Can the motors in question apply the same amount of pressure that can be produced by squeezing the human hand?
Since they were designing an impractical proof-of-concept, I think it's safe to say that they could easily come up with motors that can provide the same (or more) pressure as human hands. When you have no real weight or energy concerns, anything is possible.
but there are military helicopters which use fly-by-wireless at a significant mass savings. All that mass that isn't in copper/insulation/supports can go into payload or armor or other "useful" stuff.
Can you provide a reference for this?
With as much RF shielding that military radio/navigation equipment gets for resistance to jamming, I'm really surprised that they'd go fully wireless for control systems.
The summary says with milliseconds of difference between success and failure, but the article and paper says it has to react within 250 milliseconds - that's 1/4 of a second. My cable brakes react much quicker than that.
Calling that mere "milliseconds of difference" is like saying something that costs $2.50 costs only "pennies".
Granted I'm still pro wire vs wireless, that could have multiple variables make it go wrong, like a microwave or something. The only downside to a physical cable is that after prolonged use, eventually the cable will stretch. By this time, an aware rider would notice and either replace the cable or have it replaced. If it's not terribly broke, don't fix it.
I don't think the cables stretch so much as the housing compresses. But in any case, it's a gradual process, and the rider only needs to twist the cable adjusting barrel that most bikes have a few turns to make up for it.
The tech industry is still very engineer-driven, and as a result few companies focus on the consumer as much as older industries like, say, the car industry. Much of the tech industry thinks it's still okay to give its products a mishmash of marketing and engineering names, like AwesomePhone XZ IIc (and the customer has to figure out the difference between IIa, IIb, and IIc).
If only the tech industry were as clear as the auto industry:
Yeah case in point is the magnetic power connector on macbooks. Such a beautiful, robust thing. My new eeepc has a tiny cylindrical power plug, similar to those on small nokia phones. I am sure it will break within the next year.
Don't be so sure that it's going to break -- my 2.5 year old eeepc netbook with its tiny cylindrical connector is still working fine - my first magsafe adapter lasted about 9 months before the cable started to fray where it enters the connector and it stopped working. 6 months with my "new" adapter and it looks like it's going to suffer a similar fate.
The Asus Netbook gets plugged/unplugged much more often since I usually take the Netbook with me.
This is classic cost-shifting from the power company onto you.
Since most power companies in the USA are regulated utilities, *all* of their costs are shifted to me in the form of rates. Anytime they make an infrastructure improvement, they pay for it (plus a reasonable profit) by asking the PUC for a rate increase.
For this to be a "reasonable" deal, the power company would need to subsidise the up-front purchase costs of your vehicle, at which point you would be obligated to participate in the load-averaging program. I'm still not interested, thanks.
Where do you live that the power company *doesn't* charge you for infrastructure improvements?
Bottom line - the vehicle is there for my convenience. I expect it to be at-the-ready on a moment's notice. I maintain the vehicle such that I have confidence that it will be ready when I demand it to be. Allowing a third-party to extract benefit/resources from my vehicle reduces my vehicle's benefit to me. Using EVs to supplement the power grid is a completely stupid idea.
I'm certain that if this type of system takes off, the electric companies will be happy to let you opt-out by paying a higher rate (or everyone else can opt-in and pay a lower-rate). Just like people now are free to use as much power as they like during peak periods, but time-of-day metering makes them pay more to encourage them to shift loads to off-peak.
Using *your* EV to supplement the grid may be a stupid idea (though maybe having an EV at all is a stupid idea for you if you count on it for emergency transport - my gas powered car will run just fine through a 2 day power outage, but your electric car likely will not).
However, using *my* EV to supplement the grid may not be so stupid if I get paid for it in lower rates. I normally don't care if my car has 100%, 80% or even 60% charge in the morning, it will still get me to work and home again. If I need to do a long trip the next morning, I'll press the "Keep 100% charge" button on the charger (or online) and pay a higher rate that night. (just like I need to remember to fill the gas tank before I go on a long trip. If I forget to charge the car, then I'll have to stop at a 15 minute fast-charge place to top up the "tank" before my trip)
Just because something doesn't make sense for you, it doesn't mean it doesn't make sense for anyone.
So when you have to take someone to a hospital in the middle of the night, or meet them there (i.e. following the ambulance), do you always know which hospital or how far away it's going to be?
No, this is a dumb idea. MAYBE you could get away with using the top 5%. Not 60%.
There's no reason to think that this system would be mandatory - I'm sure the electric companies will let you charge at a discounted rate if you participate.
The last thing I think about when I park my car is whether or not it can get me or a loved one to the hospital - the local EMS is going to get to my building faster than I could take an injured family member down to the parking garage to my car (and they can offer advanced life support on the way to the hospital). But even if the battery was 50% charged, that 20 - 50 mile range will get me to a half dozen hospitals, I think many of the potential electric car users are people like me - in a dense urban/suburban area with short commutes. People that live 20 or more miles from a hospital have correspondingly long commutes (or at least a regular trip to the town that has the hospital) - if you commute 20 miles to work, an electric car with a 45 mile range is probably not a good choice for you since an unexpected detour or traffic jam can leave you with a dead battery.
Have you even thought about a WAMP setup? A poorly admined Linux box is worse than a well managed Windows one. - from a *nix sysadmin
I've come across some WAMP setups, and in my experience, the AMP part is harder to maintain on Windows than on Linux... and, doesn't seem to run as well under load though part of that may be the poor administration of the AMP stack in the first place.
Nice job. FAA letter on the way and your education will now be complete. You may learn about high speed collisions and hazards to air navigation. I know it was probably day VFR, but controlled airspace is 1400 AGL (except in the mountains). Part of doing this correctly is to play by the rules and there are a lot of them.
Seems every geek modeler with enough sense to build a UAV ought to be wise enough not to endanger the flying public.
As long as they weren't in a restricted zone near an airport, I don't think this balloon and it's 1.6 lb payload violated any FAA regulations:
Except as provided for in 101.7, any unmanned free balloon that—
(i) Carries a payload package that weighs more than four pounds and has a weight/size ratio of more than three ounces per square inch on any surface of the package, determined by dividing the total weight in ounces of the payload package by the area in square inches of its smallest surface;
(ii) Carries a payload package that weighs more than six pounds;
(iii) Carries a payload, of two or more packages, that weighs more than 12 pounds; or
(iv) Uses a rope or other device for suspension of the payload that requires an impact force of more than 50 pounds to separate the suspended payload from the balloon.
(b) For the purposes of this part, a gyroglider attached to a vehicle on the surface of the earth is considered to be a kite.
Don't blame the kid that bought the Helium, blame the helium repositories that don't price it as the scarce resource that it is. If a 244 ft^3 tank cost $1000 instead of $100, then maybe there would be less waste.
Assuming you want to keep all of your compute nodes busy all the time, EC2 is not a good value.
They say they'll have several thousand servers. I don't know what a Zeus server is, but let's assume it's a 1U, 2 socket server and that they'll have 2000 of them. That will give them 2000 * 2 * 8 = 32,000 cores of CPU.
That's equivalent to 32000 / 4 = 8000 Amazon EC2 Quadruple Extra Large instances. Spot pricing right now matches Reserved instance pricing, $0.56/hour, so for $27M, they can get $27M / 8000 / 0.56 = 6026 hours, or 251 days of equivalent compute power.
If each server (plus network + storage/backup) costs $10,000 (A dual CPU 6 Core Xeon X5675 Dell R410 costs $5K retail), you've spent $20M on hardware. You'll need 50 42U racks to house your servers. Budget $1000/month for each rack, or $50K/month on coloc fees. So in one year you're spending around $600K in coloc fees, leaving $6.4M leftover for salaries and other overhead. (you'll end up needing a few extra racks to hold storage and network gear plus miscellaneous non-compute node servers)
So, $27M on EC2 gets you around 8 months of compute time. $27M in hardware gets you a full year of compute time and next year "only" costs you $600K excluding salaries.
Amazon is only a great deal if you're small enough to not want to manage your own servers, or your demand is variable and you can avoid paying for unused computing capacity that is only there to handle peak loads.
The article mentions that it's using Dell 'Zeus' servers, but the only information I can find about those servers online is that they are being used to build this cluster.
We have a pilot deployment of about a dozen iPads in my office (in addition to the user's traditional desktop/laptop) - I pulled up the printing history for those dozen users and aside from a small spike upwards just after they received their iPads (printing iPad manuals/guides?), printing use has remained flat, and costs around $10/month per user (including paper, ink + maintenance, but not including the printer lease, the lease fee might add $5 to the cost, but I can't imagine we'd get rid of the copier/scanner/printer even if people dramatically reduced their printing use). Even if they stop all printing, we'll never recoup the cost of the iPad.
And so far, the iPads get the most use as a netbook - most of the users have bought a keyboard and standup case that makes it look like netbook - I rarely seen one in use without a keyboard except when playing Angry Birds.
These prices are retail prices, not wholesale, and most are on the conservative side, so a system builder is going to have better wholesale prices on parts than what I quoted even. Unless your system builder is making 50%+ margins an their hardware, your system builder is trying to rip you off, or you're not comparing apples to apples.
Yeah, admittedly, I'm comparing apples to oranges - last time I did a Dell comparison, i was using a Dell VAR that was able to secure good discounting from Dell, and it was a 4 socket server with 256GB of RAM and no disk.
The Dell was 10% higher and came with a 3 year warranty on-site warranty versus a 1 year repair shop warranty from the builder, so we went with Dell.
In 9 months we've had one problem with the servers, and Dell swapped out a motherboard the next day. Diagnostics pointed to the hard drive controller, which was weird since we're not using it,but the server has been fine since then.
Using your numbers, you could almost build 2 servers for the price of 6 months of EC2, though you'd have no money for electricity.
I used 15 cents/Kwh (which is around what I pay in California). Your local rates will vary, feel free to use your local rate: 650W * 24 Hours/Day * 30 days * $0.15/Kwh = $70.20
The 650W figure is measured power use for a 2 socket Xeon compute node while busy.
I don't know where you get that $70/mo. figure from, but please note that rates vary wildly. UK rates are roughly 3 times higher than those in Hawaii which is the most expensive US state for electricity. The cheapest states are more than three times cheaper than Hawaii. Location matters.
Though, given the fact that this will run at a university, they're probably going to pay exactly zilch.
I used $0.15/KWh to run a 650W load 24x7, which is close to what someone would pay in California to host the server. This article says that rates in the UK average around $0.185/KWh (which would raise the cost of electricity from $86/mo to $70/mo). Feel free to plug in your own local rate and see where the breakeven point is.
I don't think any of the posters recommending EC2 have ever looked at the economics of EC2 versus self-hosting.
If you have long-term compute needs (as opposed to needing to throw lots of cores at a problem to get fast results in a short time), you're better off buying a Dell.
An EC2 Quadruple Extra Large EC2 instance is $1.60/hour. You have around $6500 USD, so you could buy 169 days of computer time at EC2 (ignoring the cost of I/O and network bandwidth).
For around $5000, you could buy a Dell R710 with dual X5647's, 32GB RAM, RAID-1 1TB SATA drives (depending on your storage needs, you might want to move to faster SAS disks). As long as you have a suitable office to host the server, your only recurring hosting cost is electricity (around $70/month) and maybe you'll need to spend $500 on a UPS. If you need to pay for hosting/colocation somewhere, that will definitely change the economics.
So, with your budget, you get one node + UPS + electricity for a year. All for the price of around 5 months of EC2 time.
You come out ahead even if you want to throw away the server every 6 months and start fresh.
You can save a few bucks by building your own (or going to a custom whitebox builder), but the Dell comes with 3 years of next business day support. Last time I priced out a whitebox builder, they beat Dell's best discounted price by about 10% and only offered a 1 year warranty.
What's the advantage of landing on a boat? If they want to have a (relatively soft) cushion of water to catch the capsule if it misses the target, then it seems like a shallow lake (natural or man-made) with a landing platform in the middle would work better. A small lake would have no pitching seas to contend with, and in the event of a catastrophe, help can arrive faster and it's easier to bring up wreckage from a shallow 20 foot lake then 200 feet of sea water with currents that spread it around.
There's a limited set of circumstances where water would be a softer landing anyway. The capsule would have to be moving at a very low velocity, otherwise water is not much better than concrete.
If they just want to catch the capsule if it tips off the landing platform, it seems that some sort of collapsible foam would be safer and more effective - no worries about the threat of drowning if the capsule starts to leak.
While I can't speak for the EU, I think the best way to get rid of continually extended copyright terms in the USA would be to make any extension retroactive - then, instead of Disney pushing for regular extensions to protect the Mouse, they'll be faced with paying compensation to all of the heirs of the original fairytales they based much of their content on.
Disney is a perfect example of why copyrights should not last forever - they built a huge empire largely based off of some public-domain fairytales that are hundreds of years old.
There are several 4K standards, but none are 4K pixels high:
Full Aperture 4K 4096 x 3112 1.32:1 12,746,752 Academy 4K 3656 x 2664 1.37:1 9,739,584 Digital cinema 4K 4096 x 1714 2.39:1 7,020,544 Digital cinema 4K 3996 x 2160 1.85:1 8,631,360
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4K_resolution
You'd need to go to 8K to get 4096 vertical pixels:
What a lot of people don't realize about CFL's is that they can have really fucking poor power factors, we are talking in the region of 0.3 for the really cheap ones, so you may only be getting billed for 20W but the power company is feeling the burn of 60. Add to that the fact that they are essentially an attempt to cram a LPMV lamp into a really awkward form factor (because for some reason having a strip light in the living room is unthinkable, but having it as a point source and then wrapping a shade round it to diffuse the light is fine) subjectively poor spectrum, mercury content (I know it's not a lot, but if I cant have lead in my solder you can't have mercury in your bulbs) and poor performance in cold weather they are a really a bad solution to an already solved problem.
While it's true that CFL's can have bad power factors, it's not quite as bad for the power companies as it sounds.
First, regardless of the PF, a 20W CFL uses 20W of energy, the power company doesn't have to burn 60W of coal to feed your.3 PF 20W bulb - they only burn 20W of coal.
It is true that they have higher current draw from a CFL due to the 60VA apparent load, but that doesn't really matter since for most homes, lighting energy is dwarfed by other uses, so the power infrastructure to your home is sized to handle your 3000W oven heating element and 7000W tankless water heater. Granted, the low PF can lead to higher resistive losses in wiring, but not nearly enough to erase the gain in efficiency by moving from incandescent to CFL's.
Large commercial installations with hundreds or thousands of lamps do take the power factor into account and size the electrical infrastructure accordingly. Those that are billed by power factor can use power factor correction to correct the power factor (or use high PF lamps), and still save money due to the efficiency of CFL's. Labor costs alone in reduced bulb replacement make CFL's a good deal for business with a lot of lights.
Poor power factors are nothing new - many newer computer power supplies have built-in PFC to give them a decent PF, but older power supplies could dip to around.6.
The victim should NOT be punished for a criminal act performed against them. However the victim may be financially liable for any losses incurred by third-parties who suffered from any negligence of the victim. Also there are laws already on the books in the US that sets standards on how certain types of data should be secured (medical, financial, etc).
Here's the kind of lax data security I'm talking about - Stanford hospital left confidential medical data on an open website for a year:
As far as I can tell from the article, their only "punishment" for the data disclose is having to report it to the patients and some government agencies:
California law that went into effect in 2009 requires hospitals and other health care facilities to report any loss or misuse of medical data to the state health department. Federal regulations require that medical security breaches involving more than 500 patients be reported to the U.S. Health and Human Services Department.
Slashdot Mirror
Can the motors in question apply the same amount of pressure that can be produced by squeezing the human hand?
Since they were designing an impractical proof-of-concept, I think it's safe to say that they could easily come up with motors that can provide the same (or more) pressure as human hands. When you have no real weight or energy concerns, anything is possible.
but there are military helicopters which use fly-by-wireless at a significant mass savings. All that mass that isn't in copper/insulation/supports can go into payload or armor or other "useful" stuff.
Can you provide a reference for this?
With as much RF shielding that military radio/navigation equipment gets for resistance to jamming, I'm really surprised that they'd go fully wireless for control systems.
The summary says with milliseconds of difference between success and failure, but the article and paper says it has to react within 250 milliseconds - that's 1/4 of a second. My cable brakes react much quicker than that.
Calling that mere "milliseconds of difference" is like saying something that costs $2.50 costs only "pennies".
Granted I'm still pro wire vs wireless, that could have multiple variables make it go wrong, like a microwave or something. The only downside to a physical cable is that after prolonged use, eventually the cable will stretch. By this time, an aware rider would notice and either replace the cable or have it replaced. If it's not terribly broke, don't fix it.
I don't think the cables stretch so much as the housing compresses. But in any case, it's a gradual process, and the rider only needs to twist the cable adjusting barrel that most bikes have a few turns to make up for it.
The tech industry is still very engineer-driven, and as a result few companies focus on the consumer as much as older industries like, say, the car industry. Much of the tech industry thinks it's still okay to give its products a mishmash of marketing and engineering names, like AwesomePhone XZ IIc (and the customer has to figure out the difference between IIa, IIb, and IIc).
If only the tech industry were as clear as the auto industry:
Honda Account 2010 model line: http://www.paulmillerhonda.com/models/Accord
EX-L V6 Sedan
EX-L Sedan
EX-L V6 Coupe
EX-L Coupe
EX V6 Sedan
EX Sedan
EX Coupe
LX-P Sedan
LX-S Coupe
LX Sedan
SE Sedan
Yeah case in point is the magnetic power connector on macbooks. Such a beautiful, robust thing. My new eeepc has a tiny cylindrical power plug, similar to those on small nokia phones. I am sure it will break within the next year.
Don't be so sure that it's going to break -- my 2.5 year old eeepc netbook with its tiny cylindrical connector is still working fine - my first magsafe adapter lasted about 9 months before the cable started to fray where it enters the connector and it stopped working. 6 months with my "new" adapter and it looks like it's going to suffer a similar fate.
The Asus Netbook gets plugged/unplugged much more often since I usually take the Netbook with me.
This is classic cost-shifting from the power company onto you.
Since most power companies in the USA are regulated utilities, *all* of their costs are shifted to me in the form of rates. Anytime they make an infrastructure improvement, they pay for it (plus a reasonable profit) by asking the PUC for a rate increase.
For this to be a "reasonable" deal, the power company would need to subsidise the up-front purchase costs of your vehicle, at which point you would be obligated to participate in the load-averaging program. I'm still not interested, thanks.
Where do you live that the power company *doesn't* charge you for infrastructure improvements?
Bottom line - the vehicle is there for my convenience. I expect it to be at-the-ready on a moment's notice. I maintain the vehicle such that I have confidence that it will be ready when I demand it to be. Allowing a third-party to extract benefit/resources from my vehicle reduces my vehicle's benefit to me. Using EVs to supplement the power grid is a completely stupid idea.
I'm certain that if this type of system takes off, the electric companies will be happy to let you opt-out by paying a higher rate (or everyone else can opt-in and pay a lower-rate). Just like people now are free to use as much power as they like during peak periods, but time-of-day metering makes them pay more to encourage them to shift loads to off-peak.
Using *your* EV to supplement the grid may be a stupid idea (though maybe having an EV at all is a stupid idea for you if you count on it for emergency transport - my gas powered car will run just fine through a 2 day power outage, but your electric car likely will not).
However, using *my* EV to supplement the grid may not be so stupid if I get paid for it in lower rates. I normally don't care if my car has 100%, 80% or even 60% charge in the morning, it will still get me to work and home again. If I need to do a long trip the next morning, I'll press the "Keep 100% charge" button on the charger (or online) and pay a higher rate that night. (just like I need to remember to fill the gas tank before I go on a long trip. If I forget to charge the car, then I'll have to stop at a 15 minute fast-charge place to top up the "tank" before my trip)
Just because something doesn't make sense for you, it doesn't mean it doesn't make sense for anyone.
tables suck ass for content creation
Are you kidding? Tables have been used for hundreds, if not thousands of years for content creation, and even ultrathin tablets won't replace them
http://stores.paulsplaceonline.com/Detail.bok?no=389
http://snarkmarket.com/blog/snarkives/books_writing_such/the_codex_climaci_rescriptus/
If anything, a table makes a tablet more useful:
http://www.cnet.co.uk/i/c/blg/cat/laptops/2001tablets1.jpg
Furthermore, tablets have been around for thousands of years, and they still haven't replaced tables:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akhmim_wooden_tablets
So when you have to take someone to a hospital in the middle of the night, or meet them there (i.e. following the ambulance), do you always know which hospital or how far away it's going to be?
No, this is a dumb idea. MAYBE you could get away with using the top 5%. Not 60%.
There's no reason to think that this system would be mandatory - I'm sure the electric companies will let you charge at a discounted rate if you participate.
The last thing I think about when I park my car is whether or not it can get me or a loved one to the hospital - the local EMS is going to get to my building faster than I could take an injured family member down to the parking garage to my car (and they can offer advanced life support on the way to the hospital). But even if the battery was 50% charged, that 20 - 50 mile range will get me to a half dozen hospitals, I think many of the potential electric car users are people like me - in a dense urban/suburban area with short commutes. People that live 20 or more miles from a hospital have correspondingly long commutes (or at least a regular trip to the town that has the hospital) - if you commute 20 miles to work, an electric car with a 45 mile range is probably not a good choice for you since an unexpected detour or traffic jam can leave you with a dead battery.
Have you even thought about a WAMP setup? A poorly admined Linux box is worse than a well managed Windows one. - from a *nix sysadmin
I've come across some WAMP setups, and in my experience, the AMP part is harder to maintain on Windows than on Linux... and, doesn't seem to run as well under load though part of that may be the poor administration of the AMP stack in the first place.
Nice job. FAA letter on the way and your education will now be complete. You may learn about high speed collisions and hazards to air navigation. I know it was probably day VFR, but controlled airspace is 1400 AGL (except in the mountains). Part of doing this correctly is to play by the rules and there are a lot of them.
Seems every geek modeler with enough sense to build a UAV ought to be wise enough not to endanger the flying public.
As long as they weren't in a restricted zone near an airport, I don't think this balloon and it's 1.6 lb payload violated any FAA regulations:
http://ecfr.gpoaccess.gov/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=ecfr&sid=ea968eea871ed9ab2380f6d979eaa7a6&rgn=div5&view=text&node=14:2.0.1.3.15&idno=14
Except as provided for in 101.7, any unmanned free balloon that—
(i) Carries a payload package that weighs more than four pounds and has a weight/size ratio of more than three ounces per square inch on any surface of the package, determined by dividing the total weight in ounces of the payload package by the area in square inches of its smallest surface;
(ii) Carries a payload package that weighs more than six pounds;
(iii) Carries a payload, of two or more packages, that weighs more than 12 pounds; or
(iv) Uses a rope or other device for suspension of the payload that requires an impact force of more than 50 pounds to separate the suspended payload from the balloon.
(b) For the purposes of this part, a gyroglider attached to a vehicle on the surface of the earth is considered to be a kite.
More helium stocks depleted!
Don't blame the kid that bought the Helium, blame the helium repositories that don't price it as the scarce resource that it is. If a 244 ft^3 tank cost $1000 instead of $100, then maybe there would be less waste.
Assuming you want to keep all of your compute nodes busy all the time, EC2 is not a good value.
They say they'll have several thousand servers. I don't know what a Zeus server is, but let's assume it's a 1U, 2 socket server and that they'll have 2000 of them. That will give them 2000 * 2 * 8 = 32,000 cores of CPU.
That's equivalent to 32000 / 4 = 8000 Amazon EC2 Quadruple Extra Large instances. Spot pricing right now matches Reserved instance pricing, $0.56/hour, so for $27M, they can get $27M / 8000 / 0.56 = 6026 hours, or 251 days of equivalent compute power.
If each server (plus network + storage/backup) costs $10,000 (A dual CPU 6 Core Xeon X5675 Dell R410 costs $5K retail), you've spent $20M on hardware. You'll need 50 42U racks to house your servers. Budget $1000/month for each rack, or $50K/month on coloc fees. So in one year you're spending around $600K in coloc fees, leaving $6.4M leftover for salaries and other overhead. (you'll end up needing a few extra racks to hold storage and network gear plus miscellaneous non-compute node servers)
So, $27M on EC2 gets you around 8 months of compute time. $27M in hardware gets you a full year of compute time and next year "only" costs you $600K excluding salaries.
Amazon is only a great deal if you're small enough to not want to manage your own servers, or your demand is variable and you can avoid paying for unused computing capacity that is only there to handle peak loads.
The article mentions that it's using Dell 'Zeus' servers, but the only information I can find about those servers online is that they are being used to build this cluster.
What is a Dell 'Zeus' server?
We have a pilot deployment of about a dozen iPads in my office (in addition to the user's traditional desktop/laptop) - I pulled up the printing history for those dozen users and aside from a small spike upwards just after they received their iPads (printing iPad manuals/guides?), printing use has remained flat, and costs around $10/month per user (including paper, ink + maintenance, but not including the printer lease, the lease fee might add $5 to the cost, but I can't imagine we'd get rid of the copier/scanner/printer even if people dramatically reduced their printing use). Even if they stop all printing, we'll never recoup the cost of the iPad.
And so far, the iPads get the most use as a netbook - most of the users have bought a keyboard and standup case that makes it look like netbook - I rarely seen one in use without a keyboard except when playing Angry Birds.
These prices are retail prices, not wholesale, and most are on the conservative side, so a system builder is going to have better wholesale prices on parts than what I quoted even. Unless your system builder is making 50%+ margins an their hardware, your system builder is trying to rip you off, or you're not comparing apples to apples.
Yeah, admittedly, I'm comparing apples to oranges - last time I did a Dell comparison, i was using a Dell VAR that was able to secure good discounting from Dell, and it was a 4 socket server with 256GB of RAM and no disk.
The Dell was 10% higher and came with a 3 year warranty on-site warranty versus a 1 year repair shop warranty from the builder, so we went with Dell.
In 9 months we've had one problem with the servers, and Dell swapped out a motherboard the next day. Diagnostics pointed to the hard drive controller, which was weird since we're not using it,but the server has been fine since then.
Using your numbers, you could almost build 2 servers for the price of 6 months of EC2, though you'd have no money for electricity.
Instead of just speculating that I'm overestimating the cost, why not do the math yourself and show us your work?
EC2 pricing is here: http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/
$1.60/hour * 24 hours/day * 169 days = $6489
You could buy a one year reserved instance:
$4290 + $0.56 * 24 hours/day * 164 days = $6494
I used 15 cents/Kwh (which is around what I pay in California). Your local rates will vary, feel free to use your local rate:
650W * 24 Hours/Day * 30 days * $0.15/Kwh = $70.20
The 650W figure is measured power use for a 2 socket Xeon compute node while busy.
I don't know where you get that $70/mo. figure from, but please note that rates vary wildly. UK rates are roughly 3 times higher than those in Hawaii which is the most expensive US state for electricity. The cheapest states are more than three times cheaper than Hawaii. Location matters.
Though, given the fact that this will run at a university, they're probably going to pay exactly zilch.
I used $0.15/KWh to run a 650W load 24x7, which is close to what someone would pay in California to host the server. This article says that rates in the UK average around $0.185/KWh (which would raise the cost of electricity from $86/mo to $70/mo). Feel free to plug in your own local rate and see where the breakeven point is.
I don't think any of the posters recommending EC2 have ever looked at the economics of EC2 versus self-hosting.
If you have long-term compute needs (as opposed to needing to throw lots of cores at a problem to get fast results in a short time), you're better off buying a Dell.
An EC2 Quadruple Extra Large EC2 instance is $1.60/hour. You have around $6500 USD, so you could buy 169 days of computer time at EC2 (ignoring the cost of I/O and network bandwidth).
This instance has 23GB of RAM and is equivalent to 2 x Intel Xeon X5570 CPU's.
For around $5000, you could buy a Dell R710 with dual X5647's, 32GB RAM, RAID-1 1TB SATA drives (depending on your storage needs, you might want to move to faster SAS disks). As long as you have a suitable office to host the server, your only recurring hosting cost is electricity (around $70/month) and maybe you'll need to spend $500 on a UPS. If you need to pay for hosting/colocation somewhere, that will definitely change the economics.
So, with your budget, you get one node + UPS + electricity for a year. All for the price of around 5 months of EC2 time.
You come out ahead even if you want to throw away the server every 6 months and start fresh.
You can save a few bucks by building your own (or going to a custom whitebox builder), but the Dell comes with 3 years of next business day support. Last time I priced out a whitebox builder, they beat Dell's best discounted price by about 10% and only offered a 1 year warranty.
What's the advantage of landing on a boat? If they want to have a (relatively soft) cushion of water to catch the capsule if it misses the target, then it seems like a shallow lake (natural or man-made) with a landing platform in the middle would work better. A small lake would have no pitching seas to contend with, and in the event of a catastrophe, help can arrive faster and it's easier to bring up wreckage from a shallow 20 foot lake then 200 feet of sea water with currents that spread it around.
There's a limited set of circumstances where water would be a softer landing anyway. The capsule would have to be moving at a very low velocity, otherwise water is not much better than concrete.
If they just want to catch the capsule if it tips off the landing platform, it seems that some sort of collapsible foam would be safer and more effective - no worries about the threat of drowning if the capsule starts to leak.
While I can't speak for the EU, I think the best way to get rid of continually extended copyright terms in the USA would be to make any extension retroactive - then, instead of Disney pushing for regular extensions to protect the Mouse, they'll be faced with paying compensation to all of the heirs of the original fairytales they based much of their content on.
Disney is a perfect example of why copyrights should not last forever - they built a huge empire largely based off of some public-domain fairytales that are hundreds of years old.
There are several 4K standards, but none are 4K pixels high:
Full Aperture 4K 4096 x 3112 1.32:1 12,746,752
Academy 4K 3656 x 2664 1.37:1 9,739,584
Digital cinema 4K 4096 x 1714 2.39:1 7,020,544
Digital cinema 4K 3996 x 2160 1.85:1 8,631,360
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4K_resolution
You'd need to go to 8K to get 4096 vertical pixels:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/8K_Video_Format
What a lot of people don't realize about CFL's is that they can have really fucking poor power factors, we are talking in the region of 0.3 for the really cheap ones, so you may only be getting billed for 20W but the power company is feeling the burn of 60. Add to that the fact that they are essentially an attempt to cram a LPMV lamp into a really awkward form factor (because for some reason having a strip light in the living room is unthinkable, but having it as a point source and then wrapping a shade round it to diffuse the light is fine) subjectively poor spectrum, mercury content (I know it's not a lot, but if I cant have lead in my solder you can't have mercury in your bulbs) and poor performance in cold weather they are a really a bad solution to an already solved problem.
While it's true that CFL's can have bad power factors, it's not quite as bad for the power companies as it sounds.
First, regardless of the PF, a 20W CFL uses 20W of energy, the power company doesn't have to burn 60W of coal to feed your .3 PF 20W bulb - they only burn 20W of coal.
It is true that they have higher current draw from a CFL due to the 60VA apparent load, but that doesn't really matter since for most homes, lighting energy is dwarfed by other uses, so the power infrastructure to your home is sized to handle your 3000W oven heating element and 7000W tankless water heater. Granted, the low PF can lead to higher resistive losses in wiring, but not nearly enough to erase the gain in efficiency by moving from incandescent to CFL's.
Large commercial installations with hundreds or thousands of lamps do take the power factor into account and size the electrical infrastructure accordingly. Those that are billed by power factor can use power factor correction to correct the power factor (or use high PF lamps), and still save money due to the efficiency of CFL's. Labor costs alone in reduced bulb replacement make CFL's a good deal for business with a lot of lights.
Poor power factors are nothing new - many newer computer power supplies have built-in PFC to give them a decent PF, but older power supplies could dip to around .6.
The victim should NOT be punished for a criminal act performed against them. However the victim may be financially liable for any losses incurred by third-parties who suffered from any negligence of the victim. Also there are laws already on the books in the US that sets standards on how certain types of data should be secured (medical, financial, etc).
Here's the kind of lax data security I'm talking about - Stanford hospital left confidential medical data on an open website for a year:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/09/09/BA1Q1L23AP.DTL&tsp=1
As far as I can tell from the article, their only "punishment" for the data disclose is having to report it to the patients and some government agencies:
California law that went into effect in 2009 requires hospitals and other health care facilities to report any loss or misuse of medical data to the state health department. Federal regulations require that medical security breaches involving more than 500 patients be reported to the U.S. Health and Human Services Department.