Way to totally ignore any negative experience regarding unions...at all. They're the reason our jobs left.
Citation needed? The reason our jobs left was globalization, not unions. It wouldn't matter if there was a union or not -- you can't compete with slave labor that costs $2 a year.
know a fellow here in China from Carolina doing furniture manufacturing. His company told the unions that the price had to come down, they were getting killed by competition from overseas. Union wouldn't budge one inch. Guess what happened? Closed down the factory and moved it lock, stock, and barrel to China. Surprise! Reality.
It would have happened anyway. Blaming the union was just an excuse.
Let's also totally ignore the union thugs who came out to bust Cesar Chavez and his workers.
His "thugs" campaigned against police brutality against the latino community. You may not be aware of this, but most of your produce is picked by mexican immigrants, the very people he was passionate about helping. They get no health care, below minimum wage pay, and the working conditions are so terrible that when several states passed anti-immigration laws they found they couldn't pay americans enough to work the fields. Did I mention they're breathing in pesticides and other chemicals that can cause all kinds of severe neurological disorder? Nobody wanted to do it, regardless of pay, and they still don't. Chavez organized the workers and forced lawmakers to address the problems. Oh, and those "thugs" you mentioned? He championed non-violent activism and considered Ghandi one of his personal heroes. But I mean, who cares -- it's just a bunch of fucking brown people. Throw 'em under a bus, right?
Let's ignore the fact that in some states, you can't even work without being forced to join a union.
Do these states have a name? Perhaps some kind of law, or something, you could point out for us all?
Let's ignore all the union bosses in prison (I didn't even bother to cite specific links as Google is continually populated with new stories on the topic).
Yes, because when someone pisses off a business, they're clearly moral degenerates, and the government never goes after people that are politically problematic for the wealthy -- they're totally fair an impartial.
Let's ignore the racism and sexism of the white male union rank-and-file.
As opposed to the racism and sexism of the non-union rank-and-file?
Once upon a time, there were genuine problems that unions solved. That time has passed.
Once upon a time, the United States helped win World War II. But since it's 50 years old, I suppose we can cancel Memorial Day. I mean, what have they done for us lately?
Wait a second, you are telling me without unions we would have no public education? Are you retarded?
No, my good and simple-minded detractor, I am simply aware of the fact that the people who ran the factories were the kind of people who, upon seeing a worker get mutilated by the machinery were simply led out the back door as their replacement walked in the front. If they don't value your life they aren't going to consider your education important.
Now I know you've lost it. We went to the moon because of unions?
No, you malignant ball of happy brain death... we built a strong industrial base and developed a large number of highly educated scientists and engineers because of unions, which allowed us to spend money on things like going to the moon, as well as having the expertise to do so.
And he was unionized, I suppose? Just that single person inventing things and selling them, a unionized island to himself.
Without an education, I doubt he'd be inventing much of anything besides idiosyncratic political viewpoints held in such low esteem by the author he wouldn't even pen his name to it. Or perhaps he lost his name in the bottom of a bottle while searching for his misplaced wits...
The unions had nothing to do with that. Union employes always had PENSIONS (well, you would like to think) that keep them from needing social security.
In days of old, when economies were bold, and monies were aplenty... it might be true, these words from you, if a public education you did not benefit. Alas our tale begins, in the darkened days of nineteen thirty two, whereupon there were many old, and the economy had foresaken. Fifty percent, the elderly were, homeless and in need, no pensions had they, no prospects too, when Sir Rosevelt made them all a Deal. He said to them, "I shall save you too, and you, and you, and you!" And with a mighty heave of his pen, he did create pensions for all, where none had existed before.
Most of these people have never had a union, except for certain engineers (and no, I'm talking professional engineer, sanitation engineers have a union, but they ain't real engineers, are they?) and scientists working for a university (and only sometimes then).
Not to put too fine a point on it, you keenly lacking invertebrate of questionable mental faculties and breeding, but they didn't have jobs either.
You must be high or retarded. Perhaps both?
On the internet, asking if someone else is either of those is basically admitting the character defect being accused. Or put in terms your juvenile nature can relate to, "the person who smelt it, dealt it." Good day sir!
the largest plant is going to be in the south. Most likely northern Alabama or possibly Louisiana. How do I know? I work in one of the State Governors office and there has been Foxconn AND Pegatron groups in and out since at least, roughly, Christmas 2011
How ironic (and fitting) that a land where people who still to this day wish for the good old days of slavery and cotton farms to return will soon be working in the modern equivalent of the cotton farm.
You jabber on about how unions are bad, how they destroyed this country, but you couldn't be more mistaken. The reason we became a world superpower was because of unions, not in spite of them. When the industrial revolution first made land fall, people left the farms to move into urban factories. There was no health care, no OSHA, no retirement or social security, no educational system, and no child labor laws. Workers would get chewed up by machines and that was that. No lawsuits, no nothing -- your livelihood was destroyed. Quite possibly, you later died of starvation. All of the problems that are present in China today were there at the start of our industrial revolution as well: Corruption, environmental contamination, worker abuse, long hours, low pay, and massive wealth inequity.
Then the unions came, and with it; OSHA, social security, public education, child labor laws, overtime compensation. And you know what happened then? Civilization didn't collapse. In fact, it prospered: The roaring 50s. A single man could now drive a car and live in a house he paid for, in full, and support a wive and two kids, working only 40 hours a week. It was the first generation to grow up with public education, and that literacy reflected in every area of american living; Anyone could invent something new and sell it. America became the land of opportunity. Immigrants flocked to the stars and striped by the millions. The middle class grew, and upward mobility was something just about anyone could achieve. For the first time in modern history, hard work nearly guaranteed a comfortable living. And work hard we did. When Europe was devestated by the world wars, it was american industry and ingenuity that pulled their ass out of the fire, and I'm not talking about the unparalleled capacity to produce ships, tanks, guns, and planes either. We didn't just build our own country -- we rebuilt a dozen others as well in post-war reconstruction. And after all that, you know what we did then? We went to the fucking moon.
Even Adam Smith in Wealth of Nations pointed out that one of the essential duties of government is to provide for the safety and well-being of its citizens. In other words, the work force. America's investment in its labor force resulted in economic gains far in excess of anything even the largest mega-corporations of today can match. And then it all went wrong.
It started with the Boomers. Having been given everything by their parents, they didn't understand the price paid by their predecessors. They assumed that this temporary equilibrium, this golden age, was a permanent feature of America. They felt entitled to it, instead of thankful. And when they seized power in the 70s and 80s, they cut social security, education, defunded OSHA, deregulated... and for a time, it was good. But in the shadows consumer debt piled up. The cost of an education skyrocketed, and illiteracy creeped back in. Our scientific and technological progress peaked, then rapidly deflated as the careers of scientist, engineer, inventor, were removed from public prestige and replaced with ridicule and scorn.
Today, our media holds illiterate opinions as equal to the most established of scientific truths. Our children are unable to afford an education, and we're witnessing the lowest graduation rates from all levels of education that anyone alive can remember. Our economy is in ruins, the middle class is rapidly evaporating, and the few wealthy compete amongst each other to auction off our civil infrastructure and institutions. The bridges and roadways our grandparents built with pride that enabled our economy to prosper grow increasingly deficient, falling into rivers or eating tires and vehicles. Our railway and roadway networks are so badly mangled that the idea of bringing back blimps has been floated a few times as a way of getting goods around. Our air space is managed by state of the art technology... or it was, in 1965.
No, unions made us a super power. And we're going to lose that status because we took what they gave us for granted.
The problem with 'anonymizing' the data is that while today it might seem safe, tomorrow a separate database showing a different subset of the same data source, or trace information, etc., which when combined can re-pair and de-anonymize it.
Kind of creepy to hear of "ex" CIA officers in top Cisco positions... advertising this must do wonders for foreign (and domestic) sales...
A lot of people get out of the military and then get regular jobs. Kind of creepy to hear of "ex" soldiers in top corporate positions... (dramatic pause) The fact that the guy is an ex-CIA officer doesn't mean anything on its own. Everyone has a past. Now if black helicopters are found over the homes of thousands of cisco employees and they report that a creepy guy stands in a dark corner of the copy machine wearing a mask chanting "Sing, my angel of muuusic!" then grapple-hooks his way into the ceiling laughing maniacally, and there's a bookshelf in the corporate boardroom that leads to a clandestine laboratory filled with guys known only as a single letter then maybe you've got a story.
I think they are off by an order of magnitude, extant evidence shows that brewing alcohol only started about 10,000 years ago.
In the official version of events, yes. You see, it took 40,000 years for humanity to sober up from the first brew they made. The stuff you call alcohol is version 2.0.
At the heart of the Constitution is the notion that the powers are government are derived from the people. That is to say, the government can only do what the people consent to allowing it to do. The document makes various references to this principle, some direct, others inferred. The Declaration of Independence was quite a bit more blunt on the topic. That said, the truth is... we're not all equal. Some people have more influence than others. Others have more money. And while we are afforded the right to vote, it's almost always voting who will represent us. We have no significant control over our government; Which was deliberate. The same people who said powers not expressly enumerated in the Constitution are reserved for the people also wrote in the so-called elasticity clause and created the electoral college.
So when people say there's no right to privacy in the Constitution, they're right and they're wrong... as is the other camp. The truth is, human rights are not derived from any legal instrument. They have always flowed from the same source -- a willingness to fight against their removal.
Okay, your cell phone phone is dead. Zombies have taken out the cell towers. It's an urban apocalypse. You're surrounded by evil, and low on gas. And there are no pay phones. How do you get in touch with the mad scientist 500 miles away to get the cure?
It's easy guys: Walk into a commercial building with power and ask to use the phone. In fact, many without power will still have a few POTS lines powered (read: Not digital); but you may have to hunt for them, so if you're trapped in an apparently "dead" building with zombies and cthulu beasts outside, patience and a flashlight will save the day. Just avoid the restrooms.
I know I'm being sarcastic here, but seriously guys -- if you're ever in a true emergency situation, stop and think. House flooded? No fresh water? Think about where fresh water might be -- stop panic'ing and really think. Ding! Toilet reservoir. People get all manner of stupid in a crisis because something they used to depend on suddenly isn't there. Guys, you've got millions of years of evolution that has taught you to be adaptable.. but not a lick of those years is going to do you any good until you calm down.
We don't need pay phones. We need to teach people to be self-reliant, instead of hiding under their desks. The government and emergency services may not always be there for you. Neither will any of your modern conveniences. But there is nothing you need to survive that can't be found within a few miles of wherever you are in an urban environment. Food. Shelter. Water. Medical supplies. And if someone's injured, know first aid! It's not rocket science; Take a course today. And keep a small bug-out bag in your car. Less than $100 and some planning ahead of time and you can not only survive just about any catastrophe but also help the people around you.
Everyone should be doing this. Don't rely on your fucking cell phone, or having access to any phone at all. Don't rely on the government. Rely on you. In an emergency, that's the only person you can rely on.
The $83 million a year would be the cost to rent 1 floor of a 1 square block sized skyscraper. One assumes the electricity would be the other major operating cost, so I fudged an extra $3 mil into the equation. But even $400k against an operating budget of $200mil represents a.2% increase in operating cost to protect against something that has a 1 in 50 chance of occuring. The profit margin of the 25 largest businesses in America is about 8.3%. It's likely our margins would be lower, but even at 8.3%, that's still a loss of 2.5% in profits. I understand boards of directors can get a good roasting for missing their earnings forcast by that much by the shareholders.
Disaster recovery isn't free, and protecting against all threats isn't practical for everyone, in every situation. That kind of mentality was popular during the dot com boom -- everybody wanted multiple redundant data centers on SONET fiber rings, nightly incremental backups to an offsite location and everything hot swap. You know what happened? Most of those businesses failed! The ones that succeeded made do with less, until they could build up to the point where some of those elements could be put into production.
I'm not a pie-in-the-sky engineer like a lot of people here on slashdot. I'm a down to earth engineer, who understands that a lot of times management isn't going to give me all the tools I need to do my job. Every company I've worked for or consulted with has had something significant in their IT infrastructure missing, whether it was uninterruptible power supplies in the server room, or keeping all the encryption keys on a single server with only two harddrives mirrored and no other backup, the fact is nobody is prepared for all contingencies. Nobody. Even the people you'd think would have their act together have overlooked something, somewhere. That's just the nature of this industry.
So regardless of where you think the cost versus benefit lines cross the reality is each business is going to plot it differently, and they'll have good reasons for doing so. A lot of the data centers listed in the article simply aren't mission-critical. Their customers' looked at them and said "Hey, if I can save $5 a month to locate it here instead of the other guys that spent the extra cash for a better recovery plan, I'm going for it!"
That's how businesses operate. All I was trying to do with those numbers was explain the logic behind why these businesses made that choice from an engineering perspective, I never intended the numbers to be solid, and even indicated as much in my comment by saying these are ballpark figures. As in, I didn't check my work. As in, I just mashed some numbers together to see how bad the problem really was. And while you're right that I got the amount of square footage wrong, as it was later pointed out in that thread -- most skyscrapers aren't built to support the weight of 300k gallons of diesel fuel on a single floor, and that's where these data centers are located. So even if cost wasn't an issue, structural design would be.
In the end, my only point was: There must be a rational explanation for why they aren't storing weeks' of fuel in these buildings, because I cannot believe that hundreds of millions of dollars would be going into these data centers' operating budget and they'd just forget to spec out the space for the fuel.
While amusing, the ability to watch the video unencrypted probably won't save you from being blown up at that point. What it will do, however, is tell your buddies where the drone took off, where it landed, and what areas are under surveillance. Now if I were an evil scheming terrorist, I'd wait until the drone passed by with its surveillance rig, and once it recorded something the top brass would consider a "target", shuffle in a bunch of women and children in the back way, and then evacuate the building. When Sir Bombsalot comes knocking, have camcorders standing by to show how the bastard americans are targeting innocent women and children.
It's clear that the US military is better funded than my theoretical terrorist cell of doom, so rather than risk the lives of my people, I'd just as soon leave somebody else in the firing line. Why send someone into a crowded building with a bomb strapped to their chest when your enemy will happily supply an expensive GPS-guided smart bomb instead? And if the equipment to watch the video isn't expensive, equipment to jam the signal and replace it with a fake feed wouldn't be that difficult to come by either. It's not like realtime video manipulation software doesn't exist; they use it for football games, and it fits in the back of a van. Or did you think the yellow scrimmage line got repainted every time they made a new first down?
What kind of disaster plan is it that doesn't account for a likely disaster? I can guarantee that...
There were 47 storms to hit New York last century. Of those, only the storms of 1936, 1944, 1954, 1971, 1976, and 1996. Of those, the only storm which caused the New York subway system to flood and caused significant damage to Manhattan was in 1971. So a couple times a century is not a likely disaster -- most of these storms do not result in the level of devastation seen here.
Just follow the train lines to find out where the major telecommunication lines are -- I have access to more carriers down on the Peninsula outside of San Francisco than I do downtown. You may be surprised at how much bandwidth runs through Colorado and even Missouri.
I'm well aware that bandwidth runs through rural areas, but planting a data center in a place conveniently located on top of one that also bisects a town large enough to host said data center is somewhat rare. When Google announced it needed a data center, only a dozen small towns in the whole country met the requirements. So it's not as common as you think.
Sure, latency is a reason to be close to NYC, but I don't think any of the exchanges even have datacenters in the city anymore,they are all across the river. I know NASDAQ has a backup facility in Virginia.
I seem to recall there were two of them located in the Twin Towers. You know, until the day they were exploded. So don't "think" me anything -- either know, or keep quiet.
I'm not sure what your point is? Datacenters have to be built in the city because that's where the carriers are, but commercial real estate is expensive so don't build your datacenter in the city?
Where do you plan on locating the several thousand gallons of diesel fuel needed to run a 2 or 4MW data center for over a week, in downtown Manhattan? It's expensive enough just finding space for the servers.
You're obviously not in NYC if you think "over six figures" means someone is highly paid. Part of my job is planning our IT DR strategy. Fortunately, our Facilities dept is in charge of the generator so I don't need to worry about fuel contracts or keeping it running, but I do need to make sure our data is safe no matter what happens to the building and that we can continue to operate as a business.
I didn't say it was highly paid, I was just suggesting they were probably being paid more than you. And given some of the comments I've read in your previous post, it's clear to me that whatever disaster recovery plans you are involved with or in charge of is nowhere near the scale of the data centers under discussion.
Diesel fuel lasts about a year if kept dry, around 68F, and in a sealed container. It can be prolonged with additives but this is not usually done because they can clog the fuel filter. Typically a data center keeps 2--5 days of fuel on site in an urban area; Not due to the cost of the fuel (which is a pitance) but the cost of storage, which requires commercial real estate. In most metropolitan areas, that price is $40-200 per square foot. Do the math.
You guys recently bought slashdot, and let me say, the first few "sponsored links" have been a real disappointment. TFA has a picture that's a screenshot of the ConEd website, and poorly cropped. The information is almost 10 hours out of date at time of posting, and most of the article consists of direct quotes from articles previously submitted to slashdot! Where's the originality? Where's the reporting on why this matters? Journalism includes an analysis of the facts, not just a compilation of them.
Any datacenter manager that doesn't already have fuel logistics in their disaster plan is in the wrong line of work.
I don't think any data center manager had a line item in the disaster recovery plan that included having all transportation access cut to the entire island due to flooding of the tunnel and closure of the bridges, for over a week. Everyone is having a problem getting fuel into the city; even mission-critical services like emergency services, hospitals, and telecommunications facilities.
As to your comment that "suburban and rural datacenters have the space", sure... but where's the fiber optic cable hookups and the telecommunications infrastructure located? I'll give you a hint: Not in a barn. Those data centers are located downtown because that's where everything else is. Not only that, but most of the data centers on the island are there because that's where Wall St. is, and milliseconds matter when it comes to high volume trading and financial transactions. Commercial real estate is at a premium in New York. Actually, all real estate is, leading to the old joke that when a New Yorker hears someone has died, the first question they ask is, "Is their apartment for rent?"
I think it's more likely to assume you've made an error in your reasoning, writing opinions from the comfort of an armchair, than people being paid over six figures who's job depends on balancing everything out exactly and to the nearest penny an hour.
I just googled to source the numbers to get a ballpark figure. So yeah, undoubtedly they're off -- people spend months preparing reports for their data center on fuel consumption, storage costs, location, etc. I spent 20 minutes. But putting the numbers together shows that even if you lowball all the numbers by 50%, storage cost is still massively eclipsing fuel cost.
People on slashdot here were being 'armchair CTOs' and saying how if it was their data center, they'd have bought all that extra fuel. "Well it was obvious Sandy was going to hit! Duh. Buy fuel." And of course when I see commentary like that, I feel a strong compulsion to point out that there were hundreds of professionals involved in the design, build, and maintenance of each of these data centers. They didn't just make an idiot mistake. And running the numbers (above) shows why they made the decisions they did. They may not be exact, but they're ballpark -- close enough to prove that the armchair CTOs were wrong, and the pros were right... and why they were right.
If it's an isotropic antenna radiating the power, then yes... the amount of received energy decreases as a square of the distance. But tesla wasn't using isotropic antennas. In fact, he was basically using giant coils to induce current flow in the Earth's magnetic field. By coupling it to the already-existing magnetic field, he could transmit power over very long distances at low losses... but it required a very low frequency (7.8hz) and a massive amount of input energy to run the process. It was definately not a mobile technology, and it depended on having a massive several-story tall coil as a receiver, again due to the very low frequency above.
You're not going to be powering drones using Tesla's technology... but you could transmit power from coast to coast rather than just regionally using our existing grid.
I would have thought it was obvious, but the middle of the city is where the telecommunications infrastructure is. It doesn't exist in a barn a hundred miles from any major city. And fuel has a shelf life. Diesel will slowly oxidize over time, and so the time you can keep it in the tank is about 12 months. You'll burn about 72 gallons an hour per megawatt (as a rough average). So a 2 megawatt data center will need about 3,500 gallons of diesel per day. A gallon takes up 231 cubic inches of space, so a single day's worth of fuel would need a tank with a capacity of 67,375 cubic feet. The average height of a floor in a skyscraper is 12.5 feet. In New York city, the average city block is 264 feet. That means that even if you filled an entire floor of a skyscraper with nothing but diesel fuel, you'd still get less than a week's worth of fuel guys. At a rate of perhaps $100 per month per square foot... you're talking about $83 million a year for a floor of an outlying area just to store that diesel fuel. Mind you, near Wall St., that price is probably going to be double or triple. The price of fuel is peanuts compared to this; 7 days of fuel for a 2MW plant would cost you only $94,000, plus transport costs.
So as you can see, this isn't a question of them not stocking enough fuel -- the cost of storing that fuel is prohibitively expensive.
And that, people, is why they didn't load up on fuel ahead of the storm. You can't simply pay $83 million a year for your data center to protect against a threat that might only materialize once a decade, and be severe enough to deny fuel deliveries or power restoration for that long of a time frame. Generator backup is a short term solution. There is no long term solution for disaster recovery, at least not one that's cost effective. Not in an urban setting.
The only time you can justify spending that kind of cash is if you're supporting critical infrastructure like phones, hospitals, and emergency services. Everyone else plans for a couple day supply and leaves it at that.
That's true, but the poster went off the deep end babbling about how what Tesla did was a myth, and it's crazy pseudo-science, and blah blah blah. Tesla succeeded in transmitting power over long distances and low loss rates wirelessly, that's historical fact. It may not work well with mobile devices, but I never claimed it did. I simply pointed out... it's not a new idea, or a new technology.
There's only one problem with people like you: You're always wrong. Tesla did do exactly what I said he did. Sorry it took me so long to check in and see some moron had gotten +5'd for handwaving while I got -1'd for telling the truth guys. Hopefully the mods will read the link and attached pictures and realize that yes, Tesla did have wireless power in the 1890s. Oh, and I was severely understating the distance: "Furthermore, the power loss experienced by Teslaâ(TM)s pulsed, electrostatic discharge mode of propagation was less than 5% over 25,000 miles. Dr. Van Voorhies states, âoe...path losses are 0.25 dB/Mm at 10 Hz,â which often is difficult for engineers to believe, who are used to transverse waves, a resistive medium, and line-of-sight propagation modes that can dissipate 10 dB/km at 5 MHz."
It does if you're one of the 2 million Americans in prison.
That leaves 99.5% of the population in the country out and about enjoying their freedoms. Not bad.
The incarceration rate is proof that the government has failed at its most basic task, keeping its citizens safe.
Funny, most people here consider criminals being locked up as enhancing their safety, not diminishing it...
I disagree with this definition. That's warlordism.
I'll tell you what -- you're right. I'll just give you that one. But that wasn't the point I was making: Just about every person in those places and situations would jump at the chance to be living here.
Does anyone really believe she would stand a chance against the US government?
You make it sound like our government has nothing better to do than bring it's full military might to bear on single mothers. An idea like that can only come from a regular viewer of FoxNews.
Tesla figured out how to broadcast power miles away, wirelessly, using technology available in the late 1800s. People around his lab routinely reported switching off the lights in their house, only to find they didn't turn off. Six feet? I'll be impressed when it's ten miles -- that was the standard at the turn of the last century.
Slashdot Mirror
Where would this land be? You aren't speaking of Alabama or Louisiana.
Really? They were both Confederate states. Read a history book once in awhile.
Way to totally ignore any negative experience regarding unions...at all. They're the reason our jobs left.
Citation needed? The reason our jobs left was globalization, not unions. It wouldn't matter if there was a union or not -- you can't compete with slave labor that costs $2 a year.
know a fellow here in China from Carolina doing furniture manufacturing. His company told the unions that the price had to come down, they were getting killed by competition from overseas. Union wouldn't budge one inch. Guess what happened? Closed down the factory and moved it lock, stock, and barrel to China. Surprise! Reality.
It would have happened anyway. Blaming the union was just an excuse.
Let's also totally ignore the union thugs who came out to bust Cesar Chavez and his workers.
His "thugs" campaigned against police brutality against the latino community. You may not be aware of this, but most of your produce is picked by mexican immigrants, the very people he was passionate about helping. They get no health care, below minimum wage pay, and the working conditions are so terrible that when several states passed anti-immigration laws they found they couldn't pay americans enough to work the fields. Did I mention they're breathing in pesticides and other chemicals that can cause all kinds of severe neurological disorder? Nobody wanted to do it, regardless of pay, and they still don't. Chavez organized the workers and forced lawmakers to address the problems. Oh, and those "thugs" you mentioned? He championed non-violent activism and considered Ghandi one of his personal heroes. But I mean, who cares -- it's just a bunch of fucking brown people. Throw 'em under a bus, right?
Let's ignore the fact that in some states, you can't even work without being forced to join a union.
Do these states have a name? Perhaps some kind of law, or something, you could point out for us all?
Let's ignore all the union bosses in prison (I didn't even bother to cite specific links as Google is continually populated with new stories on the topic).
Yes, because when someone pisses off a business, they're clearly moral degenerates, and the government never goes after people that are politically problematic for the wealthy -- they're totally fair an impartial.
Let's ignore the racism and sexism of the white male union rank-and-file.
As opposed to the racism and sexism of the non-union rank-and-file?
Once upon a time, there were genuine problems that unions solved. That time has passed.
Once upon a time, the United States helped win World War II. But since it's 50 years old, I suppose we can cancel Memorial Day. I mean, what have they done for us lately?
Wait a second, you are telling me without unions we would have no public education? Are you retarded?
No, my good and simple-minded detractor, I am simply aware of the fact that the people who ran the factories were the kind of people who, upon seeing a worker get mutilated by the machinery were simply led out the back door as their replacement walked in the front. If they don't value your life they aren't going to consider your education important.
Now I know you've lost it. We went to the moon because of unions?
No, you malignant ball of happy brain death... we built a strong industrial base and developed a large number of highly educated scientists and engineers because of unions, which allowed us to spend money on things like going to the moon, as well as having the expertise to do so.
And he was unionized, I suppose? Just that single person inventing things and selling them, a unionized island to himself.
Without an education, I doubt he'd be inventing much of anything besides idiosyncratic political viewpoints held in such low esteem by the author he wouldn't even pen his name to it. Or perhaps he lost his name in the bottom of a bottle while searching for his misplaced wits...
The unions had nothing to do with that. Union employes always had PENSIONS (well, you would like to think) that keep them from needing social security.
In days of old, when economies were bold, and monies were aplenty... it might be true, these words from you, if a public education you did not benefit. Alas our tale begins, in the darkened days of nineteen thirty two, whereupon there were many old, and the economy had foresaken. Fifty percent, the elderly were, homeless and in need, no pensions had they, no prospects too, when Sir Rosevelt made them all a Deal. He said to them, "I shall save you too, and you, and you, and you!" And with a mighty heave of his pen, he did create pensions for all, where none had existed before.
Most of these people have never had a union, except for certain engineers (and no, I'm talking professional engineer, sanitation engineers have a union, but they ain't real engineers, are they?) and scientists working for a university (and only sometimes then).
Not to put too fine a point on it, you keenly lacking invertebrate of questionable mental faculties and breeding, but they didn't have jobs either.
You must be high or retarded. Perhaps both?
On the internet, asking if someone else is either of those is basically admitting the character defect being accused. Or put in terms your juvenile nature can relate to, "the person who smelt it, dealt it." Good day sir!
the largest plant is going to be in the south. Most likely northern Alabama or possibly Louisiana. How do I know? I work in one of the State Governors office and there has been Foxconn AND Pegatron groups in and out since at least, roughly, Christmas 2011
How ironic (and fitting) that a land where people who still to this day wish for the good old days of slavery and cotton farms to return will soon be working in the modern equivalent of the cotton farm.
You jabber on about how unions are bad, how they destroyed this country, but you couldn't be more mistaken. The reason we became a world superpower was because of unions, not in spite of them. When the industrial revolution first made land fall, people left the farms to move into urban factories. There was no health care, no OSHA, no retirement or social security, no educational system, and no child labor laws. Workers would get chewed up by machines and that was that. No lawsuits, no nothing -- your livelihood was destroyed. Quite possibly, you later died of starvation. All of the problems that are present in China today were there at the start of our industrial revolution as well: Corruption, environmental contamination, worker abuse, long hours, low pay, and massive wealth inequity.
Then the unions came, and with it; OSHA, social security, public education, child labor laws, overtime compensation. And you know what happened then? Civilization didn't collapse. In fact, it prospered: The roaring 50s. A single man could now drive a car and live in a house he paid for, in full, and support a wive and two kids, working only 40 hours a week. It was the first generation to grow up with public education, and that literacy reflected in every area of american living; Anyone could invent something new and sell it. America became the land of opportunity. Immigrants flocked to the stars and striped by the millions. The middle class grew, and upward mobility was something just about anyone could achieve. For the first time in modern history, hard work nearly guaranteed a comfortable living. And work hard we did. When Europe was devestated by the world wars, it was american industry and ingenuity that pulled their ass out of the fire, and I'm not talking about the unparalleled capacity to produce ships, tanks, guns, and planes either. We didn't just build our own country -- we rebuilt a dozen others as well in post-war reconstruction. And after all that, you know what we did then? We went to the fucking moon.
Even Adam Smith in Wealth of Nations pointed out that one of the essential duties of government is to provide for the safety and well-being of its citizens. In other words, the work force. America's investment in its labor force resulted in economic gains far in excess of anything even the largest mega-corporations of today can match. And then it all went wrong.
It started with the Boomers. Having been given everything by their parents, they didn't understand the price paid by their predecessors. They assumed that this temporary equilibrium, this golden age, was a permanent feature of America. They felt entitled to it, instead of thankful. And when they seized power in the 70s and 80s, they cut social security, education, defunded OSHA, deregulated... and for a time, it was good. But in the shadows consumer debt piled up. The cost of an education skyrocketed, and illiteracy creeped back in. Our scientific and technological progress peaked, then rapidly deflated as the careers of scientist, engineer, inventor, were removed from public prestige and replaced with ridicule and scorn.
Today, our media holds illiterate opinions as equal to the most established of scientific truths. Our children are unable to afford an education, and we're witnessing the lowest graduation rates from all levels of education that anyone alive can remember. Our economy is in ruins, the middle class is rapidly evaporating, and the few wealthy compete amongst each other to auction off our civil infrastructure and institutions. The bridges and roadways our grandparents built with pride that enabled our economy to prosper grow increasingly deficient, falling into rivers or eating tires and vehicles. Our railway and roadway networks are so badly mangled that the idea of bringing back blimps has been floated a few times as a way of getting goods around. Our air space is managed by state of the art technology... or it was, in 1965.
No, unions made us a super power. And we're going to lose that status because we took what they gave us for granted.
The problem with 'anonymizing' the data is that while today it might seem safe, tomorrow a separate database showing a different subset of the same data source, or trace information, etc., which when combined can re-pair and de-anonymize it.
Kind of creepy to hear of "ex" CIA officers in top Cisco positions... advertising this must do wonders for foreign (and domestic) sales...
A lot of people get out of the military and then get regular jobs. Kind of creepy to hear of "ex" soldiers in top corporate positions... (dramatic pause) The fact that the guy is an ex-CIA officer doesn't mean anything on its own. Everyone has a past. Now if black helicopters are found over the homes of thousands of cisco employees and they report that a creepy guy stands in a dark corner of the copy machine wearing a mask chanting "Sing, my angel of muuusic!" then grapple-hooks his way into the ceiling laughing maniacally, and there's a bookshelf in the corporate boardroom that leads to a clandestine laboratory filled with guys known only as a single letter then maybe you've got a story.
I think they are off by an order of magnitude, extant evidence shows that brewing alcohol only started about 10,000 years ago.
In the official version of events, yes. You see, it took 40,000 years for humanity to sober up from the first brew they made. The stuff you call alcohol is version 2.0.
At the heart of the Constitution is the notion that the powers are government are derived from the people. That is to say, the government can only do what the people consent to allowing it to do. The document makes various references to this principle, some direct, others inferred. The Declaration of Independence was quite a bit more blunt on the topic. That said, the truth is... we're not all equal. Some people have more influence than others. Others have more money. And while we are afforded the right to vote, it's almost always voting who will represent us. We have no significant control over our government; Which was deliberate. The same people who said powers not expressly enumerated in the Constitution are reserved for the people also wrote in the so-called elasticity clause and created the electoral college.
So when people say there's no right to privacy in the Constitution, they're right and they're wrong... as is the other camp. The truth is, human rights are not derived from any legal instrument. They have always flowed from the same source -- a willingness to fight against their removal.
Okay, your cell phone phone is dead. Zombies have taken out the cell towers. It's an urban apocalypse. You're surrounded by evil, and low on gas. And there are no pay phones. How do you get in touch with the mad scientist 500 miles away to get the cure?
It's easy guys: Walk into a commercial building with power and ask to use the phone. In fact, many without power will still have a few POTS lines powered (read: Not digital); but you may have to hunt for them, so if you're trapped in an apparently "dead" building with zombies and cthulu beasts outside, patience and a flashlight will save the day. Just avoid the restrooms.
I know I'm being sarcastic here, but seriously guys -- if you're ever in a true emergency situation, stop and think. House flooded? No fresh water? Think about where fresh water might be -- stop panic'ing and really think. Ding! Toilet reservoir. People get all manner of stupid in a crisis because something they used to depend on suddenly isn't there. Guys, you've got millions of years of evolution that has taught you to be adaptable.. but not a lick of those years is going to do you any good until you calm down.
We don't need pay phones. We need to teach people to be self-reliant, instead of hiding under their desks. The government and emergency services may not always be there for you. Neither will any of your modern conveniences. But there is nothing you need to survive that can't be found within a few miles of wherever you are in an urban environment. Food. Shelter. Water. Medical supplies. And if someone's injured, know first aid! It's not rocket science; Take a course today. And keep a small bug-out bag in your car. Less than $100 and some planning ahead of time and you can not only survive just about any catastrophe but also help the people around you.
Everyone should be doing this. Don't rely on your fucking cell phone, or having access to any phone at all. Don't rely on the government. Rely on you. In an emergency, that's the only person you can rely on.
The $83 million a year would be the cost to rent 1 floor of a 1 square block sized skyscraper. One assumes the electricity would be the other major operating cost, so I fudged an extra $3 mil into the equation. But even $400k against an operating budget of $200mil represents a .2% increase in operating cost to protect against something that has a 1 in 50 chance of occuring. The profit margin of the 25 largest businesses in America is about 8.3%. It's likely our margins would be lower, but even at 8.3%, that's still a loss of 2.5% in profits. I understand boards of directors can get a good roasting for missing their earnings forcast by that much by the shareholders.
Disaster recovery isn't free, and protecting against all threats isn't practical for everyone, in every situation. That kind of mentality was popular during the dot com boom -- everybody wanted multiple redundant data centers on SONET fiber rings, nightly incremental backups to an offsite location and everything hot swap. You know what happened? Most of those businesses failed! The ones that succeeded made do with less, until they could build up to the point where some of those elements could be put into production.
I'm not a pie-in-the-sky engineer like a lot of people here on slashdot. I'm a down to earth engineer, who understands that a lot of times management isn't going to give me all the tools I need to do my job. Every company I've worked for or consulted with has had something significant in their IT infrastructure missing, whether it was uninterruptible power supplies in the server room, or keeping all the encryption keys on a single server with only two harddrives mirrored and no other backup, the fact is nobody is prepared for all contingencies. Nobody. Even the people you'd think would have their act together have overlooked something, somewhere. That's just the nature of this industry.
So regardless of where you think the cost versus benefit lines cross the reality is each business is going to plot it differently, and they'll have good reasons for doing so. A lot of the data centers listed in the article simply aren't mission-critical. Their customers' looked at them and said "Hey, if I can save $5 a month to locate it here instead of the other guys that spent the extra cash for a better recovery plan, I'm going for it!"
That's how businesses operate. All I was trying to do with those numbers was explain the logic behind why these businesses made that choice from an engineering perspective, I never intended the numbers to be solid, and even indicated as much in my comment by saying these are ballpark figures. As in, I didn't check my work. As in, I just mashed some numbers together to see how bad the problem really was. And while you're right that I got the amount of square footage wrong, as it was later pointed out in that thread -- most skyscrapers aren't built to support the weight of 300k gallons of diesel fuel on a single floor, and that's where these data centers are located. So even if cost wasn't an issue, structural design would be.
In the end, my only point was: There must be a rational explanation for why they aren't storing weeks' of fuel in these buildings, because I cannot believe that hundreds of millions of dollars would be going into these data centers' operating budget and they'd just forget to spec out the space for the fuel.
While amusing, the ability to watch the video unencrypted probably won't save you from being blown up at that point. What it will do, however, is tell your buddies where the drone took off, where it landed, and what areas are under surveillance. Now if I were an evil scheming terrorist, I'd wait until the drone passed by with its surveillance rig, and once it recorded something the top brass would consider a "target", shuffle in a bunch of women and children in the back way, and then evacuate the building. When Sir Bombsalot comes knocking, have camcorders standing by to show how the bastard americans are targeting innocent women and children.
It's clear that the US military is better funded than my theoretical terrorist cell of doom, so rather than risk the lives of my people, I'd just as soon leave somebody else in the firing line. Why send someone into a crowded building with a bomb strapped to their chest when your enemy will happily supply an expensive GPS-guided smart bomb instead? And if the equipment to watch the video isn't expensive, equipment to jam the signal and replace it with a fake feed wouldn't be that difficult to come by either. It's not like realtime video manipulation software doesn't exist; they use it for football games, and it fits in the back of a van. Or did you think the yellow scrimmage line got repainted every time they made a new first down?
a couple of times a century is definitely a likely disaster. Would you not plan for an event with a 2% chance of occuring every year?
Not if it cost me $86 million a year, and my total operating budget was $200 million.
What kind of disaster plan is it that doesn't account for a likely disaster? I can guarantee that...
There were 47 storms to hit New York last century. Of those, only the storms of 1936, 1944, 1954, 1971, 1976, and 1996. Of those, the only storm which caused the New York subway system to flood and caused significant damage to Manhattan was in 1971. So a couple times a century is not a likely disaster -- most of these storms do not result in the level of devastation seen here.
Just follow the train lines to find out where the major telecommunication lines are -- I have access to more carriers down on the Peninsula outside of San Francisco than I do downtown. You may be surprised at how much bandwidth runs through Colorado and even Missouri.
I'm well aware that bandwidth runs through rural areas, but planting a data center in a place conveniently located on top of one that also bisects a town large enough to host said data center is somewhat rare. When Google announced it needed a data center, only a dozen small towns in the whole country met the requirements. So it's not as common as you think.
Sure, latency is a reason to be close to NYC, but I don't think any of the exchanges even have datacenters in the city anymore,they are all across the river. I know NASDAQ has a backup facility in Virginia.
I seem to recall there were two of them located in the Twin Towers. You know, until the day they were exploded. So don't "think" me anything -- either know, or keep quiet.
I'm not sure what your point is? Datacenters have to be built in the city because that's where the carriers are, but commercial real estate is expensive so don't build your datacenter in the city?
Where do you plan on locating the several thousand gallons of diesel fuel needed to run a 2 or 4MW data center for over a week, in downtown Manhattan? It's expensive enough just finding space for the servers.
You're obviously not in NYC if you think "over six figures" means someone is highly paid. Part of my job is planning our IT DR strategy. Fortunately, our Facilities dept is in charge of the generator so I don't need to worry about fuel contracts or keeping it running, but I do need to make sure our data is safe no matter what happens to the building and that we can continue to operate as a business.
I didn't say it was highly paid, I was just suggesting they were probably being paid more than you. And given some of the comments I've read in your previous post, it's clear to me that whatever disaster recovery plans you are involved with or in charge of is nowhere near the scale of the data centers under discussion.
Diesel fuel lasts about a year if kept dry, around 68F, and in a sealed container. It can be prolonged with additives but this is not usually done because they can clog the fuel filter. Typically a data center keeps 2--5 days of fuel on site in an urban area; Not due to the cost of the fuel (which is a pitance) but the cost of storage, which requires commercial real estate. In most metropolitan areas, that price is $40-200 per square foot. Do the math.
You guys recently bought slashdot, and let me say, the first few "sponsored links" have been a real disappointment. TFA has a picture that's a screenshot of the ConEd website, and poorly cropped. The information is almost 10 hours out of date at time of posting, and most of the article consists of direct quotes from articles previously submitted to slashdot! Where's the originality? Where's the reporting on why this matters? Journalism includes an analysis of the facts, not just a compilation of them.
Any datacenter manager that doesn't already have fuel logistics in their disaster plan is in the wrong line of work.
I don't think any data center manager had a line item in the disaster recovery plan that included having all transportation access cut to the entire island due to flooding of the tunnel and closure of the bridges, for over a week. Everyone is having a problem getting fuel into the city; even mission-critical services like emergency services, hospitals, and telecommunications facilities.
As to your comment that "suburban and rural datacenters have the space", sure... but where's the fiber optic cable hookups and the telecommunications infrastructure located? I'll give you a hint: Not in a barn. Those data centers are located downtown because that's where everything else is. Not only that, but most of the data centers on the island are there because that's where Wall St. is, and milliseconds matter when it comes to high volume trading and financial transactions. Commercial real estate is at a premium in New York. Actually, all real estate is, leading to the old joke that when a New Yorker hears someone has died, the first question they ask is, "Is their apartment for rent?"
I think it's more likely to assume you've made an error in your reasoning, writing opinions from the comfort of an armchair, than people being paid over six figures who's job depends on balancing everything out exactly and to the nearest penny an hour.
I just googled to source the numbers to get a ballpark figure. So yeah, undoubtedly they're off -- people spend months preparing reports for their data center on fuel consumption, storage costs, location, etc. I spent 20 minutes. But putting the numbers together shows that even if you lowball all the numbers by 50%, storage cost is still massively eclipsing fuel cost.
People on slashdot here were being 'armchair CTOs' and saying how if it was their data center, they'd have bought all that extra fuel. "Well it was obvious Sandy was going to hit! Duh. Buy fuel." And of course when I see commentary like that, I feel a strong compulsion to point out that there were hundreds of professionals involved in the design, build, and maintenance of each of these data centers. They didn't just make an idiot mistake. And running the numbers (above) shows why they made the decisions they did. They may not be exact, but they're ballpark -- close enough to prove that the armchair CTOs were wrong, and the pros were right... and why they were right.
If it's an isotropic antenna radiating the power, then yes... the amount of received energy decreases as a square of the distance. But tesla wasn't using isotropic antennas. In fact, he was basically using giant coils to induce current flow in the Earth's magnetic field. By coupling it to the already-existing magnetic field, he could transmit power over very long distances at low losses... but it required a very low frequency (7.8hz) and a massive amount of input energy to run the process. It was definately not a mobile technology, and it depended on having a massive several-story tall coil as a receiver, again due to the very low frequency above.
You're not going to be powering drones using Tesla's technology... but you could transmit power from coast to coast rather than just regionally using our existing grid.
I would have thought it was obvious, but the middle of the city is where the telecommunications infrastructure is. It doesn't exist in a barn a hundred miles from any major city. And fuel has a shelf life. Diesel will slowly oxidize over time, and so the time you can keep it in the tank is about 12 months. You'll burn about 72 gallons an hour per megawatt (as a rough average). So a 2 megawatt data center will need about 3,500 gallons of diesel per day. A gallon takes up 231 cubic inches of space, so a single day's worth of fuel would need a tank with a capacity of 67,375 cubic feet. The average height of a floor in a skyscraper is 12.5 feet. In New York city, the average city block is 264 feet. That means that even if you filled an entire floor of a skyscraper with nothing but diesel fuel, you'd still get less than a week's worth of fuel guys. At a rate of perhaps $100 per month per square foot... you're talking about $83 million a year for a floor of an outlying area just to store that diesel fuel. Mind you, near Wall St., that price is probably going to be double or triple. The price of fuel is peanuts compared to this; 7 days of fuel for a 2MW plant would cost you only $94,000, plus transport costs.
So as you can see, this isn't a question of them not stocking enough fuel -- the cost of storing that fuel is prohibitively expensive.
And that, people, is why they didn't load up on fuel ahead of the storm. You can't simply pay $83 million a year for your data center to protect against a threat that might only materialize once a decade, and be severe enough to deny fuel deliveries or power restoration for that long of a time frame. Generator backup is a short term solution. There is no long term solution for disaster recovery, at least not one that's cost effective. Not in an urban setting.
The only time you can justify spending that kind of cash is if you're supporting critical infrastructure like phones, hospitals, and emergency services. Everyone else plans for a couple day supply and leaves it at that.
That's true, but the poster went off the deep end babbling about how what Tesla did was a myth, and it's crazy pseudo-science, and blah blah blah. Tesla succeeded in transmitting power over long distances and low loss rates wirelessly, that's historical fact. It may not work well with mobile devices, but I never claimed it did. I simply pointed out... it's not a new idea, or a new technology.
Slashdot missed the most important thing about this one: It attacks from above.
I'm waiting for my apology.
It does if you're one of the 2 million Americans in prison.
That leaves 99.5% of the population in the country out and about enjoying their freedoms. Not bad.
The incarceration rate is proof that the government has failed at its most basic task, keeping its citizens safe.
Funny, most people here consider criminals being locked up as enhancing their safety, not diminishing it...
I disagree with this definition. That's warlordism.
I'll tell you what -- you're right. I'll just give you that one. But that wasn't the point I was making: Just about every person in those places and situations would jump at the chance to be living here.
Does anyone really believe she would stand a chance against the US government?
You make it sound like our government has nothing better to do than bring it's full military might to bear on single mothers. An idea like that can only come from a regular viewer of FoxNews.
Tesla figured out how to broadcast power miles away, wirelessly, using technology available in the late 1800s. People around his lab routinely reported switching off the lights in their house, only to find they didn't turn off. Six feet? I'll be impressed when it's ten miles -- that was the standard at the turn of the last century.