I guess this takes place in West Virginia? Coal isn't economical compared to natural gas in most places so there are plenty of places that would just have to ramp up a few other power plants and be just fine.
Unless you're planning on running them on LNG (with the associated trucking / transportation costs), you will also have to plan on installing several thousand km's of pipeline* to supply these theoretical natural gas power stations. Not to mention compressor stations to make sure your turbines aren't getting starved out when everyone in the area turns on their barbeques or natural gas ovens for dinner...
I like how non-technical people thing that 'they' just have to ramp up a few other plants to solve the problem. Um, no. The plants were built to serve a specific maximum capacity, and that includes all of the support infrastructure behind the plants in the first place. Generally, unless the plant was designed for it from the start, you can't just throw in another turbine or two at each site and not expect things to come crashing to a halt. More often, new generation means you need bigger pipes, higher pressures and more site infrastructure (electrical, controls, instrumentation, backup generation, meter stations, even manpower) to support the new turbines. That's likely a multi-year project, and the cost of the turbines alone is a mere fraction of the total.
* I thought after that whole Keystone debacle that Americans aren't that keen on running pipeline? >:)
Interesting subject but your post ends up a bit obvious and redundant given all the other posts (no offense, constructive criticism!) while ignoring the truly surprising part of this plan. The entire coal industry can be bought for ONLY $50B?! There are individuals walking around with more money than that. Exxon's profits for 2013 alone were over $30B. How is an entire 100+ year old industry that supplies 40% of our power and holds political sway over a bunch of states only worth $50 billion?
Because it's efficient. Because it doesn't require a lot of high-tech manufactured goods and has lower maintenance and repair costs compared to other alternatives (natural gas and hydro being the exception...which would be why they're numbers 2 and 4 on the 'percent of US power is supplied by...' list. Nuclear's only number 3 because of the massive amount of production available per plant).
That's why it's so popular. Well, that and the fact that you can put one pretty much anywhere you have space, so it's good for those places with no sunshine, variable wind and no local hydro sources available...
I would definitely say external drives for the irreplaceable data (photos, home video, scanned images, voice clips, documents, etc.). The rest is already *cough torrents cough* backed up for you. Yes, it would take a while to rebuild, but ultimately it's available.
I would also perhaps back up any older or hard-to-find collections to the hard drive, or any particularly cherished movies (kids movie collection, perhaps). Personally, I back up everything to three 4TB external drives because I have the ports available on my server, but if you don't then back up what's important and don't worry about the rest...
Your only other option, really, is to get a 6-bay NAS and some hard drives to fill it. This setup would run you around $2,000, but then you'd be able to back up all of teh things...until your data grows beyond 20 TB (assuming you'd put the NAS into Raid 5 at least:)
Darwin's theory rested on oversimplifying the complexity of life, so he came up with a bizarro view of heredity reminescent of how the Nazi's invented the "frost" cosmology because they were embarrased by all the advances made by Jewish cosmologists (who incidentally were mostly Germans themselves).
Baby...bathwater. Darwin was trying to posit a mechanisim to describe his observations on hereditable traits. Remember, Mendel was a contemporary, and his work developing genetic theory wasn't to gain general acceptance until after his death...which was two years after Darwin died. Once genetic theory was developed and refined, it was simply applied to Darwin's Theory of Evolution and found to be a better description of how observed heredity actually works than his original hypothesis.
I find music annoying when it's playing while I'm doing something else. It really does bother me when it's playing at random places like bowling alleys or stores, serving no purpose but to make it harder to talk with other people. The louder it is the more it drives me crazy for that reason.
THIS is why I hate going to bars. I like drinking. I like talking to my friends and (sometimes) making new ones. However, I hate having to shout at each other to pass the damn chicken wings...
While I never listen to music, I think it has its place in games and movies. The music can help to convey the emotion of the scene, or the action going on in the game, in such a way that it heightens the experience.
I am firmly in the 1-3%, yet I find you are correct, there are times and places where music enhances other experiences. So long as it doesn't distract from the movie or game.
I will occasionally turn the radio on on long car trips to keep me awake but after about an hour I get overstimulated and have to turn it back off again.
Might I suggest you try listening to audiobooks on your long car trips? Douwnpour.com has a great selection of DRM-free MP3 audiobooks for reasonable prices.
I also can't stand listening to music while driving: it doesn't engage my mind enough to counteract the tedium, while being just repetitive enough to engender frustration and annoyance. But put in a good book by one of my favourite authors, and I'm happy as a clam: those four-hour drives just fly by!:)
How much "game-changing functionality" can you really work into a fucking coffee machine?
To me, it sounds like they're planning on emulating Tassimo and their bar-coded brewing system, so the user can use 'milk' pods, tea pods, etc. and the system will brew them differently depending on the scanned and recognized contents (temperature for sure, pressure maybe? size? IDK)
What they seem to be 'forgetting' is that it was the flexibility and simplicity of the K-Cup system that actually gained them the dominant market share in the first place. Sure you can brew cappucinos and lattes with the Tassimo...but you can use your own favorite coffee brand with the Keurig My K-Cup reusable filter, freshly ground if that's your thing, or spooned out of a Maxwell House container to save money / env. wastage on each cup. Heck, I use my My K-Cup to hold loose tea leaves when I feel like a specialty cuppa...and they're good for two to three cups, too.
Nope, if they disable their whole BYO ability, I predict that they will wind up in a small corner of a niche market. If they relent and provide a My K-Cup equivalent for the 2.0...well, it's just barely possible that they could survive this bone-headed move, although people will grumble about not having cheap generics available. Either way, watch for stock prices to plunge.
FYI, most of these programs (i.e., 10 out of the 12, if you count the alternate text editor Notepad++) are available as Portable Apps that you can keep on (and even run from) a USB thumb drive.
Might save you some installation and configuring time:) I'd bet plenty of programs on your full list are available too...
Frankly, the first thing I 'install' on a Windows box is a USB drive containing my Portable Apps, including Firefox, Libre Office, pdftk, FreeCommander, Lupas Rename (portable version), 7-Zip, FileZilla, Gimp, Dia, Irfanview, Notepad++, VLC, Audacity, WinDirStat, AutoHotKey and of course PStart to help manage them all:)
Irfanview is nice, I used to default to that, but I switched over to XNView a while back and like it much more. Just a more polished interface than IView, simple but very powerful batch tools, quick, responsive and customizable.
Unfortunately, the main desktop version is buggy under Windows 8 (was wonderful under Windows 7 and XP), and the cross-platform java version isn't nearly as powerful as the main one, although at least it works with Windows 8...
That would be Thunderbird, followed by Calibre and Skype. I don't care for Evolution, so Thunderbird which is nice and simple to use! Calibre since I have a Sony Reader which uses epub format, since Calibre can convert just about any eBook format to just about any other one, as long as they are not DRMed, it also keeps my eBook library nicely organized. Skype is because one son lives 800 miles away and another 6,157 miles away right now, and Skype works with MS, Apple and Linux OSes so we can keep in touch and see each others faces once in a while!
I used to install Calibre on everything, too, then I started using their server option and just leave a master copy running on my home server. Much better, and I don't have to worry about my various libraries getting out of sync.
Do you really think you're going to be able to do a reasonable job of it, if you don't know which functions of your app users have enabled permissions for.
Yes, because a support email from the app can include what features are enabled - or I can just ask them.
But realistically there are not so many permissions choices you cannot test them. The iOS app reviewers do, so you have to test your app with all possible permissions disabled before you submit.
Ooops, your app crashes for the 3% of users who turn of contact searching
And one of the many crash reporters you can (and should) embed in an app will tell you that long before a user sends in a complaint, so it's fixed in the next update.
To be sure, there certainly are many, many ways to break an egg, but this article is specifically talking about device-resident code that would take care of bricking the phone for you...no need to mess with HLR's. One-stop shopping, as it were:)
If so, they are barking up the WRONG tree. We don't want the handset software to do the banning. Banning an ESN is *easy* compared to what they are describing here. Carriers only have to check the ESN registry when the handset gets turned on, if it's not "bad" and a it has a valid SIM so you know who to bill, it's good to go. The other advantages is that it is NOT reversible by the criminal, while re-flashing the phone is something they might be able to accomplish. Yet, upon recovery of a stolen phone, a bad ESN registry might allow for the reinstatement of of an ESN by the owner so they can use it again.
Yeah, there's definitely lots of potential problems with this whole scheme, which is why most people here are saying 'hell no'.
Even if you ignore the potential for abuse (kill-codes being sent by someone not authorized by the user), how effective can it really be? Basically, unless the reset password is hard-coded *someone* will find a way to change it, and even if it is hard-coded, chances are a patient enough thief will recover it...eventually. Firmware can be flashed, chips can be swapped out and probed, etc. etc.
The only way I can see that this could be really effective at the stated goal of reducing theft is if the phone *physically* bricks on receipt of the kill code, like if an acid capsule were punctured to etch the boards beyond repair. It's non-recoverable by anyone, which sucks for the user, but at least the thief isn't getting more than parts value for the stolen goods and the user's data is safe from malicious intent.
Even in this case, though, the thief will simply make it a priority to get the device into a faraday cage right after 'acquisition', so the user doesn't have time to get the kill code sent...then they have all the time in the world to disable the theft countermeasures. Be suspicious of that man following you with the roll of tinfoil in his back pocket...
BTW: There was some research done a while back that did show that using spell and grammar checkers improved the bad english-skills people, but actually made the people who were already good english-skills people worse!
That's it, blame the spelling and grammar checkers...
You're looking at the wrong level. The proposal was for software embedded in the phone (not the HLR) so that it would brick if it received the right command. So no need to corrupt the HLR at all, just send the brick yourself command to the phones.
This.
Why do all that work, just tell the phone to do the work for you! If this gets implemented, that is...
I don't think that is what they where discussing. I thought it was about banning the ESN at the carrier level. This would effectively render the handset unserviceable by any carrier that refused to service the ESN. No need to put software on the phone.
Nope.
FTFA:
A proposal by Samsung to the five largest U.S. carriers would have made the LoJack software, developed by Canada's Absolute Software, a standard component on many of its Android phones in the U.S.... To work, the LoJack system requires two components. The first is code buried with the phone's firmware that ensures it remains active even if the operating system is reinstalled. The second is a desktop app through which users control the software.
To be sure, there certainly are many, many ways to break an egg, but this article is specifically talking about device-resident code that would take care of bricking the phone for you...no need to mess with HLR's. One-stop shopping, as it were:)
I could find a song on iTunes US, but not available on iTunes Canada, and because I do live in Canada, I could not easily order it off of iTunes US. If the right's holder decides to maintain the rights to a song, and not allow me to purchase it legally in my own country, then why should you be allowed to sue for copyright infringement, considering you're not making it available for me to purchase legally?
Interesting thought.
I wonder how exactly they would assess 'damages' if the material in question was never available for purchase in the first place?
You're looking at the wrong level. The proposal was for software embedded in the phone (not the HLR) so that it would brick if it received the right command. So no need to corrupt the HLR at all, just send the brick yourself command to the phones.
This.
Why do all that work, just tell the phone to do the work for you! If this gets implemented, that is...
The real solution here is for rights holders to get off their fucking asses and start giving consumers what they want.
Everything for free?
DRM free, certainly.
Y'know, like mp3's, which are still pirated but are at least available for purchase, unlike any DRM-free video that I am aware of...give true customers access without all the PITA usage restrictions, and the true fans will buy it simply to support the media they love. Yes, there will always be freeloaders, but those are the same people who would bum the DVD's from their friends instead of buying it anyways. At least you'd have the freeloaders telling their friends (who may be more flush with cash) about this hot new show they should watch...if the show's worth talking about, that is.
Slashdot Mirror
Demand for energy isn't perfectly inelastic, so in the absence of a price ceiling, there's no such thing as "won't meet the demand."
So, electricity is reserved for the rich, then?
Nice to know this isn't a step backward, no, not in any way...
I guess this takes place in West Virginia? Coal isn't economical compared to natural gas in most places so there are plenty of places that would just have to ramp up a few other power plants and be just fine.
Unless you're planning on running them on LNG (with the associated trucking / transportation costs), you will also have to plan on installing several thousand km's of pipeline* to supply these theoretical natural gas power stations. Not to mention compressor stations to make sure your turbines aren't getting starved out when everyone in the area turns on their barbeques or natural gas ovens for dinner...
I like how non-technical people thing that 'they' just have to ramp up a few other plants to solve the problem. Um, no. The plants were built to serve a specific maximum capacity, and that includes all of the support infrastructure behind the plants in the first place. Generally, unless the plant was designed for it from the start, you can't just throw in another turbine or two at each site and not expect things to come crashing to a halt. More often, new generation means you need bigger pipes, higher pressures and more site infrastructure (electrical, controls, instrumentation, backup generation, meter stations, even manpower) to support the new turbines. That's likely a multi-year project, and the cost of the turbines alone is a mere fraction of the total.
* I thought after that whole Keystone debacle that Americans aren't that keen on running pipeline? >:)
Interesting subject but your post ends up a bit obvious and redundant given all the other posts (no offense, constructive criticism!) while ignoring the truly surprising part of this plan. The entire coal industry can be bought for ONLY $50B?! There are individuals walking around with more money than that. Exxon's profits for 2013 alone were over $30B. How is an entire 100+ year old industry that supplies 40% of our power and holds political sway over a bunch of states only worth $50 billion?
Because it's efficient. Because it doesn't require a lot of high-tech manufactured goods and has lower maintenance and repair costs compared to other alternatives (natural gas and hydro being the exception...which would be why they're numbers 2 and 4 on the 'percent of US power is supplied by...' list. Nuclear's only number 3 because of the massive amount of production available per plant).
That's why it's so popular. Well, that and the fact that you can put one pretty much anywhere you have space, so it's good for those places with no sunshine, variable wind and no local hydro sources available...
I would definitely say external drives for the irreplaceable data (photos, home video, scanned images, voice clips, documents, etc.). The rest is already *cough torrents cough* backed up for you. Yes, it would take a while to rebuild, but ultimately it's available.
I would also perhaps back up any older or hard-to-find collections to the hard drive, or any particularly cherished movies (kids movie collection, perhaps). Personally, I back up everything to three 4TB external drives because I have the ports available on my server, but if you don't then back up what's important and don't worry about the rest...
Your only other option, really, is to get a 6-bay NAS and some hard drives to fill it. This setup would run you around $2,000, but then you'd be able to back up all of teh things...until your data grows beyond 20 TB (assuming you'd put the NAS into Raid 5 at least :)
Look it up:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P...
Darwin's theory rested on oversimplifying the complexity of life, so he came up with a bizarro view of heredity reminescent of how the Nazi's invented the "frost" cosmology because they were embarrased by all the advances made by Jewish cosmologists (who incidentally were mostly Germans themselves).
Baby...bathwater. Darwin was trying to posit a mechanisim to describe his observations on hereditable traits. Remember, Mendel was a contemporary, and his work developing genetic theory wasn't to gain general acceptance until after his death...which was two years after Darwin died. Once genetic theory was developed and refined, it was simply applied to Darwin's Theory of Evolution and found to be a better description of how observed heredity actually works than his original hypothesis.
Claiming that "Pangenesis was wrong, therefore evolution is wrong" is akin to claiming that Copernican theory is incorrect because Galileo thought tides were caused by variations in the motion of the earth as it revolved around the sun.
I find music annoying when it's playing while I'm doing something else. It really does bother me when it's playing at random places like bowling alleys or stores, serving no purpose but to make it harder to talk with other people. The louder it is the more it drives me crazy for that reason.
THIS is why I hate going to bars. I like drinking. I like talking to my friends and (sometimes) making new ones. However, I hate having to shout at each other to pass the damn chicken wings...
While I never listen to music, I think it has its place in games and movies. The music can help to convey the emotion of the scene, or the action going on in the game, in such a way that it heightens the experience.
I don't think I've ever seen a better example of this than this trailer of Mrs. Doubtfire recut as a horror film.
I am firmly in the 1-3%, yet I find you are correct, there are times and places where music enhances other experiences. So long as it doesn't distract from the movie or game.
I will occasionally turn the radio on on long car trips to keep me awake
but after about an hour I get overstimulated and have to turn it back off again.
Might I suggest you try listening to audiobooks on your long car trips? Douwnpour.com has a great selection of DRM-free MP3 audiobooks for reasonable prices.
I also can't stand listening to music while driving: it doesn't engage my mind enough to counteract the tedium, while being just repetitive enough to engender frustration and annoyance. But put in a good book by one of my favourite authors, and I'm happy as a clam: those four-hour drives just fly by! :)
How much "game-changing functionality" can you really work into a fucking coffee machine?
To me, it sounds like they're planning on emulating Tassimo and their bar-coded brewing system, so the user can use 'milk' pods, tea pods, etc. and the system will brew them differently depending on the scanned and recognized contents (temperature for sure, pressure maybe? size? IDK)
What they seem to be 'forgetting' is that it was the flexibility and simplicity of the K-Cup system that actually gained them the dominant market share in the first place. Sure you can brew cappucinos and lattes with the Tassimo...but you can use your own favorite coffee brand with the Keurig My K-Cup reusable filter, freshly ground if that's your thing, or spooned out of a Maxwell House container to save money / env. wastage on each cup. Heck, I use my My K-Cup to hold loose tea leaves when I feel like a specialty cuppa...and they're good for two to three cups, too.
Nope, if they disable their whole BYO ability, I predict that they will wind up in a small corner of a niche market. If they relent and provide a My K-Cup equivalent for the 2.0...well, it's just barely possible that they could survive this bone-headed move, although people will grumble about not having cheap generics available. Either way, watch for stock prices to plunge.
So should I tell you both off since I have a 5-digit UID?
It's not the length that counts, but how you use it...
Excellent list!
FYI, most of these programs (i.e., 10 out of the 12, if you count the alternate text editor Notepad++) are available as Portable Apps that you can keep on (and even run from) a USB thumb drive.
Might save you some installation and configuring time :) I'd bet plenty of programs on your full list are available too...
Frankly, the first thing I 'install' on a Windows box is a USB drive containing my Portable Apps, including Firefox, Libre Office, pdftk, FreeCommander, Lupas Rename (portable version), 7-Zip, FileZilla, Gimp, Dia, Irfanview, Notepad++, VLC, Audacity, WinDirStat, AutoHotKey and of course PStart to help manage them all :)
Irfanview is nice, I used to default to that, but I switched over to XNView a while back and like it much more. Just a more polished interface than IView, simple but very powerful batch tools, quick, responsive and customizable.
Unfortunately, the main desktop version is buggy under Windows 8 (was wonderful under Windows 7 and XP), and the cross-platform java version isn't nearly as powerful as the main one, although at least it works with Windows 8...
That would be Thunderbird, followed by Calibre and Skype. I don't care for Evolution, so Thunderbird which is nice and simple to use! Calibre since I have a Sony Reader which uses epub format, since Calibre can convert just about any eBook format to just about any other one, as long as they are not DRMed, it also keeps my eBook library nicely organized. Skype is because one son lives 800 miles away and another 6,157 miles away right now, and Skype works with MS, Apple and Linux OSes so we can keep in touch and see each others faces once in a while!
I used to install Calibre on everything, too, then I started using their server option and just leave a master copy running on my home server. Much better, and I don't have to worry about my various libraries getting out of sync.
Skype and Thunderbird...not so much.
You've got questions?
We've got stupid looks.
Haha, the one I remember best is:
"You've got questions?
We've got blank stares..."
Which pretty much applies to any 'tech' chain store these days...*sigh*
This article sums it up nicely, I think.
Nice going, Arizona. Or at least, Arizona politicians.
Do you really think you're going to be able to do a reasonable job of it, if you don't know which functions of your app users have enabled permissions for.
Yes, because a support email from the app can include what features are enabled - or I can just ask them.
But realistically there are not so many permissions choices you cannot test them. The iOS app reviewers do, so you have to test your app with all possible permissions disabled before you submit.
Ooops, your app crashes for the 3% of users who turn of contact searching
And one of the many crash reporters you can (and should) embed in an app will tell you that long before a user sends in a complaint, so it's fixed in the next update.
Assuming they have enabled network access...
I found that people judge you by your domain.
Custom domain -- professional.
@gmail/yahoo/hotmail -- hack.
You read the Oatmeal too, don't you?
To be sure, there certainly are many, many ways to break an egg, but this article is specifically talking about device-resident code that would take care of bricking the phone for you...no need to mess with HLR's. One-stop shopping, as it were :)
If so, they are barking up the WRONG tree. We don't want the handset software to do the banning. Banning an ESN is *easy* compared to what they are describing here. Carriers only have to check the ESN registry when the handset gets turned on, if it's not "bad" and a it has a valid SIM so you know who to bill, it's good to go. The other advantages is that it is NOT reversible by the criminal, while re-flashing the phone is something they might be able to accomplish. Yet, upon recovery of a stolen phone, a bad ESN registry might allow for the reinstatement of of an ESN by the owner so they can use it again.
Yeah, there's definitely lots of potential problems with this whole scheme, which is why most people here are saying 'hell no'.
Even if you ignore the potential for abuse (kill-codes being sent by someone not authorized by the user), how effective can it really be? Basically, unless the reset password is hard-coded *someone* will find a way to change it, and even if it is hard-coded, chances are a patient enough thief will recover it...eventually. Firmware can be flashed, chips can be swapped out and probed, etc. etc.
The only way I can see that this could be really effective at the stated goal of reducing theft is if the phone *physically* bricks on receipt of the kill code, like if an acid capsule were punctured to etch the boards beyond repair. It's non-recoverable by anyone, which sucks for the user, but at least the thief isn't getting more than parts value for the stolen goods and the user's data is safe from malicious intent.
Even in this case, though, the thief will simply make it a priority to get the device into a faraday cage right after 'acquisition', so the user doesn't have time to get the kill code sent...then they have all the time in the world to disable the theft countermeasures. Be suspicious of that man following you with the roll of tinfoil in his back pocket...
BTW: There was some research done a while back that did show that using spell and grammar checkers improved the bad english-skills people, but actually made the people who were already good english-skills people worse!
That's it, blame the spelling and grammar checkers...
You're looking at the wrong level. The proposal was for software embedded in the phone (not the HLR) so that it would brick if it received the right command. So no need to corrupt the HLR at all, just send the brick yourself command to the phones.
This.
Why do all that work, just tell the phone to do the work for you! If this gets implemented, that is...
I don't think that is what they where discussing. I thought it was about banning the ESN at the carrier level. This would effectively render the handset unserviceable by any carrier that refused to service the ESN. No need to put software on the phone.
Nope.
FTFA:
A proposal by Samsung to the five largest U.S. carriers would have made the LoJack software, developed by Canada's Absolute Software, a standard component on many of its Android phones in the U.S. ...
To work, the LoJack system requires two components. The first is code buried with the phone's firmware that ensures it remains active even if the operating system is reinstalled. The second is a desktop app through which users control the software.
To be sure, there certainly are many, many ways to break an egg, but this article is specifically talking about device-resident code that would take care of bricking the phone for you...no need to mess with HLR's. One-stop shopping, as it were :)
canada: you used to be cool. what happened?
Have you been up here lately??
-47 Celsius with the wind chill this morning...and we're getting damn tired of it already!
I could find a song on iTunes US, but not available on iTunes Canada, and because I do live in Canada, I could not easily order it off of iTunes US. If the right's holder decides to maintain the rights to a song, and not allow me to purchase it legally in my own country, then why should you be allowed to sue for copyright infringement, considering you're not making it available for me to purchase legally?
Interesting thought.
I wonder how exactly they would assess 'damages' if the material in question was never available for purchase in the first place?
You're looking at the wrong level. The proposal was for software embedded in the phone (not the HLR) so that it would brick if it received the right command. So no need to corrupt the HLR at all, just send the brick yourself command to the phones.
This.
Why do all that work, just tell the phone to do the work for you! If this gets implemented, that is...
The real solution here is for rights holders to get off their fucking asses and start giving consumers what they want.
Everything for free?
DRM free, certainly.
Y'know, like mp3's, which are still pirated but are at least available for purchase, unlike any DRM-free video that I am aware of...give true customers access without all the PITA usage restrictions, and the true fans will buy it simply to support the media they love. Yes, there will always be freeloaders, but those are the same people who would bum the DVD's from their friends instead of buying it anyways. At least you'd have the freeloaders telling their friends (who may be more flush with cash) about this hot new show they should watch...if the show's worth talking about, that is.