But that's only the utility side. The current-clamp meters people are talking about are user-installed secondary meters--they are added in addition to the utility meter purely for your own information. Sure, the utility can decide to screw you if they want and install a limit/disconnect, but that's not Google's fault.
Sorry, but this service does not justify that kind of paranoia. Most devices you can use with it are not devices that control power flow; they merely measure it.
Smart power meters like Google is targeting are just that--METERS. For example the TED5000 uses non-invasive current probes that clip onto your power wires and inductively measure the current that is flowing. It then uploads the current data to Google Power Meter where it keeps a trend log you can view from anywhere, which is a legitimate service. The TED5000 itself keeps an internal log, but is not as detailed. It is physically impossible for the TED5000 to interrupt or otherwise impede the flow of electricity into your home--such a device would be large and expensive.
Smart appliances, on the other hand, are IP-enabled refrigerators, air conditioners, etc, that read information from the smart meter and make operating decisions based on it. Google probably wants to encourage smart appliances too, but this app only has to deal with the smart meters at the moment.
So using Google Power Meter with a non-invasive smart meter does not make you vulnerable to control by hackers. The only way you could have a device to shut power off remotely would if it were installed by the utility company or else be a smart appliance you installed yourself.
(1) My point about footprint was that in order for a 3-wheel vehicle to be stable, the third wheel has to be a reasonable distance from the main axle. That requires the bodywork to be modified to either extend beyond what would be required for a purely upright vehicle or to shift the main axle significantly forward. So not necessarily an increase in footprint, but probably an increase in structural members.
(2) Typo: I meant "easier to park" as a result of the smaller footprint in (1). On reflection, this would not be significantly different with a 3-wheeled or slightly larger vehicle.
(3) I admit I have no idea what kind of NHTSA regulations would be in place for road-certified balancing vehicles, but given recent advances in MEMS inertial sensing technology there is no other reason a balancing vehicle would need an industrial-grade laser gyro. Segways, in fact, use triple-redundant MEMS gyros to maintain balance very effectively and inexpensively.
(4) Assembly labor may in this case be pennies versus millionths of pennies. Have you ever seen a modern PCB assembly plant at work? Adding one part to production PCB is so trivial it makes assembling a wheel, axle, bearing, and flange with two bolts look like an interminable task. It's the difference between adding a robot arm on the assembly line versus loading one more reel onto the pick and place machine.
With all that said, I agree that a purely balancing system would be a little unwise. I assume these vehicles would have kick-stands or the like that would pop out automatically (or manually) when parking or running out of power. And I'm not the first to say that the idea is still really far-fetched and not at all likely to catch on in the states.
Ah, but if you know what word you want, you can pick the right pronunciation. To a refined tongue, affect and effect are not homophones. Excuse me while I put on my bowler cap and go for a stroll before tea.
Also having only 2 wheels reduces the footprint, makes it easier to part, and cuts chassis size and weight.
A MEMS gyro chip is like $2 in quantity and can be added to a PCB that already has enough computing power to do that and check your email. Sounds a lot cheaper than the parts and *assembly labor* for adding a third wheel, which BTW would have to be a swivel wheel for it to actually work, and look a lot less cool--who wants to ride R2-D2 around town when it could be an upright pencil case [/sarcasm]?
Or you will start hearing from Windows people how terrible the feature is because MS implemented it poorly, and they will ask how you could possibly put up with such a crappy feature in Linux all these years.
There are multiple levels of software on the rover. There is a failsafe module to turn everything off if it runs out of power, there is a bootloader OS to handle software crashes and give memory dumps to ground controllers, there is the main OS that runs the vehicle, and then there are scripts the main OS can run. This is one of the scripts.
Note that the summary says they spent "months" uploading the new software--they did it very meticulously, in chunks, with checksums, and probably read back the whole memory before giving it execute permissions.
If you were keeping up with the news when they launched the rovers, you might remember that they launched with only the bootloader installed--they actually uploaded the vehicle OS mid-flight before they reached Mars. So something like this isn't a big deal once it's been tested within an inch of its life to get "flight" qualified. The big deal is that they actually got it that far--NASA has historically been very reluctant to give their craft any more autonomy than absolutely necessary. Hopefully we are turning a corner on that.
I have been running Win7 with an SSD for the last 8 months and I am never going back. You should actually read some recent literature on SSDs to answer this question. SSDs now advertise lifetimes comparable to or longer than magnetic disks, thanks to using very advanced firmware to do error correction and wear leveling. If there is an error in an SSD write, the drive will work around it and write to another sector (most drives have unreported capacity they use for this and wear leveling).
The OCZ Vertex II, currently an industry favorite, advertises 1.5-million-hour mean time before failure. That means that the drives are estimated to last 171 years of normal use before failing outright. A Western Digital Caviar Black, on the other hand, is rated for 300,000 load/unload cycles, meaning you can spin it up and down 300,000 times. If you spin up and down 5 times a day, it will last 164 years, not counting possible degradation of the magnetic disk coating or mechanical failure due to shock or temperature extremes.
Basically, SSDs are a pretty mature technology with reliability that meets or exceeds standard HDDs. In many applications, the vibration and temperature resistance of SSDs give them a significant advantage of HDDs. Just remember that you have to treat them differently from "dumb" HDDs--the SSD firmware automatically does all the defrag/wear leveling/error correction itself so trying to do that manually will kill the drive prematurely. File system alignment and RAID controller settings can be very important as well, so due diligence is required to use them properly.
Once again a demonstration of why adjusting policies to save specific jobs is totally bass-ackwards. This is the same as forcing GM to keep too many dealerships open. Using politics to subsidize or arm-wrestle certain jobs from going extinct hurts the free market and prevents those people from actually being productive in the economy. The only legitimate use of power is to alter policies for the public good and let the market decide what jobs are and are not required to serve that public good. And in this case, the public good means saving money on bureaucracies so it can be spent actually helping people.
[Cue cynical comments in response to reasoned idealism.]
For instance, if you are a Sikh you are allowed to use a motorbike without a helmet since you have a turban in the way (although to be honest, in that case your violation doesn't harm anyone else).
Helmet laws exist because it does harm other people if you don't wear a helmet. Even if we left your body to rot on the street, if your personal negligence results in a serious accident there will be societal costs in medical bills, police write-ups, coronaries, road closures, blood removal, etc. Why do you think attempting suicide is illegal in many countries? Because when people go around killing themselves it's almost as bad as when they go around killing each other. It causes serious consequences for a society designed to preserve human life. Which is why a state designed to protect people from each other must also protect people from themselves.
It's easy to be cavalier about your personal choices, but you have to remember that we aren't living on the unpopulated frontier, where you can shoot yourself in the woods and nobody will care. Some things are not simply your problem and yours alone.
Of course, this is precisely why religious exceptions to public safety rules make so little sense. If you want to be a Sikh and wear a turban all the time, then you better ride a car instead of a motorbike without a helmet, both for your own good and for the sake of the people who will have to clean up after you.
This isn't an argument specifically on one's Constitutional right to free speech. It's more about third parties performing censorship activities that they otherwise would have no reason to perform...
Which is why this looks more like a case of harassment, not censorship. But there is still no legal argument against Youtube, thanks to the all-denying EULA. And I expect would be difficult to prove some company pressured Google into taking down your video as a means of deliberate harassment.
It is true that there are issues caused when USB->serial converters buffer data. The buffer timeout (latency) is a big issue for real-time systems. On many converters, you can reduce the buffer timeout by changing a kernel setting. We did that on a PC-based robot using an FTDI converter chip under Debian. Dropped the latency from like 50ms to 1ms or something like that.
If we were all wearing silver jumpsuits, they wouldn't be futuristic anymore! They'd be "modern". The reason people don't wear silver jumpsuits is they don't like silver jumpsuits. It's just a coincidence that for some reason we associate silver jumpsuits with "futuristic" stuff. But that association alone doesn't have anything to do with mainstream adoption.
Not that that will stop me from wearing my silver jumpsuit at every opportunity...
Exactly. When science (actually Galileo) tried to confirm the "obvious" notion that heavy objects fall faster, it turned out that what was everybody thought was "obvious" was wrong. Hence the need to confirm things that seem obvious at first glance with scientific observation and analysis.
Guess what, you're in luck! If you go to Xfinity.com and click "buy" it redirects you to Comcast.com, and offers you the same shitty package (>$100/mo for TV/phone/6Mbps internet). The plus side is if you already have Comcast, you are guaranteed to have Xfinity coverage!
Yes, but most people pay for expensive things with credit cards instead of cash, and very few things (still in the packaging) weigh less than a credit card. If you keep your $100 bills in a steel suitcase that adds weight too, because obviously you will be giving them the suitcase as well. It's all a matter of perspective, since money is more of a concept than a physical object. However, saying that something weighs less than its worth in $100 bills is an interesting comparison. ^_^
If conservatives want to have a civil war over the space program, then fine. The simple fact is that the new space program is the most rational allocation of the woefully inadequate NASA funds that politicians are willing to throw at them. Nothing more, nothing less.
As a NASA engineer, I agree that it is a shame we are shutting down all our manned launch programs for the time being, but completing the Ares project would have meant shuttering just about every other research & development effort. NASA's most valuable resource is their innovative scientists and engineers--it really is a waste to have most of NASA's budget going to routine space flight tasks.
The new budget cuts manned launches but redirects those funds to long-term research that will make future manned launches both more productive and less expensive. Extensive research into propulsion, navigation, life support, and self-sustainability will be carried out using inexpensive robotic missions and the International Space Station.
If the Republicans want someone to blame, then they should blame nearly every politician since the end of the Cold War for not pushing for more NASA funding and relevant priorities. And no, pork barrel projects don't count, only money that can be distributed based on scientific merit and technological feasibility really makes a difference.
The bottom line is the political climate makes it impossible to properly fund anything, including space travel. If you want to change that, tell your congresspeople to increase funding and support the scientific priorities--not pork projects--we need to make real and tangible progress in the quest to explore the universe
Slashdot Mirror
Over 9000 is a lot of power. Surely after getting google meter you will be able to reduce it and save money!
But that's only the utility side. The current-clamp meters people are talking about are user-installed secondary meters--they are added in addition to the utility meter purely for your own information. Sure, the utility can decide to screw you if they want and install a limit/disconnect, but that's not Google's fault.
Sorry, but this service does not justify that kind of paranoia. Most devices you can use with it are not devices that control power flow; they merely measure it.
Smart power meters like Google is targeting are just that--METERS. For example the TED5000 uses non-invasive current probes that clip onto your power wires and inductively measure the current that is flowing. It then uploads the current data to Google Power Meter where it keeps a trend log you can view from anywhere, which is a legitimate service. The TED5000 itself keeps an internal log, but is not as detailed. It is physically impossible for the TED5000 to interrupt or otherwise impede the flow of electricity into your home--such a device would be large and expensive.
Smart appliances, on the other hand, are IP-enabled refrigerators, air conditioners, etc, that read information from the smart meter and make operating decisions based on it. Google probably wants to encourage smart appliances too, but this app only has to deal with the smart meters at the moment.
So using Google Power Meter with a non-invasive smart meter does not make you vulnerable to control by hackers. The only way you could have a device to shut power off remotely would if it were installed by the utility company or else be a smart appliance you installed yourself.
Okay, quick response:
(1) My point about footprint was that in order for a 3-wheel vehicle to be stable, the third wheel has to be a reasonable distance from the main axle. That requires the bodywork to be modified to either extend beyond what would be required for a purely upright vehicle or to shift the main axle significantly forward. So not necessarily an increase in footprint, but probably an increase in structural members.
(2) Typo: I meant "easier to park" as a result of the smaller footprint in (1). On reflection, this would not be significantly different with a 3-wheeled or slightly larger vehicle.
(3) I admit I have no idea what kind of NHTSA regulations would be in place for road-certified balancing vehicles, but given recent advances in MEMS inertial sensing technology there is no other reason a balancing vehicle would need an industrial-grade laser gyro. Segways, in fact, use triple-redundant MEMS gyros to maintain balance very effectively and inexpensively.
(4) Assembly labor may in this case be pennies versus millionths of pennies. Have you ever seen a modern PCB assembly plant at work? Adding one part to production PCB is so trivial it makes assembling a wheel, axle, bearing, and flange with two bolts look like an interminable task. It's the difference between adding a robot arm on the assembly line versus loading one more reel onto the pick and place machine.
With all that said, I agree that a purely balancing system would be a little unwise. I assume these vehicles would have kick-stands or the like that would pop out automatically (or manually) when parking or running out of power. And I'm not the first to say that the idea is still really far-fetched and not at all likely to catch on in the states.
Ah, but if you know what word you want, you can pick the right pronunciation. To a refined tongue, affect and effect are not homophones. Excuse me while I put on my bowler cap and go for a stroll before tea.
Also having only 2 wheels reduces the footprint, makes it easier to part, and cuts chassis size and weight.
A MEMS gyro chip is like $2 in quantity and can be added to a PCB that already has enough computing power to do that and check your email. Sounds a lot cheaper than the parts and *assembly labor* for adding a third wheel, which BTW would have to be a swivel wheel for it to actually work, and look a lot less cool--who wants to ride R2-D2 around town when it could be an upright pencil case [/sarcasm]?
Or you will start hearing from Windows people how terrible the feature is because MS implemented it poorly, and they will ask how you could possibly put up with such a crappy feature in Linux all these years.
There are multiple levels of software on the rover. There is a failsafe module to turn everything off if it runs out of power, there is a bootloader OS to handle software crashes and give memory dumps to ground controllers, there is the main OS that runs the vehicle, and then there are scripts the main OS can run. This is one of the scripts.
Note that the summary says they spent "months" uploading the new software--they did it very meticulously, in chunks, with checksums, and probably read back the whole memory before giving it execute permissions.
If you were keeping up with the news when they launched the rovers, you might remember that they launched with only the bootloader installed--they actually uploaded the vehicle OS mid-flight before they reached Mars. So something like this isn't a big deal once it's been tested within an inch of its life to get "flight" qualified. The big deal is that they actually got it that far--NASA has historically been very reluctant to give their craft any more autonomy than absolutely necessary. Hopefully we are turning a corner on that.
Only in the difference between :-0 and :-?
See this earlier comment by TheRaven64.
I have been running Win7 with an SSD for the last 8 months and I am never going back. You should actually read some recent literature on SSDs to answer this question. SSDs now advertise lifetimes comparable to or longer than magnetic disks, thanks to using very advanced firmware to do error correction and wear leveling. If there is an error in an SSD write, the drive will work around it and write to another sector (most drives have unreported capacity they use for this and wear leveling).
The OCZ Vertex II, currently an industry favorite, advertises 1.5-million-hour mean time before failure. That means that the drives are estimated to last 171 years of normal use before failing outright. A Western Digital Caviar Black, on the other hand, is rated for 300,000 load/unload cycles, meaning you can spin it up and down 300,000 times. If you spin up and down 5 times a day, it will last 164 years, not counting possible degradation of the magnetic disk coating or mechanical failure due to shock or temperature extremes.
Basically, SSDs are a pretty mature technology with reliability that meets or exceeds standard HDDs. In many applications, the vibration and temperature resistance of SSDs give them a significant advantage of HDDs. Just remember that you have to treat them differently from "dumb" HDDs--the SSD firmware automatically does all the defrag/wear leveling/error correction itself so trying to do that manually will kill the drive prematurely. File system alignment and RAID controller settings can be very important as well, so due diligence is required to use them properly.
Once again a demonstration of why adjusting policies to save specific jobs is totally bass-ackwards. This is the same as forcing GM to keep too many dealerships open. Using politics to subsidize or arm-wrestle certain jobs from going extinct hurts the free market and prevents those people from actually being productive in the economy. The only legitimate use of power is to alter policies for the public good and let the market decide what jobs are and are not required to serve that public good. And in this case, the public good means saving money on bureaucracies so it can be spent actually helping people.
[Cue cynical comments in response to reasoned idealism.]
Yeah. $1.4b of webcams and summer intern projects. What a great educational outreach program and subsidy for chinese electronics.
For instance, if you are a Sikh you are allowed to use a motorbike without a helmet since you have a turban in the way (although to be honest, in that case your violation doesn't harm anyone else).
Helmet laws exist because it does harm other people if you don't wear a helmet. Even if we left your body to rot on the street, if your personal negligence results in a serious accident there will be societal costs in medical bills, police write-ups, coronaries, road closures, blood removal, etc. Why do you think attempting suicide is illegal in many countries? Because when people go around killing themselves it's almost as bad as when they go around killing each other. It causes serious consequences for a society designed to preserve human life. Which is why a state designed to protect people from each other must also protect people from themselves.
It's easy to be cavalier about your personal choices, but you have to remember that we aren't living on the unpopulated frontier, where you can shoot yourself in the woods and nobody will care. Some things are not simply your problem and yours alone.
Of course, this is precisely why religious exceptions to public safety rules make so little sense. If you want to be a Sikh and wear a turban all the time, then you better ride a car instead of a motorbike without a helmet, both for your own good and for the sake of the people who will have to clean up after you.
This isn't an argument specifically on one's Constitutional right to free speech. It's more about third parties performing censorship activities that they otherwise would have no reason to perform...
Which is why this looks more like a case of harassment, not censorship. But there is still no legal argument against Youtube, thanks to the all-denying EULA. And I expect would be difficult to prove some company pressured Google into taking down your video as a means of deliberate harassment.
It is true that there are issues caused when USB->serial converters buffer data. The buffer timeout (latency) is a big issue for real-time systems. On many converters, you can reduce the buffer timeout by changing a kernel setting. We did that on a PC-based robot using an FTDI converter chip under Debian. Dropped the latency from like 50ms to 1ms or something like that.
If we were all wearing silver jumpsuits, they wouldn't be futuristic anymore! They'd be "modern". The reason people don't wear silver jumpsuits is they don't like silver jumpsuits. It's just a coincidence that for some reason we associate silver jumpsuits with "futuristic" stuff. But that association alone doesn't have anything to do with mainstream adoption.
Not that that will stop me from wearing my silver jumpsuit at every opportunity...
Exactly. When science (actually Galileo) tried to confirm the "obvious" notion that heavy objects fall faster, it turned out that what was everybody thought was "obvious" was wrong. Hence the need to confirm things that seem obvious at first glance with scientific observation and analysis.
...Texting...toilet...projector...
Now Larry Craig doesn't have to use his foot ask for favors from the next stall over.
Guess what, you're in luck! If you go to Xfinity.com and click "buy" it redirects you to Comcast.com, and offers you the same shitty package (>$100/mo for TV/phone/6Mbps internet). The plus side is if you already have Comcast, you are guaranteed to have Xfinity coverage!
Yes, but most people pay for expensive things with credit cards instead of cash, and very few things (still in the packaging) weigh less than a credit card. If you keep your $100 bills in a steel suitcase that adds weight too, because obviously you will be giving them the suitcase as well. It's all a matter of perspective, since money is more of a concept than a physical object. However, saying that something weighs less than its worth in $100 bills is an interesting comparison. ^_^
Actually, the same can be said for a CDR disc, if you pay in pennies. 1 penny = 3 g, 1 CD = 15 g, CD costs $0.17. :-)
Hmmmm. That standard FedEx mailer wouldn't happened to be surrounded by an armed guard, would it?
If conservatives want to have a civil war over the space program, then fine. The simple fact is that the new space program is the most rational allocation of the woefully inadequate NASA funds that politicians are willing to throw at them. Nothing more, nothing less.
As a NASA engineer, I agree that it is a shame we are shutting down all our manned launch programs for the time being, but completing the Ares project would have meant shuttering just about every other research & development effort. NASA's most valuable resource is their innovative scientists and engineers--it really is a waste to have most of NASA's budget going to routine space flight tasks.
The new budget cuts manned launches but redirects those funds to long-term research that will make future manned launches both more productive and less expensive. Extensive research into propulsion, navigation, life support, and self-sustainability will be carried out using inexpensive robotic missions and the International Space Station.
If the Republicans want someone to blame, then they should blame nearly every politician since the end of the Cold War for not pushing for more NASA funding and relevant priorities. And no, pork barrel projects don't count, only money that can be distributed based on scientific merit and technological feasibility really makes a difference.
The bottom line is the political climate makes it impossible to properly fund anything, including space travel. If you want to change that, tell your congresspeople to increase funding and support the scientific priorities--not pork projects--we need to make real and tangible progress in the quest to explore the universe
I didn't get this one until I switched to my alter ego, the assembler programmer.