and only for the few applications where you need bleeding edge, recompiling the Fedora Rawhide SRPMs for RHEL. It works quite well for most everything, from the kernel to userland X11 apps. Yum/RPM is smart about not obliterating your changes, and will just pick up and install your new RPMs if you drop them in your local yum repo. Yet with fewer components bleeding, you'll get a much more stable system out of it.
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McDonalds? I seem to remember them basically being the ones keeping SCO afloat.
I HATED being a SCO admin in this millennia. In the past they weren't as much of a joke, but they didn't keep-up AT ALL. Their USB support was a nightmare that kept crashing servers. Their boot-disk support was a nightmare I never entirely rangled into working, because floppy disks became too small and their boot CD support was too damn messy, and merging the right drivers just didn't work out.
SCO made sense for one reason... They were the first Unix on x86. Once FreeBSD / Linux was decent, they should have been dumped, EVERYWHERE in a second. Instead, far too many companies clung to the crufty old platform, and just kept raising the pain threshold.
Fortunately, I walked away from the only company I've seen still using it extensively, and haven't had to touch it since.
Out of context, I admit my promotion of propane must seem quite odd. However, if you do some reading on some camping websites for a while, you'll completely understand why I phrased things as I did...
You see, backpackers heavily promote their preferred fuels that have huge drawbacks, all for some TINY benefit. Little or no thought is given to those who aren't interested in spending hundreds of dollars to save an oz of weight in their pack, or are not interested in terrible food prep methods, and living on the very edge (packing BARELY enough fuel to get by, and using dangerous methods to shave tiny bits of weight).
Common stove types being promoted include ethanol/methanol, gasoline/kerosene/naphtha, several types of incompatible isobutane mixes in various canisters, etc.
Here's just REI's superficial writeup:
http://www.rei.com/learn/expert-advice/backpacking-stove.html
Now just imagine THOUSANDS of "experts" offering similar advice spread all over the internet, often the writeup is FAR more verbose and involved than that one.
Now imagine it's all a huge waste of time, and propane beats them all in convenience, price, availability, compatibility, efficiency, emissions, isn't much heavier than the lightest-weight options, and performs great both in hot and cold weather down to -40 degrees. It's the best of almost all worlds, and I see no reason for practically anyone to bother with any of the other options, except in very few *extreme* fringe cases. And those same propane canisters can be used for lamps, torches, and other accessories, so they have a second life in residential use as well.
For vehicles and stationary (home/business/industrial) use, I much prefer (compressed) natural gas over propane for many reasons. I also prefer to BBQ/grill with charcoal. And I never could stand to watch King of the Hill.
Wiring and plumbing is easy enough to do, and fairly inexpensive. Building a whole new house costs several orders of magnitude more than fixing even extensive damage, and can be VERY cheap depending on how much of the work you can do yourself.
That's a problem they would face with any off-grid home. Battery banks and inverters in the basement, or tanks of fuel and a generator.
Depending on where you work, the line between work life and home life has been blurred for years, or it never will be no matter what.
I've had work-from-home jobs where I worked 8-5, never any overtime nor after-hours calls. I've also had jobs where remote work wasn't aloud, yet I'd be on-call once a month, and get several calls, and need to drive-in to the office. The work environment, not your location, dictates how much it'll suck your time.
Depends on location. Rent or mortgage will be the majority of your expenses.
If you're somewhere that they're just about giving away abandoned houses, $20/hr would be very good money.
Not true if the tire pressure is increased to compensate. Something similar to bicycle tires might work quite well.
I like how you play fast and loose with the facts, like arbitrarily switching back and forth between absolute values and per-capita values, depending on which one puts the US at the top...
1) The US is only #1 in incarcerations because China is #1 in executions...
2) Obesity is falling slightly in the US, while other countries are rising. Some reports say the UK has surpassed the US, but in a few years the US will definitely lose it's #1 spot.
3) Divorce and marriage laws could use some reforms.
4) TV is NOT A BAD THING. The US/UK might be #1 just because we have more leisure hours. Or perhaps because we have the best entertainment, news, and documentary industries.
5) Only if you emphasize the "illegal" part of it. Legalizing drug use like other countries doesn't make the behavior better or worse.
6) We have nice cars. We have more cars total, and per-capita, than anywhere else in the world, so it only makes sense that thefts would be higher in absolute terms.
7) "Reported" crimes are a GOOD thing. That means you have a working police and court system, and people are more likely to report crimes. It's the unreported ones that are a sign of your country going horribly wrong.
8) See above.
9) See above.
10) See above.
11) US heath care is always better in some ways than other systems around the world. And recent reforms (see: Obamacare) are going to bring prices down in the next few years.
12) We get all the best pharmaceuticals, our doctors correctly diagnose medical issues, and our insurance pays for them.
13) Keeping suicide rates down is a good thing. We're not #1 there, are we?
14) We have good, expensive schools, and we get good, higher paying jobs than elsewhere, so we can afford to incur and later pay off that debt.
15) Sounds like a strong entertainment industry is bringing-in more jobs to California, and exports are strong.
16) "Largest" everything (in absolute terms) happens a LOT when you have the largest economy (by far). And a lot of the reason for it is one of the strongest consumer economies in the world, which is also NOT a bad thing.
17) The US provides military services for more than 7 countries. NATO countries all depend on the US to some degree. The US maintaining a large blue-water navy is protecting the trade routes all other countries use, but don't spend the money to defend.
18) See above.
19) Simplification of the tax system would be good, but companies are managing, and the economy is doing just fine.
20) See #16. "Largest..." everything happens a lot when you've got the biggest economy. The US also has the best credit worthiness rating in the world, so you really can't claim there's a problem with the amount of debt.
Because the government subsidizes consumer PV solar installations heavily, while NOT giving the same benefits to producers.
There are the up-front purchasing subsidizes the state and federal government pays you to keep that payback time low. Then there are the regulations that require power companies to pay full retail price your the PV power you inject back into the grid, rather than wholesale price they pay big producers, so your 5 year payback time is being borne by higher prices paid by everyone else who doesn't have rooftop solar panels.
So the market inefficiency is the government forcing your solar panel investment to work out, when it would otherwise never be profitable.
There's also other issues, such as a large power plan needing to pay for the land the solar panels take up, while you use your free rooftop space. And a power plant needing to pay someone to clean those solar panels like you do for free, and maintaining electric lines out of the panels, which you pay for with your monthly bill.
Should have mentioned AM/MW, FM & SW/HF radios as a must-have item for entertainment and information during a power outage, with minimal power draw.
Also a camping water filter is a good addition. Both the immersion heater and the propane stove can boil water to decontaminate it, but a filter is quicker, easier, cheaper, and tastes better as it removes chlorine, bacteria, and other suspended solids. Only about $30 if you look for Sawyer on Walmart.com
Probably forgetting many others, too.
You should look into camping gear... Because of moving around a lot, and not having utilities for the first few days, I've done the same, and found I can carry EVERY convenience I could want.
Camp showers cost $5-10 (USD) and work better than you could ever have hoped for. Dump one cup of boiling water in, and fill up the other 5 gallons with cool tap water, and you'll have a warm show for one or two people, before you have to do it again.
Small propane cylinders cost $5/ea, are tiny enough to barely take any space, and are just incredible. They sell tiny burners/stoves, lanterns, torches, and heaters that can screw-on to the canister for $5-20/ea, and will work for weeks of use with a single canister. Very easy to cook with. Very cheap, and no temperature limitations like butane or other gas.
Immersion heaters cost $7-15, are tiny enough to fit in your pocket, and will boil a cup of water in 1-2 minutes. Even if you don't have a microwave, you can cook many foods and drinks with electricity. Avoid anything thick, but everything from ramen to macaroni and spaghetti, hot dogs, hard-boiled eggs, mashed potatoes, stuffing, vegetables, stews, soups, and packages/cans/tins of just about anything that can semi-submerged in boiling water can be cooked with this tiny item.
Solar battery charger... Keep your cell phone going in a power outage, as well as your room lights (because nothing else matches the efficiency and convenience of LEDs), and any other small entertainment devices. But be aware of your power usages, as it'll take 1-2 days to charge 4 AAs with a pocket-sized solar panel/charger.
12V ice chest / mini fridges can keep a small amount of food refrigerated for about $50. If you've got an existing ice chest, a 12V/60W Peltier/TEC can be had on Amazon for $4, then you just need to add some large heat-sinks and 12V computer fans, and mount it in the enclosure.
It's a bit too much to ask a cooler to run on solar power, as you're looking at a large panel for $150+ just for under-powered daytime-only use. But you can always start-up your car every day, using gasoline to charge the 12V car battery, or hooking-up a 12V UPS battery to charge and power your cooler if you've got one. Have to be careful not to leave it plugged-in and drain your car battery, as that's your only means to start up your vehicle and recharge it.
That's complete nonsense. Fracking has resulted in such a boom in cheap natural gas production, that we're going to have to start exporting it in the coming years. And using it in a fuel cell will be about 50% MORE EFFICIENT than burning it to turn a turbine, perhaps more if the waste heat is used to also heat your home (for free).
What MAY need to happen is improving the nation-wide natural gas pipeline. When there's a spike in demand, LNG tankers have to be dispatched to the east coast to put more supply into the pipeline. A couple more pipes would eliminate this added expense during cold winters.
The switch to digital might make drive-ins MORE VIABLE, rather than less. Movie theatres save money because they can have one or two projectionists managing dozens of screens, dealing with all the broken films and whatnot. Drive-ins can't even have half a dozen screens due to size constraints and limited demand, so one projectionist getting paid for one or two screens is expensive.
But with digital, you don't need to know how to splice film, or change reels quickly. The idiot who scoops the popcorn can hit the button to start playing the movie, and drive-ins might suddenly be cheap enough to become viable again.
And the march of technology is making it cheap and easy for even an amateur to set-up their own theatre. DLP projections are cheap and bright, and Blu-ray discs are 1920x1080, higher resolution than worn-out old films... And with some good old public domain films coming to Blu-ray, the disc costs a couple bucks to pay for a highdef film transfer, and you don't need any license for public performances: http://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread.php?t=161511
Hell, it wouldn't even be illegal for you to download a TORRENT of a Blu-ray rip of these public domain movies.
I have no doubt the expense of Hollywood's blessed projectors with DRM up the wazoo is quite expensive, but a lower-cost drive-in with older films, you can practically start your own on an absolute shoestring budget.
You can always go further afield and cut off the electricity to a house, even if it'll kill the neighbors' as well.
And firefighters are well versed in dealing with tanks of flammable gas... It's easy enough AS LONG AS THEY KNOW ITS THERE. If you keep spraying it with water, you'll keep it cool even in a raging fire, and it won't explode. Tanks also have mandatory pressure relief valves to prevent such things in less extreme circumstances. And firefighters face these issues all the time. Trailers all have propane tanks. Houses and business away from gas lines have big propane tanks in the back. City buses have CNG tanks. Cars and trucks have tens of gallons of gasoline or kerosene. And refineries catch on fire often enough...
Your numbers are a bit optimistic. I've never seen manufacturers claiming more than 98%. But in any case, it's still not "100%" as claimed, which was my point.
And that relates to fuel cells ... How?
That's true today, too. You'd just be generating electricity by burning that propane/kerosene/etc. in an engine, rather than a fuel cell.
Hell, except for internet service, it was true many, many decades ago, when humans pulled TV channels right out of the air, and all you "packets" of information got batch delivered to a small box you had to periodically poll...
Go find a 100% efficient condensing boiler and get back to me.
Nothing new here. Identical tech dates back at least to 2009:
http://www.cerespower.com/Technology/TheCeresCell/
There's no question that fuel cells, that can run on the same fossil fuels we use now, would be a huge step forward, if they could be made cheaply enough. They exceed Carnot efficiency, so a fuel cell that ran on unleaded gasoline would instantly double even the best hybrid vehicle fuel efficiency. Large natural gas power plants would get perhaps a 50% improvement in efficiency. Fuel cells running on methanol are quite popular in forklifts because they are zero emissions, lower maintenance and get more run-time than batteries, according to the DoE.
They'd be a great replacement for generators as well. Imagine a fuel cell in every cellular tower, with a CNG tank on-site in case both the power and gas lines fail (and can be refilled by truck). Imagine your central heating boiler being for home and water heating was generating free electricity as well as heat for a combined ~80% efficiency (almost as good as condensing boiler). Imagine every city block has a fuel cell the size of a utility cabinet, reducing transmission losses and easing strain on the power grid.
High efficiency, plus fuel flexibility, plus almost zero maintenance (and nearly no noise), and little pollution, makes these things possible, where they aren't all that practical with conventional heat/combustion engines.
BTW, noticing your .sig I think I should mention that pretty much all discussion of politics and religion is off-limits in interviews, resumes, and mostly verboten even in the office once you are hired. Those are the two big hot-buttons you want to stay away from. Work life and personal life are best kept separate, anyhow.
That timing makes it harder, but that's a low enough salary requirement that you should be able to get in, somewhere.
Less than 1 interview per year is quite bad. Either your in a terrible location (high-tech jobs dramatically pool in a few cities around the US), or you need to put a LOT of work into your resume. You can go find sample resumes out there, and if yours doesn't fit the standard format, you won't get anywhere with recruiters. To show some job experience, sign-up for some poorly-paying contract gigs from some place like donanza.com, and cultivate a bare minimum of 2-3 gushing references. And you can always be a bit more vague with your resume if it sounds better.
But... what happened with those 7 interviews? An interview is a good sign of serious interest, so after maybe 3 you should be able to get a job. Are your personality/interview skills really terrible? Do you have a criminal record? Do you have no good career-relevant professional references?
All things you can work on at home, by investing a decent bit of time, and saving yourself YEARS. I hate the tedious nature of that stuff too, but you've got to at least minimally get it down to fit into the workplace anywhere, no matter how much experience you've got.
Actually, Yahoo might be breaking the law by hosting the site. Free speech law goes pretty far in the US, but encouraging suicide, or any other major illegal activity could get them in trouble. I also assume there's something in their TOS that forbids such content, so they're all good.
And someone's "last wish" isn't legally binding for good reason... Just because you're dying doesn't mean your motives are free of decades of bias, prejudice, etc. Dying declarations tend to be treated specially, but not "wishes".
This is NOT an "either-or" situation. He's not going to die in two years, he's not committed to the job offer for life, and a gaming company isn't going to see electronics work on his resume and blacklist him.
Entry-level is HARD, and a college degree is worth very little without some job experience to back it up. Some jobs, like "manager" are assumed to transfer from one industry to another pretty easily, so aiming low might work out better in the long-term.
Developing a small pile of cash quickly is worthwhile. You have a LOT more freedom to do what you want when you have several thousand dollars in the bank, and can afford to pay your bills for a year if other positions don't work out. Or you may find you suddenly need a pile of cash to quickly relocate for the next available job.
Money can't buy happiness, but I've never seen people with a solid savings nearly as unhappy as those with lots of debt hanging over their head, and suffering through a job that makes them miserable because one missed paycheck is going to destroy their house of cards.
If you're deploying software that you really don't understand, you've already lost. If you run into a problem, you can track it down to a very fine level with lovely tools like strace. Unlike proprietary OSes, if you're getting some cryptic error message, you can go through the source code and find EXACTLY what causes it to be printed. In general, I find support contracts to sap money that would have been better spent on more or higher-paid IT staff, or redundant equipment.
I've resorted to Cisco support a number of times, and every time they've been a huge drain on my time, instead of helping at all. It's a lot like hiring a part-time, Jr Network Admin with poor English skills, on a short-term contract. You spend a lot of time getting them up to speed, and telling them you've already tried the basic methods they keep suggesting.
And that's the GOOD PART. The bad part is when it's easy for them to quickly close your case by saying the hardware isn't capable of doing anything more than the most basic operations. And yet, being a moron that works for Cisco gives their idiotic statements much more weight than yours. Something of a logical fallacy about being willing to put a stranger up on a pedestal, and assume they're infallible, while knowing the imperfections of your local staff all too well...
If you want bleeding-edge, use Fedora instead... I can't think of anything that bleeds more than Fedora Rawhide. Then you're still staying RHEL compatible, just ahead of the curve.
But personally, I recommend a much more reliable strategy of using the latest RHEL, and only for the few applications where you need bleeding edge, recompiling the Fedora Rawhide SRPMs for RHEL. It works quite well for most everything, from the kernel to userland X11 apps. Yum/RPM is smart about not obliterating your changes, and will just pick up and install your new RPMs if you drop them in your local yum repo. Yet with fewer components bleeding, you'll get a much more stable system out of it.