In before scores of users fail to read article and consequently raise concerns that are addressed by said article...
I took your advice and rtfa, but didn't really find anything that's not in the article summary which said it's basically a Facebook style "like" button for Google. Admittedly I didn't watch the video, do we need to wtfv too?
Wind and solar are pipe dreams. I don't care if I get modded down for saying that. I don't care if it goes against popular opinion, or flies in the face of all the pro-solar, pro-wind propaganda of late. And I don't care if it upsets the environmentalists. It's true. Even if you could come up with enough money to build the infrastructure to deploy and maintain the kind of huge solar and wind farms you would need all over the country/world, they'll still only cover a fraction of our present-day needs.
I wouldn't say they are entirely pipe dreams - solar has great potential to provide daytime "peaker" power, but neither solar nor wind can be counted on to provide consistent baseload power 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. Even Southwestern US desert locations frequently scouted as ideal solar sites are subject to clouds and rain for parts of the year.
Coupled with grid energy storage mechanisms, Solar and wind can be an important part of an energy strategy - but only a part.
Yea, now people will finally stop arguing for it and give solar, wind, etc. more attention. Awesome. I'm sorry, but I'll never be a proponent for something that has a good chance of causing horrible diseases and mutations and birth defects, regardless of how good the technology protecting it is
Yes, because solar cells are made from sugar and spice and everything nice, and don't have any toxic components.
What will you say if a tank of Cadmium waste leaks from a solar cell manufacturing plant, contaminating ground water and causing injury and death. (and who's to say that it hasn't already happened, since we've offshored most of our solar production.)
All power production has risks and can cause injury or death. The question is what level of risk is acceptable, and it needs to be looked at on a per-kwh basis. Solar hasn't killed many people yet, but it's still in its infancy -- there's around 20GW of installed capacity now, the output of a few nuclear plants.
(you could blame Chernobyl on outdated and weak Soviet tech if you want, but a modern plant by the gods of technology, Japanese, is faring no better). And there is the matter of having to bury the leftovers for thousands of years.
This is by no means a "modern" plant - it's a 40 year old plant with a reactor designed by a USA company 50 years ago. More modern designs have passive safety built-in, so no active cooling is required.
Bury the whole damn thing in concrete, and be done with it. This crisis would have been resolved two weeks ago if TEPCO wasn't more interested in repairing and reusing the reactor than the public safety.
When they pumped seawater through the freshwater cooling system, they'd pretty much given up any hope of reusing the reactor.
Dumping concrete on it isn't going to help it dissipate heat any better, and just complicates cleanup. If they do decide to contain the reactor core-in place, a well engineered containment system doesn't include "Just dump a shit load of concrete on it"
An anecdote: a few years ago, a group flew a model airplane across the Atlantic (link [bbc.co.uk]). I found this quite interesting and told a few friends. One reacted with horror, postulating that terrorists would be able to use such a thing to deliver all sorts of nasty. No counterargument convinced him of the absurdity of his fear.
What is the absurdity of the fear that a model airplane that can fly thousands of miles by itself could be used to deliver something hazardous?
The only thing missing is a hazardous payload that is concentrated enough to be carried on an ultralight, GPS guided model plane, then it just needs to be programmed to drop the cargo on large sporting event, concert, etc. Make it a night drop and there's not much that can be done to stop it since the tiny plane would have a tiny radar cross section and be hard to spot on radar, and though FLIR can pick it up, someone would have to be watching for it.
The best thing (from the terrorists point of view) is that it doesn't have to kill or injure significant numbers of people - it just needs a noticeable effect, then the fact that the substance was delivered from potentially thousands of miles away is more than enough even to instill fear and panic.
Though the military weapons vendors would make a fortune, selling miniature FLIR enabled Phalanx guns to every stadium in the country. And then there would be the bootleg flak jacket vendors in the parking lot selling protection from Phalanx fallout.
But at that point, what has using a Mac really gained you? I guess some people just love the hardware that much?
It's good hardware and some people really like it. At my company we have people running Windows on Macbooks and they love it (aside from some keyboard quirks).
There's not that much of a price differential between a Macbook and similarly equipped Thinkpad, and any developer worth hiring is worth *much* more than the cost of any laptop.
Personally, I would have gone for the thinkpad+linux, but now that he's got a Macbook and is unhappy with OSX, he may as well run Linux on it.
Even though I have a dynamic IP, it's effectively static since it hasn't changed in 9 months, so if someone asked Comcast who my IP belonged to, Comcast could say with quite some certainty that it was me.
But, I wonder what would happen if I was running a public access point (aside from facing the wrath of Comcast since I'm sure it violates their ToS) - could I blame any illegal activity on my "customers"? How can I shield myself from liability from actions by my users?
"They're upset because Nielsen can't yet capture all that data," said Richard Greenfield, an analyst with BTIG Research. "I think there's a lot of debate going on among the programmers as to what is and isn't allowed."
So why don't they just sue (or I dunno, maybe just ask) to have monitoring hooks for Nielsen built into the iPad software? How does Nielsen monitor usage these days? I imagine they are way past the "Fill out this journal every time you watch TV and we'll pay you $1/week" days.
It doesn't even have to be a part of the iPad app, since I'm sure TWC is tracking everything you watch on the app on their own, so they could just send a feed of viewing data for Nielsen families direct to Nielsen. Or does Nielsen not trust the cable companies to send accurate data?
Then everyone is happy - viewers get to watch TV on any device they want to and the cable companies get to count those viewers.
They say: if Google were to release the source for Honeycomb, Google would be unable to prevent it from being installed on mobile phones and "and creating a really bad user experience."
Who are they trying to protect from this bad user experience? Do they think a phone manufacturer is going to ship a honeycomb based phone that gives a really bad user experience? Would any manufacturer really do that when it's easier to use a version of Android that's already designed to run on phones??
Or are they worried that some hobbyist is going to port Honeycomb to his phone and end up with a bad user experience? If that's the case, why does Google care if someone wants to screw up his own phone? If I want to put diesel in my car because I think it would be really cool to run a gasoline powered car on diesel, the car manufacturer won't stop me even though they are certain that it will give me a very poor user experience. Sure they may void my warranty and they don't make it easy since the gas tank filler tube won't let a diesel nozzle fit in my tank, but they don't ban diesel to prevent me from having a bad user experience.
I think they're probably looking ahead too. If it's ok to have an app that warns about DUI checkpoints, why not one that warns you about speed traps? Why not one that ties into your phone's GPS and automatically fires off an audio alert when you're nearing a photo radar van that someone else tagged? Apps like this could be made very user friendly, and police departments could stand to lose a lot of money to them.
Thats interesting. Can you back that up? Where would this info be published?
I don't think anything is in law, but the NHTSA has issued guidelines for checkpoints that should help keep them legal, and on of those guidelines is that the public be warned of locations ahead of time:
How they do that differs - sometimes it's a local paper, evening news, etc, however posting on a bulletin board at the local police station 15 minutes before setting up the checkpoint may also count as sufficient notice.
Why should they? Police in most (all?) areas are required to publish the locations of checkpoints ahead of time, so these apps are just making public information easier to find.
The article says that browser makers rushed to put out patches to blacklist the fraudulent certs. Isn't this what certificate revocation lists are for? Are CRLs completely broken and unused?
I believe that's the case everywhere - police are required by law to disclose the locations of the checkpoints. I couldn't find the specific law, but a lot of people seem to think it exists. (though instead of a law, it may be an NHTSA guideline that states follow voluntarily to ensure their checkpoint is constitutionally valid):
So, the senate is trying to prevent people from finding out information that the police are required to publish? If publishing the location of checkpoints is required to make the checkpoint constitutionally valid, then isn't a constitutional violation to block that information from reaching the public?
By publishing the location deep inside a newspaper or with a 30 second blurb on the news an hour before the checkpoint, the police may be following the letter of the law, but these apps seem to be meeting the spirit of the law.
The PBR is supposed to be self regulating -- higher temperatures reduce the rate of the reaction, so even a total loss of coolant means that the fuel heats up to some steady state temperature and will stay there forever. What happens to a TWR if the coolant flow stops for any reason?
Didn't you just answer your own question?
If my question was "What makes a PBR reactor so safe", then I guess that answers it, but I asked what makes the TWR reactor so intrinsically safe, aside from the fact that they say so.
How about you build it so it will not crack and leak. Liquid sodium is flammable in air and explosive in water. Yet, it can be quite safely used. Or are you looking for excuses like, what would happen when a meteor hits it?
Well, tell me what a liquid metal cooling system looks like - is it 5 feet of pipe that makes a loop outside of the reactor, or is it 1000 feet of cooling pipes that need to run outside of the containment building to radiate the heat?
I guess maybe I should have just asked "What makes this TWR so safe?" Oh wait, I did. And the best answer you can give is "You build the cooling system so it can't crack and leak". Isn't that like saying "If you have active cooling, design the plant such that you can't lose electricity?"
Google basically gambled that they could violate copyright on all books and get away with it. Rather than lobbying to make some sane changes to copyright law, they want copyright to remain overly strict, but to just apply to everyone except them. One law for Google, one law for everyone else. Of course, it's okay because Google isn't evil...
If that's your argument against what Google is trying to do, then why not lobby for the Author's Guild to make a similar deal with anyone that has the resources to do it...then you're not tying yourself to the Evil Google Empire.
But there's a pretty good chance that you won't find one of those out of print books in your local library. I live in a mid sized city and our library system has 2 million books.... Google claims to have scanned 15 million.
(Yes, I know there's the interlibrary loan, but that's not the same)
However, having one corporate behemoth gain EXCLUSIVE rights to the works by paying
The answer to that is to require compulsory licensing from the guild to anyone with the resources to do what Google did.
a guild that doesn't actually necessarily even have rights to all the works in question is NOT THE SOLUTION.
The answer to that is to require some active action to keep a work in copyright, like renewing it every 5 years - that way everyone benefits - authors that really care can keep the rights to their work, but as for the rest, they get released to the public to enjoy. Oh and make sure that only an author or direct relative can renew the copyright, otherwise companies will just buy up copyrights and keep them alive forever just in case one of the works becomes valuable.
The rest of the members will be mailed a notification of settlement, including instructions on how to get their $0.38 share of the award (the lawyers, of course, will get about $45M off the top).
Except that there's no payment for anyone (except the laywers, of course), because the judge rejected the settlement -- Google wanted to pay $125M for the ability to make out-of-print books available online, giving authors the ability to opt out. The judge suggests that opt-in would be better, but I'd guess that there are many more out-of-print books with authors that are dead, just-don't-care or would be happy that their books will be available, than those that want their out-of-print book to stay out of print because they have some grand plan to reissue it some day.
So the opt-in model is far less valuable to public (and to Google) because it means that far fewer out-of-print books can be made available.
Essentially, they're just rebuilding technology which is already available commercially.
They don't say what voltage they are using, but I suspect they are using off-the-shelf 48VDC, so they aren't really rebuilding any technology, just reusing the same 48VDC technology that's been in the data center for decades.
But they could, especially with PoE+. Essentially, they're just rebuilding technology which is already available commercially.
There's only so much low voltage power you can send over CAT-5/6 cabling, and even the 25 watt of PoE plus isn't enough to run many laptops, let alone a full powered desktop. Granted there are some very low-powered computers and thin clients that can run on PoE, but it doesn't sound like they are using them here. This fanless Atom based nettop has a 40 watt power supply: http://www.provantage.com/shuttle-computer-xs35-701~7SHCO08P.htm
I think it's safe to say that if they installed a 2000 lb AC-DC converter to run 60 desktops (and went through all of the trouble to widen doorways and cut through walls to get it installed), they aren't using PoE since a few PoE ethernet switches would weigh around 20 lbs -- 99% lighter than the huge power supply they used.
Those freezer bags with the plastic zip/seal thing on? I wouldn't trust them to keep my cock dry in the Sahara.
Well unless you cut your cock off and put it entirely inside the bag, of course it's not going to seal.
I always wondered why Glad came out with the Yellow and Blue Make Green Seal, but now I see why -- there are people out there that are unable to make a good seal with traditional non-color coded baggies.
I've taken my kindle into the pool in a baggie (blow a small amount of air inside before sealing to ensure it floats) and haven't had any problems, if you're really worried, use a custom made waterproof case.
A very large cable operator has been making progress converting all its systems to DC. Right now its kinda ugly, with AC main power, AC generators, AC UPSes, lots of AC computers and network gear. Then there is the DC plant with the DC battery stack, and more and more DC computers and network gear.
DC in the data center makes sense, as if your AC, every system needs a power supply. Every power supply is inefficient. The generate heat, and use up more power then the computer needs.
Is DC really that much more efficient? I thought Telcos used 48VDC because it was easy to supply with batteries, not because it was more efficient. Many modern DC-DC converters are just mini switching power supplies, so you're trading a 120VAC switching power supply with a 48VDC switching power supply to generate the needed voltages (12V, 5V, 3.3V, etc).
And supplying 350A @ 48V to a cabinet full of servers will take a lot more copper than 70 amps @ 220VAC.
I guess they gain something by using battery strings as a UPS instead of a big inverter, but I'd be surprised if a big 48VDC power system costs significantly less than a big UPS given the much larger wiring required for 48VDC.
Slashdot Mirror
In before scores of users fail to read article and consequently raise concerns that are addressed by said article...
I took your advice and rtfa, but didn't really find anything that's not in the article summary which said it's basically a Facebook style "like" button for Google. Admittedly I didn't watch the video, do we need to wtfv too?
Wind and solar are pipe dreams. I don't care if I get modded down for saying that. I don't care if it goes against popular opinion, or flies in the face of all the pro-solar, pro-wind propaganda of late. And I don't care if it upsets the environmentalists. It's true. Even if you could come up with enough money to build the infrastructure to deploy and maintain the kind of huge solar and wind farms you would need all over the country/world, they'll still only cover a fraction of our present-day needs.
I wouldn't say they are entirely pipe dreams - solar has great potential to provide daytime "peaker" power, but neither solar nor wind can be counted on to provide consistent baseload power 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. Even Southwestern US desert locations frequently scouted as ideal solar sites are subject to clouds and rain for parts of the year.
Coupled with grid energy storage mechanisms, Solar and wind can be an important part of an energy strategy - but only a part.
Yea, now people will finally stop arguing for it and give solar, wind, etc. more attention. Awesome.
I'm sorry, but I'll never be a proponent for something that has a good chance of causing horrible diseases and mutations and birth defects, regardless of how good the technology protecting it is
Yes, because solar cells are made from sugar and spice and everything nice, and don't have any toxic components.
What will you say if a tank of Cadmium waste leaks from a solar cell manufacturing plant, contaminating ground water and causing injury and death. (and who's to say that it hasn't already happened, since we've offshored most of our solar production.)
All power production has risks and can cause injury or death. The question is what level of risk is acceptable, and it needs to be looked at on a per-kwh basis. Solar hasn't killed many people yet, but it's still in its infancy -- there's around 20GW of installed capacity now, the output of a few nuclear plants.
(you could blame Chernobyl on outdated and weak Soviet tech if you want, but a modern plant by the gods of technology, Japanese, is faring no better). And there is the matter of having to bury the leftovers for thousands of years.
This is by no means a "modern" plant - it's a 40 year old plant with a reactor designed by a USA company 50 years ago. More modern designs have passive safety built-in, so no active cooling is required.
Bury the whole damn thing in concrete, and be done with it. This crisis would have been resolved two weeks ago if TEPCO wasn't more interested in repairing and reusing the reactor than the public safety.
When they pumped seawater through the freshwater cooling system, they'd pretty much given up any hope of reusing the reactor.
Dumping concrete on it isn't going to help it dissipate heat any better, and just complicates cleanup. If they do decide to contain the reactor core-in place, a well engineered containment system doesn't include "Just dump a shit load of concrete on it"
An anecdote: a few years ago, a group flew a model airplane across the Atlantic (link [bbc.co.uk]). I found this quite interesting and told a few friends. One reacted with horror, postulating that terrorists would be able to use such a thing to deliver all sorts of nasty. No counterargument convinced him of the absurdity of his fear.
What is the absurdity of the fear that a model airplane that can fly thousands of miles by itself could be used to deliver something hazardous?
The only thing missing is a hazardous payload that is concentrated enough to be carried on an ultralight, GPS guided model plane, then it just needs to be programmed to drop the cargo on large sporting event, concert, etc. Make it a night drop and there's not much that can be done to stop it since the tiny plane would have a tiny radar cross section and be hard to spot on radar, and though FLIR can pick it up, someone would have to be watching for it.
The best thing (from the terrorists point of view) is that it doesn't have to kill or injure significant numbers of people - it just needs a noticeable effect, then the fact that the substance was delivered from potentially thousands of miles away is more than enough even to instill fear and panic.
Though the military weapons vendors would make a fortune, selling miniature FLIR enabled Phalanx guns to every stadium in the country. And then there would be the bootleg flak jacket vendors in the parking lot selling protection from Phalanx fallout.
But at that point, what has using a Mac really gained you? I guess some people just love the hardware that much?
It's good hardware and some people really like it. At my company we have people running Windows on Macbooks and they love it (aside from some keyboard quirks).
There's not that much of a price differential between a Macbook and similarly equipped Thinkpad, and any developer worth hiring is worth *much* more than the cost of any laptop.
Personally, I would have gone for the thinkpad+linux, but now that he's got a Macbook and is unhappy with OSX, he may as well run Linux on it.
Even though I have a dynamic IP, it's effectively static since it hasn't changed in 9 months, so if someone asked Comcast who my IP belonged to, Comcast could say with quite some certainty that it was me.
But, I wonder what would happen if I was running a public access point (aside from facing the wrath of Comcast since I'm sure it violates their ToS) - could I blame any illegal activity on my "customers"? How can I shield myself from liability from actions by my users?
Is this what Slashdot has come to? A how-to guide on how to add a new card to your computer!?
From TFA:
"They're upset because Nielsen can't yet capture all that data," said Richard Greenfield, an analyst with BTIG Research. "I think there's a lot of debate going on among the programmers as to what is and isn't allowed."
So why don't they just sue (or I dunno, maybe just ask) to have monitoring hooks for Nielsen built into the iPad software? How does Nielsen monitor usage these days? I imagine they are way past the "Fill out this journal every time you watch TV and we'll pay you $1/week" days.
It doesn't even have to be a part of the iPad app, since I'm sure TWC is tracking everything you watch on the app on their own, so they could just send a feed of viewing data for Nielsen families direct to Nielsen. Or does Nielsen not trust the cable companies to send accurate data?
Then everyone is happy - viewers get to watch TV on any device they want to and the cable companies get to count those viewers.
They say: if Google were to release the source for Honeycomb, Google would be unable to prevent it from being installed on mobile phones and "and creating a really bad user experience."
Who are they trying to protect from this bad user experience? Do they think a phone manufacturer is going to ship a honeycomb based phone that gives a really bad user experience? Would any manufacturer really do that when it's easier to use a version of Android that's already designed to run on phones??
Or are they worried that some hobbyist is going to port Honeycomb to his phone and end up with a bad user experience? If that's the case, why does Google care if someone wants to screw up his own phone? If I want to put diesel in my car because I think it would be really cool to run a gasoline powered car on diesel, the car manufacturer won't stop me even though they are certain that it will give me a very poor user experience. Sure they may void my warranty and they don't make it easy since the gas tank filler tube won't let a diesel nozzle fit in my tank, but they don't ban diesel to prevent me from having a bad user experience.
I think they're probably looking ahead too. If it's ok to have an app that warns about DUI checkpoints, why not one that warns you about speed traps? Why not one that ties into your phone's GPS and automatically fires off an audio alert when you're nearing a photo radar van that someone else tagged? Apps like this could be made very user friendly, and police departments could stand to lose a lot of money to them.
You mean people might write apps like these?
http://www.trapster.com/iphone.php
http://landlinemedia.blogspot.com/2009/07/photo-radar-theres-app-for-that.html
Thats interesting. Can you back that up? Where would this info be published?
I don't think anything is in law, but the NHTSA has issued guidelines for checkpoints that should help keep them legal, and on of those guidelines is that the public be warned of locations ahead of time:
http://www.duiattorney.com/dui-basics/dui-checkpoints
How they do that differs - sometimes it's a local paper, evening news, etc, however posting on a bulletin board at the local police station 15 minutes before setting up the checkpoint may also count as sufficient notice.
Why should they? Police in most (all?) areas are required to publish the locations of checkpoints ahead of time, so these apps are just making public information easier to find.
The article says that browser makers rushed to put out patches to blacklist the fraudulent certs. Isn't this what certificate revocation lists are for? Are CRLs completely broken and unused?
I believe that's the case everywhere - police are required by law to disclose the locations of the checkpoints. I couldn't find the specific law, but a lot of people seem to think it exists. (though instead of a law, it may be an NHTSA guideline that states follow voluntarily to ensure their checkpoint is constitutionally valid):
http://www.drivinglaws.org/resources/dui-dwi/aggravated-dui/dui-checkpoints
http://www.duiblock.com/FAQ/
http://statepatrol.ohio.gov/sobcheck.stm
So, the senate is trying to prevent people from finding out information that the police are required to publish? If publishing the location of checkpoints is required to make the checkpoint constitutionally valid, then isn't a constitutional violation to block that information from reaching the public?
By publishing the location deep inside a newspaper or with a 30 second blurb on the news an hour before the checkpoint, the police may be following the letter of the law, but these apps seem to be meeting the spirit of the law.
The PBR is supposed to be self regulating -- higher temperatures reduce the rate of the reaction, so even a total loss of coolant means that the fuel heats up to some steady state temperature and will stay there forever. What happens to a TWR if the coolant flow stops for any reason?
Didn't you just answer your own question?
If my question was "What makes a PBR reactor so safe", then I guess that answers it, but I asked what makes the TWR reactor so intrinsically safe, aside from the fact that they say so.
How about you build it so it will not crack and leak. Liquid sodium is flammable in air and explosive in water. Yet, it can be quite safely used. Or are you looking for excuses like, what would happen when a meteor hits it?
Well, tell me what a liquid metal cooling system looks like - is it 5 feet of pipe that makes a loop outside of the reactor, or is it 1000 feet of cooling pipes that need to run outside of the containment building to radiate the heat?
I guess maybe I should have just asked "What makes this TWR so safe?" Oh wait, I did. And the best answer you can give is "You build the cooling system so it can't crack and leak". Isn't that like saying "If you have active cooling, design the plant such that you can't lose electricity?"
Google basically gambled that they could violate copyright on all books and get away with it. Rather than lobbying to make some sane changes to copyright law, they want copyright to remain overly strict, but to just apply to everyone except them. One law for Google, one law for everyone else. Of course, it's okay because Google isn't evil...
If that's your argument against what Google is trying to do, then why not lobby for the Author's Guild to make a similar deal with anyone that has the resources to do it...then you're not tying yourself to the Evil Google Empire.
But there's a pretty good chance that you won't find one of those out of print books in your local library. I live in a mid sized city and our library system has 2 million books.... Google claims to have scanned 15 million.
(Yes, I know there's the interlibrary loan, but that's not the same)
How can you tell with 100% certainty if the author of any given work is deceased?
You could send out a team to kill him and document it.
However, having one corporate behemoth gain EXCLUSIVE rights to the works by paying
The answer to that is to require compulsory licensing from the guild to anyone with the resources to do what Google did.
a guild that doesn't actually necessarily even have rights to all the works in question is NOT THE SOLUTION.
The answer to that is to require some active action to keep a work in copyright, like renewing it every 5 years - that way everyone benefits - authors that really care can keep the rights to their work, but as for the rest, they get released to the public to enjoy. Oh and make sure that only an author or direct relative can renew the copyright, otherwise companies will just buy up copyrights and keep them alive forever just in case one of the works becomes valuable.
The rest of the members will be mailed a notification of settlement, including instructions on how to get their $0.38 share of the award (the lawyers, of course, will get about $45M off the top).
Except that there's no payment for anyone (except the laywers, of course), because the judge rejected the settlement -- Google wanted to pay $125M for the ability to make out-of-print books available online, giving authors the ability to opt out. The judge suggests that opt-in would be better, but I'd guess that there are many more out-of-print books with authors that are dead, just-don't-care or would be happy that their books will be available, than those that want their out-of-print book to stay out of print because they have some grand plan to reissue it some day.
So the opt-in model is far less valuable to public (and to Google) because it means that far fewer out-of-print books can be made available.
Essentially, they're just rebuilding technology which is already available commercially.
They don't say what voltage they are using, but I suspect they are using off-the-shelf 48VDC, so they aren't really rebuilding any technology, just reusing the same 48VDC technology that's been in the data center for decades.
But they could, especially with PoE+. Essentially, they're just rebuilding technology which is already available commercially.
There's only so much low voltage power you can send over CAT-5/6 cabling, and even the 25 watt of PoE plus isn't enough to run many laptops, let alone a full powered desktop. Granted there are some very low-powered computers and thin clients that can run on PoE, but it doesn't sound like they are using them here. This fanless Atom based nettop has a 40 watt power supply: http://www.provantage.com/shuttle-computer-xs35-701~7SHCO08P.htm
I think it's safe to say that if they installed a 2000 lb AC-DC converter to run 60 desktops (and went through all of the trouble to widen doorways and cut through walls to get it installed), they aren't using PoE since a few PoE ethernet switches would weigh around 20 lbs -- 99% lighter than the huge power supply they used.
Those freezer bags with the plastic zip/seal thing on? I wouldn't trust them to keep my cock dry in the Sahara.
Well unless you cut your cock off and put it entirely inside the bag, of course it's not going to seal.
I always wondered why Glad came out with the Yellow and Blue Make Green Seal, but now I see why -- there are people out there that are unable to make a good seal with traditional non-color coded baggies.
I've taken my kindle into the pool in a baggie (blow a small amount of air inside before sealing to ensure it floats) and haven't had any problems, if you're really worried, use a custom made waterproof case.
A very large cable operator has been making progress converting all its systems to DC. Right now its kinda ugly, with AC main power, AC generators, AC UPSes, lots of AC computers and network gear. Then there is the DC plant with the DC battery stack, and more and more DC computers and network gear.
DC in the data center makes sense, as if your AC, every system needs a power supply. Every power supply is inefficient. The generate heat, and use up more power then the computer needs.
Is DC really that much more efficient? I thought Telcos used 48VDC because it was easy to supply with batteries, not because it was more efficient. Many modern DC-DC converters are just mini switching power supplies, so you're trading a 120VAC switching power supply with a 48VDC switching power supply to generate the needed voltages (12V, 5V, 3.3V, etc).
And supplying 350A @ 48V to a cabinet full of servers will take a lot more copper than 70 amps @ 220VAC.
I guess they gain something by using battery strings as a UPS instead of a big inverter, but I'd be surprised if a big 48VDC power system costs significantly less than a big UPS given the much larger wiring required for 48VDC.