Trying to wrap my head around this. Would the overall total water flow be the same now as it was before the pumping system was created? Or does the Swiss system continually recirculate a certain amount of water? This makes a difference as to whether the energy is really being stored or if it's just an expensive way to heat water with electricity.
Except that the proposal is to take some of the flowing water downstream about 20 miles and pump that back. That's exactly equivalent to reducing the flow from the dam in the first place, and then later increasing it.
What am I missing? How is this different and not a complete and utter loss?
Further to my comment, here's the reasoning I was getting at. If we take a certain amount of the downstream river's flow, call it f, and pump it back into the reservoir where it will be released at night, presumably increasing the flow by f (the overall flow in 24 hours is the same), then that's the same as simply reducing the dam's outflow by f during the day and increasing it by f at night. Same effect, but no pumping required. Am I incorrect in this analysis? This would be true for any pumped storage scheme on a flowing river system, such as the one proposed for Loch Nes. One might think the electricity used for pumping is being stored and released later, but this has to be an illusion because the water already had all that potential energy to begin with. The pumping energy is lost as far as I can tell.
The only scenario where pumped storage makes sense is pumping from a lower body of water to an upper body of water that's not normally part of a flowing river system.
I was just about to write this. Where does the LA power company plan to get the water to put into the reservoir? If it's from water that is running downstream then this seems rather silly. There are probably easier ways to waste out electricity, which is what that would be doing. And as you say, if you just left the water in the reservoir, it can generate electricity when it flows out.
Of course they could be referring to other sources of water flowing nearby, but I don't think there are any.
Someone doesn't seem to have thought this through very clearly. Or else we're all missing something very important. Just doesn't make sense. And I even read the article.
Same here. I think the feedly Android app is a bit cumbersome (what's up with page at a time scrolling?), but it does the job. I track Slashdot, Ars, various forums, and world news sites using Feedly and RSS. Love it.
A while back I asked the forum administrators on a forum I frequent if they could enable the RSS feed, which they did. I view that feed every day. Beats the heck out of using the web interface and trying to track activity on several sub forums.
I still have a bunch of natural keyboards. Mine are all USB and PS/2. They are great keyboards. Spill water on them, though, and they are done. It seems to oxidize the contacts.
The Natural 4000 keyboards are also very good, but I've been through four of them in the last 6 or 7 years, and they all seem to fail in the same way. Invariably a couple of keys just stop working. Possibly one line of the switch array goes bad. I've tried to fix them, but the flimsy circuit plastic isn't repairable.
I've finally settled on the Adesso Tru-Form Media 208 usb keyboard. It took me quite a while to get used to the slightly different geometry from the Microsoft keyboard, but now I really like it. A great feel, and not too many extra media buttons on it. I hope it never dies because I can't seem to find too many places that still sell this version. Plenty sell the wireless version, or the version with integrated touch pad.
You're of course welcome to remove any clause from the GPL you wish. Linus Torvalds did just that when he licensed the kernel; the "or any later version" clause is removed. Hence the Linux kernel is stuck at GPLv2 forever, since it's not possible to even contact all of the copyright holders for any re-licensing. So the anti-Tivoization clauses in the GPLv3 can never be used by the kernel, for better or worse.
That said, if it's your code you can license it to others anyway you want at any time, regardless of previous licensing. The "or later version" clause applies to the end user of the code, not to you. Stallman isn't forcing you to do anything. If it's someone else's code, well that's a different story; you don't have any rights to that code anyway without a license, which kind of makes your little rant nonsensical. If you don't like the GPLv4 don't use it. What derivative projects choose to do with your code (supposing it was under the later version clause) shouldn't affect you in any way. It certainly doesn't affect your code itself.
If you're the copyright holder you can license the code any way you like. You can take a standard license text and add clauses to it. Typically people say they are licensing the code under the GPL with some exception. For example, GCC is licensed under the GPLv2 or later, with the exception added that the code generated by the compiler (your compiled executable) is not licensed under the GPL.
Of course you cannot take someone else's code that is under the GPL and add your own exceptions to the license without negotiating with the copyright holders.
As to the RedHat's statement about people believing the GPLv2 as written implies immediate termination of the license in the event of a license violation, I belief that's just how the US copyright law functions. By default *no one* has any right to use code that is copyrighted by someone else, except as granted explicitly by license. When that license is breached, the default position under US copyright law is that you have no rights to the code.
I support RedHat's proposal and I think it will generate some good will and ease some of the FUD that's out there.
The diagonal long edge is the length of seconds in a day in feet
Wait, so the ancient Egyptians used the modern (and arbitrary) British unit of a foot? As in 12 inches? 30.48 cm? At most it's a coincidence. Or an alien conspiracy.
I'm sure there are constants such as Pi, phi, euler's constant, the golden ratio, and more that can be found in the pyramids' construction, as a consequence of geometry. That in no way is proof they understood the constants in abstract. In fact there's little evidence they did. But they were smart master builders and knew how to get a job done.
The GP is correct, though. You can do the alignments with the plumb bobs and shadow method that he said. In fact you can get an alignment with 1 degree of true north with the sun and shadows. We don't need GPS to for that.
He knew when his contract was supposed to be up. He was 8 months into the 36 month contract. Definitely a failure of management, but his contract certainly hadn't run out in any legal sense.
I think the hope is that if fuels can be made solely from the air then we won't need to refine fossil fuels anymore. In some ways it sounds too good to be true. With carbon neutral hydrocarbon fuels being manufactured our existing infrastructure can stay in place and suddenly becomes carbon neutral. All we'd have to worry about is addressing pollution from nox and co2.
I am cautiously supportive of these guys. The concept is good if the numbers really are economical.
The problem with a screen vs a window, though, is the focus distance for your eyes. I find it increasingly difficult to look at a nearby screen while I'm in motion (unless it's dead smooth). This goes for the screens in the backs of the seats, or even my laptop sometimes. The eye strain from trying to focus on the screen while shaking around can cause a real headache which can sometimes lead to nausea. I suspect I'm not the only one who experiences this. Although it's actually a bit better with higher humidity and higher pressure cabins.
Interesting concept, though. It will have to be tried to see what kind of long-term acceptance and comfort they get.
Years ago, and before the iPhone and the app store, I used a handle for a variety of online accounts that happened to be the same as the name as a particular company which was unrelated to anything computers, software, or the internet. I used this handle to create an account with the Apple web site, which years later Apple later turned into a more general ID scheme that granted access to the developer tools and the ability to publish apps. Suddenly during the app boom I started getting emails about lost password changing for that account. I'm assuming the company suddenly really wanted that handle so they could make and publish iPhone and iPad apps related to their business. I would have been happy to hand it over to them if I knew how to do that, or how to even contact them. I wanted to just close the account so they could open it afresh. Try as I might, I could find no way to close my Apple account. I had friends working at Apple and they couldn't tell me how to do it. I don't think it ever occurred to Apple that anyone would ever want to do that.
I haven't used that handle in many years now, have long stopped getting the password reset request emails, and I have no idea if the company was ever successful at obtaining it.
Regardless of whether the US has the moral high ground, it also behooves companies in other countries, especially China, to likewise remove all critical dependencies on the US from their economy. It goes both ways.
A fully independent China is far more frightening to American interests than anything we have now, trade and IP issues notwithstanding. I think this move is going to backfire on the US in the long run. China is nearly 20% of the world's population! If we think we can ultimately control them without paying a steep economic price we're fooling ourselves. The wild card in the mix is that China continually fails to grasp what it is that has really driven American innovation over the last 100 years. Money is a huge part of it, but it's not all. It's liberal democracy combined with a strong sense of morality and personal freedom and responsibility has allowed America to advance so rapidly. China will never go there, so they will be held back by that. On the other hand we seem to be walking back all parts of that here in the US at a rapid pace.
Not at all. You may be the only human user on your system but every day you bring untrusted data and actually programs onto your computer in the form of web pages. With these vulnerabilities, a rogue JavaScript program running in a web site could grab your passwords sitting in memory for other processes. In fact one of the meltdown exploits first demonstrated was in JavaScript. So it's a bigger deal than you think and it does affect you even though you don't run a server and are the only user on your computer.
Are you joking? Self-signed certificates are secure, arguably more secure than commercial CA-signed certificates because I had to register each and every one with the browser. I created the certs myself. A MITM attack is *instantly* detectable to browsers (and to me), unlike a MITM attack using bonafide signed certificates from a breached certificate authority. Browsers make using self-signed certificates somewhat awkward, which is unfortunate. Firefox tells me, incorrectly, that my self-signed certificate is not secure. That is complete nonsense of course.
Another secure method is to sign with your own certificate authority. Then you just have to convince the browser once to take your CA cert. Like the self-signed certificates, MITM attacks are instantly detectable. This method is preferable to self-signed certs when you have deal with more than a few.
In my mind for internal servers and devices, my own certificate authority is far more secure than using something like Let's Encrypt.
In the short term I think it will benefit existing customers of both companies in terms of expanded service coverage. As far as on-going monthly customer costs go, I won't be surprised when rates go up.
I can't think of any merger in recent memory where prices actually dropped for the customers in the long term.
Interesting you should mention lasers. My university's library considered buying a unit for their record archive, but they found that the laser units actually produced a lot more noise because of all the dust and stuff that accumulates on the record's surface. Takes some expensive (at the time) audio processors to filter it out. Turned out that a regular high-quality needle was was the best choice. The act of playing a record with a needle gently cleans it and helps keep the sound noise free.
I think this is probably the reason you just don't hear a lot about optical LP players these days. They never quite turned out as promised, and the old needle technology still works very well.
Actually no, the "confidentiality" feature works regardless of recipient's email address. The recipient simply gets a link that opens in a browser to a site that Google has control over. This does force the recipient to create a Google account, of course, but it need not be a gmail account. And how they expect to prevent the end user from printing out the screen I don't know! If the recipient does use gmail and the gmail web interface then this "feature" is integrated into Gmail.
Just because you use ellipses to make a tweet sound like William Shatner doesn't mean that's the purpose of the ellipses in a quote.
It's called editing a quote for the purpose of summarizing. Near as I can tell, he did it exactly right. He used direct quotes from the article, snipping out sections that weren't necessary, to create a concise summary from the article's own words. He even cited the source paragraphs by way of a url link to the original article. Maybe he could have edited the quote differently, or just used his own words to summarize, but a direct quote is often a good way to go.
I'm well aware of the history and purpose of the electoral college. No problems with that little quiz.
But none of that is what I was referring to. I am referring more to the attitudes of those who utter that phrase as some kind of dogma. Many act as if there's some right-thinking, historical, universal definition of "republic" but in fact it's just true. We know the founding fathers had a particular definition of "Republic" in mind, but in popular parlance today, but I feel the word has lost nearly all meaning today in popular discourse.
Some who've said this "it's not a democracy; it's a republic" phrase to me only have the vaguest understanding of the electoral college. They use the word mainly as an intellectual club to beat back others who have different ideas and beliefs than they do. And often the phrase is uttered by way of excuse or rationalization. That's all I was getting at.
As so many freedom loving Americans like to constantly remind me, the United States is not a democracy; it's a republic. Which of course doesn't actually mean anything. Except maybe that democracy is great when everyone votes the way I would like them to. When they don't, it's okay to ignore those dissenting voices.
It's not just Google that does this. Amazon bought the Ivona TTS system and completely killed it for anyone other than users of the Kindle Fire who want to use the Ivona voices that ship with it.
I have to admit Sallli is an amazing TTS voice on the Fire; sure wish I could use it on my Android phone. I've tried different ways of extracting it but haven't had any luck.
Slashdot Mirror
Trying to wrap my head around this. Would the overall total water flow be the same now as it was before the pumping system was created? Or does the Swiss system continually recirculate a certain amount of water? This makes a difference as to whether the energy is really being stored or if it's just an expensive way to heat water with electricity.
Except that the proposal is to take some of the flowing water downstream about 20 miles and pump that back. That's exactly equivalent to reducing the flow from the dam in the first place, and then later increasing it.
What am I missing? How is this different and not a complete and utter loss?
Further to my comment, here's the reasoning I was getting at. If we take a certain amount of the downstream river's flow, call it f, and pump it back into the reservoir where it will be released at night, presumably increasing the flow by f (the overall flow in 24 hours is the same), then that's the same as simply reducing the dam's outflow by f during the day and increasing it by f at night. Same effect, but no pumping required. Am I incorrect in this analysis? This would be true for any pumped storage scheme on a flowing river system, such as the one proposed for Loch Nes. One might think the electricity used for pumping is being stored and released later, but this has to be an illusion because the water already had all that potential energy to begin with. The pumping energy is lost as far as I can tell.
The only scenario where pumped storage makes sense is pumping from a lower body of water to an upper body of water that's not normally part of a flowing river system.
I was just about to write this. Where does the LA power company plan to get the water to put into the reservoir? If it's from water that is running downstream then this seems rather silly. There are probably easier ways to waste out electricity, which is what that would be doing. And as you say, if you just left the water in the reservoir, it can generate electricity when it flows out.
Of course they could be referring to other sources of water flowing nearby, but I don't think there are any.
Someone doesn't seem to have thought this through very clearly. Or else we're all missing something very important. Just doesn't make sense. And I even read the article.
Same here. I think the feedly Android app is a bit cumbersome (what's up with page at a time scrolling?), but it does the job. I track Slashdot, Ars, various forums, and world news sites using Feedly and RSS. Love it.
A while back I asked the forum administrators on a forum I frequent if they could enable the RSS feed, which they did. I view that feed every day. Beats the heck out of using the web interface and trying to track activity on several sub forums.
I still have a bunch of natural keyboards. Mine are all USB and PS/2. They are great keyboards. Spill water on them, though, and they are done. It seems to oxidize the contacts.
The Natural 4000 keyboards are also very good, but I've been through four of them in the last 6 or 7 years, and they all seem to fail in the same way. Invariably a couple of keys just stop working. Possibly one line of the switch array goes bad. I've tried to fix them, but the flimsy circuit plastic isn't repairable.
I've finally settled on the Adesso Tru-Form Media 208 usb keyboard. It took me quite a while to get used to the slightly different geometry from the Microsoft keyboard, but now I really like it. A great feel, and not too many extra media buttons on it. I hope it never dies because I can't seem to find too many places that still sell this version. Plenty sell the wireless version, or the version with integrated touch pad.
You're of course welcome to remove any clause from the GPL you wish. Linus Torvalds did just that when he licensed the kernel; the "or any later version" clause is removed. Hence the Linux kernel is stuck at GPLv2 forever, since it's not possible to even contact all of the copyright holders for any re-licensing. So the anti-Tivoization clauses in the GPLv3 can never be used by the kernel, for better or worse.
That said, if it's your code you can license it to others anyway you want at any time, regardless of previous licensing. The "or later version" clause applies to the end user of the code, not to you. Stallman isn't forcing you to do anything. If it's someone else's code, well that's a different story; you don't have any rights to that code anyway without a license, which kind of makes your little rant nonsensical. If you don't like the GPLv4 don't use it. What derivative projects choose to do with your code (supposing it was under the later version clause) shouldn't affect you in any way. It certainly doesn't affect your code itself.
If you're the copyright holder you can license the code any way you like. You can take a standard license text and add clauses to it. Typically people say they are licensing the code under the GPL with some exception. For example, GCC is licensed under the GPLv2 or later, with the exception added that the code generated by the compiler (your compiled executable) is not licensed under the GPL.
Of course you cannot take someone else's code that is under the GPL and add your own exceptions to the license without negotiating with the copyright holders.
As to the RedHat's statement about people believing the GPLv2 as written implies immediate termination of the license in the event of a license violation, I belief that's just how the US copyright law functions. By default *no one* has any right to use code that is copyrighted by someone else, except as granted explicitly by license. When that license is breached, the default position under US copyright law is that you have no rights to the code.
I support RedHat's proposal and I think it will generate some good will and ease some of the FUD that's out there.
Wait, so the ancient Egyptians used the modern (and arbitrary) British unit of a foot? As in 12 inches? 30.48 cm? At most it's a coincidence. Or an alien conspiracy.
I'm sure there are constants such as Pi, phi, euler's constant, the golden ratio, and more that can be found in the pyramids' construction, as a consequence of geometry. That in no way is proof they understood the constants in abstract. In fact there's little evidence they did. But they were smart master builders and knew how to get a job done.
The GP is correct, though. You can do the alignments with the plumb bobs and shadow method that he said. In fact you can get an alignment with 1 degree of true north with the sun and shadows. We don't need GPS to for that.
He knew when his contract was supposed to be up. He was 8 months into the 36 month contract. Definitely a failure of management, but his contract certainly hadn't run out in any legal sense.
Oops I meant particulates.
I think the hope is that if fuels can be made solely from the air then we won't need to refine fossil fuels anymore. In some ways it sounds too good to be true. With carbon neutral hydrocarbon fuels being manufactured our existing infrastructure can stay in place and suddenly becomes carbon neutral. All we'd have to worry about is addressing pollution from nox and co2.
I am cautiously supportive of these guys. The concept is good if the numbers really are economical.
The problem with a screen vs a window, though, is the focus distance for your eyes. I find it increasingly difficult to look at a nearby screen while I'm in motion (unless it's dead smooth). This goes for the screens in the backs of the seats, or even my laptop sometimes. The eye strain from trying to focus on the screen while shaking around can cause a real headache which can sometimes lead to nausea. I suspect I'm not the only one who experiences this. Although it's actually a bit better with higher humidity and higher pressure cabins.
Interesting concept, though. It will have to be tried to see what kind of long-term acceptance and comfort they get.
Years ago, and before the iPhone and the app store, I used a handle for a variety of online accounts that happened to be the same as the name as a particular company which was unrelated to anything computers, software, or the internet. I used this handle to create an account with the Apple web site, which years later Apple later turned into a more general ID scheme that granted access to the developer tools and the ability to publish apps. Suddenly during the app boom I started getting emails about lost password changing for that account. I'm assuming the company suddenly really wanted that handle so they could make and publish iPhone and iPad apps related to their business. I would have been happy to hand it over to them if I knew how to do that, or how to even contact them. I wanted to just close the account so they could open it afresh. Try as I might, I could find no way to close my Apple account. I had friends working at Apple and they couldn't tell me how to do it. I don't think it ever occurred to Apple that anyone would ever want to do that.
I haven't used that handle in many years now, have long stopped getting the password reset request emails, and I have no idea if the company was ever successful at obtaining it.
Regardless of whether the US has the moral high ground, it also behooves companies in other countries, especially China, to likewise remove all critical dependencies on the US from their economy. It goes both ways.
A fully independent China is far more frightening to American interests than anything we have now, trade and IP issues notwithstanding. I think this move is going to backfire on the US in the long run. China is nearly 20% of the world's population! If we think we can ultimately control them without paying a steep economic price we're fooling ourselves. The wild card in the mix is that China continually fails to grasp what it is that has really driven American innovation over the last 100 years. Money is a huge part of it, but it's not all. It's liberal democracy combined with a strong sense of morality and personal freedom and responsibility has allowed America to advance so rapidly. China will never go there, so they will be held back by that. On the other hand we seem to be walking back all parts of that here in the US at a rapid pace.
Not at all. You may be the only human user on your system but every day you bring untrusted data and actually programs onto your computer in the form of web pages. With these vulnerabilities, a rogue JavaScript program running in a web site could grab your passwords sitting in memory for other processes. In fact one of the meltdown exploits first demonstrated was in JavaScript. So it's a bigger deal than you think and it does affect you even though you don't run a server and are the only user on your computer.
Are you joking? Self-signed certificates are secure, arguably more secure than commercial CA-signed certificates because I had to register each and every one with the browser. I created the certs myself. A MITM attack is *instantly* detectable to browsers (and to me), unlike a MITM attack using bonafide signed certificates from a breached certificate authority. Browsers make using self-signed certificates somewhat awkward, which is unfortunate. Firefox tells me, incorrectly, that my self-signed certificate is not secure. That is complete nonsense of course.
Another secure method is to sign with your own certificate authority. Then you just have to convince the browser once to take your CA cert. Like the self-signed certificates, MITM attacks are instantly detectable. This method is preferable to self-signed certs when you have deal with more than a few.
In my mind for internal servers and devices, my own certificate authority is far more secure than using something like Let's Encrypt.
In the short term I think it will benefit existing customers of both companies in terms of expanded service coverage. As far as on-going monthly customer costs go, I won't be surprised when rates go up.
I can't think of any merger in recent memory where prices actually dropped for the customers in the long term.
Interesting you should mention lasers. My university's library considered buying a unit for their record archive, but they found that the laser units actually produced a lot more noise because of all the dust and stuff that accumulates on the record's surface. Takes some expensive (at the time) audio processors to filter it out. Turned out that a regular high-quality needle was was the best choice. The act of playing a record with a needle gently cleans it and helps keep the sound noise free.
I think this is probably the reason you just don't hear a lot about optical LP players these days. They never quite turned out as promised, and the old needle technology still works very well.
Actually no, the "confidentiality" feature works regardless of recipient's email address. The recipient simply gets a link that opens in a browser to a site that Google has control over. This does force the recipient to create a Google account, of course, but it need not be a gmail account. And how they expect to prevent the end user from printing out the screen I don't know! If the recipient does use gmail and the gmail web interface then this "feature" is integrated into Gmail.
Just because you use ellipses to make a tweet sound like William Shatner doesn't mean that's the purpose of the ellipses in a quote.
It's called editing a quote for the purpose of summarizing. Near as I can tell, he did it exactly right. He used direct quotes from the article, snipping out sections that weren't necessary, to create a concise summary from the article's own words. He even cited the source paragraphs by way of a url link to the original article. Maybe he could have edited the quote differently, or just used his own words to summarize, but a direct quote is often a good way to go.
I don't need a thinner phone. And the last thing I want is a phone that I can't hold in my hand without accidentally touching the screen on the edges.
I'm well aware of the history and purpose of the electoral college. No problems with that little quiz.
But none of that is what I was referring to. I am referring more to the attitudes of those who utter that phrase as some kind of dogma. Many act as if there's some right-thinking, historical, universal definition of "republic" but in fact it's just true. We know the founding fathers had a particular definition of "Republic" in mind, but in popular parlance today, but I feel the word has lost nearly all meaning today in popular discourse.
Some who've said this "it's not a democracy; it's a republic" phrase to me only have the vaguest understanding of the electoral college. They use the word mainly as an intellectual club to beat back others who have different ideas and beliefs than they do. And often the phrase is uttered by way of excuse or rationalization. That's all I was getting at.
As so many freedom loving Americans like to constantly remind me, the United States is not a democracy; it's a republic. Which of course doesn't actually mean anything. Except maybe that democracy is great when everyone votes the way I would like them to. When they don't, it's okay to ignore those dissenting voices.
It's not just Google that does this. Amazon bought the Ivona TTS system and completely killed it for anyone other than users of the Kindle Fire who want to use the Ivona voices that ship with it.
I have to admit Sallli is an amazing TTS voice on the Fire; sure wish I could use it on my Android phone. I've tried different ways of extracting it but haven't had any luck.