In a normal situation involving a neutral, either a 2-pole single phase circuit (like commonly going to homes in North America) or a 3-pole three phase circuit, where the current waveform is sinusoidal, when the currents are balanced in the phases, the neutral is neutralized, and no current flows there at all. In the worst case of sinusoidal current flow, which is all the current flowing in a single phase, the neutral is carrying the same amount of current as that phase, which it is capable of doing.
The problem comes about with non-sinusoidal waveforms, and in particular, waveforms that have a timing that does not allow phases to cancel out in the neutral wiring.
Here is a simple explanation of how you can simulate the problem in a way that can be more easily understood. Suppose you have 3 large banks of incandescent light bulbs that make up a huge display sign. Each of the 3 separate banks requires 60 amps of electric current when turned on. Now suppose you are going to turn on only one bank at a time to make the sign display in a sequenced manner. That means each bank is only going to be turned on 1/3 of the time. If the switching on and off is fast enough, you could use wiring rated for only 20 amps to supply each lighting bank (though electrical safety codes would not allow this) without overheating those wires. Since the phase wires would be on at 60 amps for just 1/3 of the time, and off 2/3 of the time, the average current is only 20 amps over time. The catch is that even though the neutral would have 0 amps of current if all banks were on at the same time, it will have 60 amps of current when you switch on each bank at the same time. While the phase wires are on only 1/3 of the time, the neutral is carrying the 60 amps continuously all the time. A 20 amp wire there would overheat.
Switching power supplies, like those found in computers, do not conduct continuously over the sinusoidal voltage waveform cycle. Their current flows in short cycles, usually triggered when the voltage reaches some particular level. Two like power supplies on opposite poles/phases of 2-pole single phase power will generally conduct at about the same time, leaving little or no neutral current. But on three phase power, the waveforms do not line up, so the points in time when the current conducts in switching power supplies do not line up, either. This means that current cannot bypass the neutral and conduct across from one phase's load to another phase's load. The neutral ends up conducting current for the current pulses from all three phases at separate times. So if you have 20 amps of current (many like computers together) on each of three circuits on different phases, the phase wires will be heated by an average of 20 amps pulsing 100 or 120 times a second. But the neutral, carrying the time-separated pulses from all three phases, will be heated by an average of 60 amps pulsing 300 or 360 times a second (150 Hz or 180 Hz depending on power frequency used).
A basic bridge rectified power supply won't be as severe as a switching power supply because the rectifiers will conduct whenever they are in forward bias. On single phase that will be most of the time if the DC load is conducting and draining the filter capacityors. But for a three phase bridge, the voltages on different phases will reverse-bias the rectifiers some times during the complete cycle. The end result is that each phase is now conducting less often. Only the phase presenting the higher voltage can conduct since it is reverse-biasing the other rectifiers. This means narrower pulses that have less time frames for the current on different phases to bypass the neutral. Now the neutral will carry more current (rather than be cancelled out to zero in the optimally balanced sinusoidal current case).
One way around this issue for your circuit is to wire the three phase loads in a phase-to-phase manner instead of a phase-to-neutral manner. Now the neutral, being unconnected, cannot have any current at all. But all thi
This is the IT business sector growth, not necessarily any real tech role job growth. A great deal of the jobs will the kinds of jobs that simply cannot be outsourced because it requires being present right here. Counted in IT sector jobs include sales and marketing people that sell the technology stuff to business managers and executives at (potential) customers. Since most technology buyers at the average business are not really tech savvy, the sales and marketing people have to be more knowledgeable about the interpersonal (e.g. bull****ing and lying) aspects of the work, than about the technology aspects (as long as they memorize a number of buzzwords to toss around). Genuine techies won't fill (or touch) most of these jobs, anyway. And a lot of other jobs that are supposedly tech job roles also end up being semi-sales jobs anyway. They call them consultants. Their real role is to get the client they are placed at to buy even more from the vendor.
Real tech jobs like program development and tech support are going to still be heavily outsourced to the lowest priced outsourcing offer, which usually is offshore these days. Most business executives have little or no respect for true technical skills. In many cases this can be because such job roles do not have specific sales numbers attached to them, so they are not perceived as contributing to the profit levels of the corporation (whereas saving money by outsourcing does such a contribution and is attributed to the executive himself or herself).
Let's see some solid data (not just percentages) on numbers of people hired into each of the various tech role positions, broken down by job class (permanent vs. contract), and by work status (citizen vs. resident vs. non-resident).
... count the owners of analog-input only displays are part of the market they expect to be buying their DRM crippled discs, and use the low sales statistics to "show" there is even more piracy than ever before when asking Congress to establish more draconian laws to let them squeeze everyone for even more money.
One factor that will skew the statistics is the fact that Windows more frequently requires buying new more powerful hardware than Linux, or even Unix, does. The next big version of (some distribution of) Linux will likely run just fine on your existing server hardware. But the next big version of Windows could easily require some signification portion of the server base to accomplish an upgrade by buying all new hardware (which will likely be sold with Windows pre-installed, and counted as such). If they could subtract from these statistics the replacement value of the hardware discarded or recycled into other uses, you might see something different. The way they did this is somewhat like trying to count the number of users of each operating system by counting the number of system boots that take place for each.
I believe the "Some American DVDs" work a little more like this:
DVD talks to DVD player: My region is region 0. What region are you?
DVD player: I'm region 0, too. That means region free. I can play you.
DVD: OK, sure thing. But I only have one frame to play. Read and weep.
If the player reported region 1, though, the programming would "find" the whole movie to play. To get around this, follow the previous posted instructions and set the region code on the player to the region of the DVD, which will be 1 for most or all of the DVDs with this trick.
We have a development team. We need a new person to join it. We think that we'd like someone with 2 to 4 years experience.
Then say you are looking for someone with at least 2 years experience, and do not expect applicants with more than 4 years experience. Say it so that applicants that actually read the description with less than 2 years or more than 4 years experience will move along to the next listing.
It would be preferable if that experience was in our industry (finance), but we'll look at any talented candidates. We know what skills are mandatory and which ones are desirable.
Then say what the industry is, and the range of talents you would consider. List the skills that are mandator, and separately list the additional skills that are desirable and will influence your selection and level of offer.
There's a large range of potential candidates there, and they will deliver different value to our team. As a general rule, the candiate with 4 years experience in the right technology in the right industry with the right demeanour will contribute substantially more to our projects than someone with 2 years experience in a different industry. We'll pay in accordance with that.
So yes, we know what a really great candidate is worth (to us) and what an average candidate is worth, but that's quite a range and it's not particularly helpful to put it on a job ad.
Then don't whine when someone sends a resume with 2 years in the wrong field and expects a salary beyond what you can possible offer even the best possible candidate. Being flexible is a good thing, but that in no way means you have to be vague in the job description. Say how much you are willing to pay for 2 years experience, for 3 years, and for 4 years, then. Unless you enjoy sifting through an excess of resumes, at least give the respondents an opportunity to self-filter for you. It will save your time, and ours, too.
I'm not trying to defend recruiters who won't tell you what a job is worth - it's not fair to expect you to interview before you can even know what's on offer - but you need to understand that (in our case at least) salaries are very dependant on the candidate.
They are very dependent on the qualifications of a candidate, too. You can at least narrow things down quite a bit by identifying the possible range based qualification level. If you aren't willing to put in a little work up front in your job description posting, don't expect to save work in the back end when it comes time to whittle down the responses.
And definitely do not expect an applicant to tell you right up front what their specific salary expectation is. I know that my own expectations of salary do vary by things about the job, the company, the location, and other job specifics that I cannot know about until an interview.
If Radioshack were to sell a complete line of all the components for building your own computer, from cases, to mainboards, to every kind of add on card, with at least 3 manufacturers represented for each type of part, then I probably will go there, and probably even buy something. And this needs to include all the major manufacturers of hard disk drives (at least in IDE, SATA, and SCSI).
One problem is, at the rates they pay people, they would never be able to hire someone that actually knows what these products are, much less knows what they do or how to work with them.
Or would this just turn them into a scaled down version of Fry's?
I've never seen a good way to find a good recruiter and make a reasonable contact with them. In a large city, they are a dime a dozen, way too many for me to filter through. In a small city, they don't seem to exist at all. Is there some kind of listing of recruiters in all areas that can truly give reliable evaluations of them?
Who out there really judges whether to followup and apply for a job based on the pumping the agency does about itself? Sometimes I do see agencies/recruiters pump the client/employer (even without identifying them). But what does it matter about the agency itself? It's the employer that is their (potential) client. I say leave the agency pumping crap out entirely, including the agency logo.
I ran across a recruiter once that specifically said he needed to have resumes in Microsoft Word format because he only uses Microsoft Word to "process" them (which as you say, probably means he removes identifying info). I managed to track this guy down and gave him a phone call and he seemed friendly enough. Then I spilled the beans on him. I told him that his precious Microsoft Word would actually work with resumes in ASCII text format, as well as resumes in HTML format, and would allow him to edit them and store them in Word format right on his hard drive. He had no idea that could be done. I spent the next 20 minutes telling him how to do it and was quite surprised that my HTML format resume looked just about like a Word format resume when loaded in Word. He thought I was some Word guru or something, but the fact is, I had by then accumulated perhaps no more than about 3 or 4 hours of time using Word (and all of that was at work, not at home). I'd bet a lot of the "please send resume in Word format, only" requests are based on this level of ignorance about the very tools they use every day.
I expected you might be like a lot of other employers, who state a dozen or so requirements, and that they all are absolute. Anyone that has even so much as one less in their list of experiences, even if they are eager to learn that one, get automatically excluded, even if no one better can be found for months. But I looked at your job postings site and found this is not the case. You're actually more flexible than the average employer. Sadly, that might also be why you get so many resumes of people that aren't well qualified. Qualified is a matter of degree, and what it comes down to is that your judgement and their judgement of how much is enough to get hired just doesn't meet. But a lot of the resumes you get are very likely to be from people that just found a keyword (like "Linux" or "Perl") and fired away and moved on to the next job posting somewhere, ending up sending a few hundred that day, as the have been doing for weeks.
A system to select and filter qualified candidates would be nice. What I am afraid of is that it would still be abused, or just might not even properly function, for jobs that could be successfully filled by someone whose qualifications would be described as "a matter of degree". But I think in your case, it could work, as long as that system is flexible enough to handle candidates that are less than having exactly every experience listed.
The signal to noise ratio, unfortunately, is doomed to go down simply because of the internet's ability to connect everyone to everyone, and the networked PCs' ability to automate that process. I remember when resumes were hand typed and mailed in an envelope with a stamp on it. There were mainframe computers but no fax machines and no PCs. But there was no shotgun mailing of resumes. What few recruiters there were, were mostly honest and really did their work. But it is different today, where sending resumes isn't all that much different than spamming. I do have some ideas how to fix it, but I'm holding on to them until I find the right business partners to make it fly.
You can get smoother DC from three phase with fewer capacitors. You'll need three transformers, or a three phase E-core transformer. To get all that smooth DC your rectifiers would be conducting in 6 different stages over the time of 1 AC cycle. That means your AC side would have current conduction in 1/3 time pulses. So while you get smooth DC, your get high harmonics in the AC current. Since the current phases won't line up, the neutral could have excess current at triple frequency. If you wire up with a delta-wye connection to avoid the neutral, you still can end up with the same problem in the source transformer at its grounding point of it's anything other than a delta-delta transformer.
High voltage DC arcs are a definite problem. But the parent of my previous comment was talking about DC needing larger wire to avoid losses with no mention that a lower voltage had to be used. Of course the original Slashdot question was about all these low voltage devices. DC does not by itself need larger conductors; when larger conductors are needed it's not because of the DC but rather because of the larger current. Higher voltage avoids the higher current, but that is harder to manage with DC (more expensive conversion, more difficult fault interruption). I'd feel safer working with 600 volts AC than with 120 volts DC. And I'd feel safer with AC as the distribution power leaving conversion to DC at the end of the line.
This is an example of why privacy has to be preserved and ideas like cameras in the home cannot be accepted. They ask "If you've done nothing wrong, why worry about cameras monitoring your every activity?"... to which this case is the perfect example of exactly why cameras should never be forced into any private place, and not even in some public ones.
DC does not require any larger conductors than AC does, for the same voltage and current. You must be assuming low voltage in reference to DC.
Three phase is only marginally better than single phase for converting AC to DC. And unless the power supply is a very complex and expensive type, it will result in a high level of harmonics and a low power factor on the AC source due to the rectification cycles. On a large scale this could also overload the neutral conductor.
Three phase is generally good for motors only above the 1 horsepower level. Many home appliances would not benefit from it. A few might (the big ones), but not all areas get three phase power, so the dominant appliance products use single phase power.
There are a lot of different voltage needs I have seen, including: 3v, 4.5v, 6v, 7.5v, 9v, 10v, 10.5v, 12v, 14v, 15v, 16v, and 18v. Some things need (or can accept) AC, others need DC (some can take it filtered while most want reasonably smooth). It would be nice if the voltages were better standardized, but this is not always an option. And often where it is an option, it ends up being traded off with a loss in efficiency.
Voltage drop is more dramatic at lower voltages. Given a specific current and a specific wire resistance, the voltage drop is a constant. Home wiring typically sees voltage drops in the range of 2 to 3 volts with high current loads, which is not much of an issue with 120 volts (less so with 230 volts). But at even 12 volts, that's a rather dramatic drop in voltage.
For the same amount of power, devices at lower voltage use more current, which means even more voltage drop.
Fault current can be an issue. If you have a lot of devices, the total current you might need could be very high. A power supply would need to deliver such current. A short circuit on a high current source can result in significant damage to everything from the power supply to the house. Surely you would fuse protect each branch circuit. The small "wall wart" power supplies have very small fault current as seen by the small arc if you short them out (don't try this at risk of blowing a tiny fuse they may have inside). But a power supply that can deliver 25 amps to a normal load can deliver much more than that under a short circuit condition, resulting in damaging arcs.
A central power supply (or transformer if AC is all you need) is going to have its own level of power waste, anyway. While it can probably be designed with better efficiency, it won't really make up for what's lost in the wiring.
If you have a cluster of devices of all the same voltage at the same location, then it would make sense to have a common power supply. Otherwise, it makes more sense to use a higher voltage for distribution purposes. The electric utility generally brings power down to your street in the 11kv to 14kv range, and a permanent transformer drops it down to the 120 to 240 volt range you get into your home. Distributing power at 240 volts would not even be considered beyond at most 100 to 200 meters. Every time the voltage goes up by 2, the distant can go up by 4 since the current is cut in half, which means the voltage drop is cut in half, which has even less effect on twice the voltage. When they run the voltage at 50 to 100 times as much, they can deliver power over substantial distances. Cutting voltage to 1/10 as much means you can deliver the same amount power to only 1/100 the distance.
Incandescent lights actually work better at lower voltage, especially for bulbs of lower wattage. Normally a low wattage bulb requires greater resistance in the filament. That means the filament must be longer and/or thinner. That means it is more prone to mechanical shock damage. It also has to run at a lower temperature, producing a more orange light (which in some cases is what is desired). The lower temperature wastes power since more is emitted as infrared instead of usable light. By changing the bulb design to a low voltage like 12 volts, the same power level can have a shorter, thicker, hotter filament, which can run more efficiently, even making up for the loss involved in having a transformer converting the voltage.
The reason I mention low voltage lights is to point out that they are rather standard at 12 volts (a few use 24 volts), yet transformers are generally located close to where the lights are, rather than in a central location which would require the power be distributed in low voltage form. If a central low voltage source were practical, low voltage lighting would be the first to use it. But with very few exceptions, they don't do it this way.
I once considered running lots of stuff in my house on lo
What is the point in having a TV license at all (in the UK)? Well, the obvious first answer is to fund the BBC. Fine. But why can't the BBC be funded from general tax funds? It could be, but in theory that would be unfair to those who don't own a TV. That argument would have worked well in the 1950's and 1960's when TV ownership was smaller. But what portion of people in countries like UK and USA do not own a TV today? I believe the figure is so small at this point of a modern connected society that if the BBC funding were switched to general tax funds, there would be overall savings because the overhead of maintaining all the individual TV license fee accounts, and the enforcement (the guys driving around in the trucks scanning for the carrier frequencies typically emitted by a TV), would no longer have to be paid for. I'm sure you can find many government services that get paid for by taxes which not everyone can make use of.
FYI, I don't live in the UK, so I cannot be certain of any of this (I live in a country that didn't think very highly of British taxes on tea and surely would not like a TV tax at all). I could be wrong... maybe lots and lots of people in the UK don't have a TV. If not, I wonder why that is.
This does make me wonder if the TV licensing people are trying to keep the licensing just to keep their jobs (as opposed to doing some work that actually produces something of value for the country).
... for their internet connections just like everyone else.
The whole idea of the internet is everyone pays their provider to be connected into the "cloud", which is some combination of public peering points, private peering points, and peering agreements directly between providers. If Verizone thinks Google is getting a free ride, maybe Verizon should have a talk with Google's access providers about it. And what about all the other customers of those same providers?
Clearly, Verizon is just not wanting to play fair with peering. They want to raise the revenues and profits, but are afraid to raise the prices on their own end. Maybe other providers should start fussing about Verizon customer's getting a free ride.
Re:A good online payment system is desperately nee
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PayPal vs Google(Buy)
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· Score: 1
Yes, it is a system where you need to trust the seller. A system where two parties cannot trust each other is one which can be highly abused, anyway. The current credit card system in the US is just that. Merchants can rip off credit card owners by charging extra things. Credit card owners can harm merchants by reversing charges. There's no real control in the system. It forces both parties to not trust each other.
If you can't trust the seller, don't buy. Or at least buy through an escrow agent you both can trust.
For small things, a fer dollars perhaps, the system can let you deal with untrusted sellers. You can lose a few dollars, but simply not come back if you get ripped off. You simply have to understand that it's a cash transaction and your money is gone.
One thing this has over current bank payment systems is that it is fast. Payments can be processed in a few seconds if one side is automated, or a few minutes if both parties are doing it manually. What seller's info are you expecting to get?
A good online payment system is desperately needed
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PayPal vs Google(Buy)
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· Score: 1, Troll
... and PayPal certainly is not it. To begin with, such a payment system needs to work on a basis where you cannot ever have an account frozen except by court order. A payment system which gives a definitely point of guarantee is also needed, and credit cards certainly don't do that (charges can be reversed for a lengthy period of time). And such a system needs to be available to anyone who can properly identify themselves regardless of things like credit rating (i.e. don't grant credit and you won't need to check creditworthiness).
One possible system could work like this. You have a bank account with a bank that participates. You visit any web site offering to sell you something over this system and select your purchase. When the purchase reaches payment stage in checkout, you get a special code string from the seller that exactly identifies this one transaction, including final price. You take that code string (perhaps with the help of an added feature in the browser to avoid cut/paste operations) to your bank web site. You authenticate yourself to your bank to login, and provide this code string to make the payment. The bank does checks like having you verify the price. If you finalize the payment, it sends that information to a central clearinghouse and gives you back a new code string identifying the payment completion. This code string is passed back to the seller web site, who uses gives it to his bank to pick up the payment at the same central clearinghouse. At this point, it's now an irreversible cash payment.
While this system does not have the advantage of being able to reverse the payment as you might do with a credit card, it does have the advantage that the seller you sent payment to will not have any information about you, your bank account, or even which bank your account is with. They cannot double charge you. They cannot come back some other day and apply new charges. They cannot drain your bank account. All they got with their own bank verifying with the clearinghouse that someone paid the pending transaction, and the requested money really is in their account (and not in yours any longer).
The level of security you get with this system depends on your own bank. Just how much your bank demands of you to prove you have the authority to make payments from your account depends on how secure your bank wants to be... and which bank you chose based on their security reputation. Unlike a credit card where your security depends on the seller's honesty and security vigilance, where you could lose money because of someone you didn't establish a security relationship with, this system would make your bank the focus of all your financial security (or banks if you choose to spread out in more than one). Thus you control the level of security you want by which bank you choose to do business with.
Most individuals would interface with their bank through a web interface accessed manually. You can be a seller and receive payments in low volume that way, too, if you want. Merchants would establish an automated arrangement with their bank (from among those that offer such) so they can generate transaction payment requests and verify payment completion messages quickly, rather than wait for some human to get around to doing it.
If you want to actually make payment under terms of credit, instead of using your own cash, then that's up to your bank to offer you the credit if they choose to do so. The seller won't know if the payment was based on a credit offering or not as that is just between you and your bank.
Of course, there will continue to be phishing scams to try to access your bank account so they can run some irreversible payments through to themselves from your money. But it is up to you and your bank to establish a level of security to prevent that. That could mean one of those smart cards that generates a password that changes every 30 seconds. Again, the level of security is something you choose
I think $10 is a bit too high, especially for apartment management agencies that often have many apartments come available each month. Maybe $1 per listing would be better. I guess they need to find the sweet-spot where the price doesn't drive away listings altogether, but keeps down the repeats.
I've never needed to look for an apartment on Craigslist anyway, so I don't know how this issue might be handled. It would be nice to be sure a listing goes away when the unit is rented. But you can't really be sure the person listing it will come back and remove it when it's rented. So, some kind of "yup, this is still available" action would be a good thing, while still a means to keep it from being up high, or even show at all, if I've seen it before. So maybe a $1 placement and $0.05 renewal to keep it active.
What about a pay-for-placement approach? Let them pay whatever they want to pay and the listing shows up with highest payer first. Also provide an option for viewing listings to limit the range of what was paid... such as few apartments for which no more than $15 nor no less than $0.50 was paid to list.
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In a normal situation involving a neutral, either a 2-pole single phase circuit (like commonly going to homes in North America) or a 3-pole three phase circuit, where the current waveform is sinusoidal, when the currents are balanced in the phases, the neutral is neutralized, and no current flows there at all. In the worst case of sinusoidal current flow, which is all the current flowing in a single phase, the neutral is carrying the same amount of current as that phase, which it is capable of doing.
The problem comes about with non-sinusoidal waveforms, and in particular, waveforms that have a timing that does not allow phases to cancel out in the neutral wiring.
Here is a simple explanation of how you can simulate the problem in a way that can be more easily understood. Suppose you have 3 large banks of incandescent light bulbs that make up a huge display sign. Each of the 3 separate banks requires 60 amps of electric current when turned on. Now suppose you are going to turn on only one bank at a time to make the sign display in a sequenced manner. That means each bank is only going to be turned on 1/3 of the time. If the switching on and off is fast enough, you could use wiring rated for only 20 amps to supply each lighting bank (though electrical safety codes would not allow this) without overheating those wires. Since the phase wires would be on at 60 amps for just 1/3 of the time, and off 2/3 of the time, the average current is only 20 amps over time. The catch is that even though the neutral would have 0 amps of current if all banks were on at the same time, it will have 60 amps of current when you switch on each bank at the same time. While the phase wires are on only 1/3 of the time, the neutral is carrying the 60 amps continuously all the time. A 20 amp wire there would overheat.
Switching power supplies, like those found in computers, do not conduct continuously over the sinusoidal voltage waveform cycle. Their current flows in short cycles, usually triggered when the voltage reaches some particular level. Two like power supplies on opposite poles/phases of 2-pole single phase power will generally conduct at about the same time, leaving little or no neutral current. But on three phase power, the waveforms do not line up, so the points in time when the current conducts in switching power supplies do not line up, either. This means that current cannot bypass the neutral and conduct across from one phase's load to another phase's load. The neutral ends up conducting current for the current pulses from all three phases at separate times. So if you have 20 amps of current (many like computers together) on each of three circuits on different phases, the phase wires will be heated by an average of 20 amps pulsing 100 or 120 times a second. But the neutral, carrying the time-separated pulses from all three phases, will be heated by an average of 60 amps pulsing 300 or 360 times a second (150 Hz or 180 Hz depending on power frequency used).
A basic bridge rectified power supply won't be as severe as a switching power supply because the rectifiers will conduct whenever they are in forward bias. On single phase that will be most of the time if the DC load is conducting and draining the filter capacityors. But for a three phase bridge, the voltages on different phases will reverse-bias the rectifiers some times during the complete cycle. The end result is that each phase is now conducting less often. Only the phase presenting the higher voltage can conduct since it is reverse-biasing the other rectifiers. This means narrower pulses that have less time frames for the current on different phases to bypass the neutral. Now the neutral will carry more current (rather than be cancelled out to zero in the optimally balanced sinusoidal current case).
One way around this issue for your circuit is to wire the three phase loads in a phase-to-phase manner instead of a phase-to-neutral manner. Now the neutral, being unconnected, cannot have any current at all. But all thi
Nah. I was too afraid he might try to find me a job supporting Microsoft Word in some boring office environment.
This is the IT business sector growth, not necessarily any real tech role job growth. A great deal of the jobs will the kinds of jobs that simply cannot be outsourced because it requires being present right here. Counted in IT sector jobs include sales and marketing people that sell the technology stuff to business managers and executives at (potential) customers. Since most technology buyers at the average business are not really tech savvy, the sales and marketing people have to be more knowledgeable about the interpersonal (e.g. bull****ing and lying) aspects of the work, than about the technology aspects (as long as they memorize a number of buzzwords to toss around). Genuine techies won't fill (or touch) most of these jobs, anyway. And a lot of other jobs that are supposedly tech job roles also end up being semi-sales jobs anyway. They call them consultants. Their real role is to get the client they are placed at to buy even more from the vendor.
Real tech jobs like program development and tech support are going to still be heavily outsourced to the lowest priced outsourcing offer, which usually is offshore these days. Most business executives have little or no respect for true technical skills. In many cases this can be because such job roles do not have specific sales numbers attached to them, so they are not perceived as contributing to the profit levels of the corporation (whereas saving money by outsourcing does such a contribution and is attributed to the executive himself or herself).
Let's see some solid data (not just percentages) on numbers of people hired into each of the various tech role positions, broken down by job class (permanent vs. contract), and by work status (citizen vs. resident vs. non-resident).
... count the owners of analog-input only displays are part of the market they expect to be buying their DRM crippled discs, and use the low sales statistics to "show" there is even more piracy than ever before when asking Congress to establish more draconian laws to let them squeeze everyone for even more money.
... otherwise the expectations will be increased.
One factor that will skew the statistics is the fact that Windows more frequently requires buying new more powerful hardware than Linux, or even Unix, does. The next big version of (some distribution of) Linux will likely run just fine on your existing server hardware. But the next big version of Windows could easily require some signification portion of the server base to accomplish an upgrade by buying all new hardware (which will likely be sold with Windows pre-installed, and counted as such). If they could subtract from these statistics the replacement value of the hardware discarded or recycled into other uses, you might see something different. The way they did this is somewhat like trying to count the number of users of each operating system by counting the number of system boots that take place for each.
I guess people really do start acting out threats when they can't find a place to sit and cool off.
I believe the "Some American DVDs" work a little more like this:
DVD talks to DVD player: My region is region 0. What region are you?
DVD player: I'm region 0, too. That means region free. I can play you.
DVD: OK, sure thing. But I only have one frame to play. Read and weep.
If the player reported region 1, though, the programming would "find" the whole movie to play. To get around this, follow the previous posted instructions and set the region code on the player to the region of the DVD, which will be 1 for most or all of the DVDs with this trick.
Then say you are looking for someone with at least 2 years experience, and do not expect applicants with more than 4 years experience. Say it so that applicants that actually read the description with less than 2 years or more than 4 years experience will move along to the next listing.
Then say what the industry is, and the range of talents you would consider. List the skills that are mandator, and separately list the additional skills that are desirable and will influence your selection and level of offer.
Then don't whine when someone sends a resume with 2 years in the wrong field and expects a salary beyond what you can possible offer even the best possible candidate. Being flexible is a good thing, but that in no way means you have to be vague in the job description. Say how much you are willing to pay for 2 years experience, for 3 years, and for 4 years, then. Unless you enjoy sifting through an excess of resumes, at least give the respondents an opportunity to self-filter for you. It will save your time, and ours, too.
They are very dependent on the qualifications of a candidate, too. You can at least narrow things down quite a bit by identifying the possible range based qualification level. If you aren't willing to put in a little work up front in your job description posting, don't expect to save work in the back end when it comes time to whittle down the responses.
And definitely do not expect an applicant to tell you right up front what their specific salary expectation is. I know that my own expectations of salary do vary by things about the job, the company, the location, and other job specifics that I cannot know about until an interview.
If Radioshack were to sell a complete line of all the components for building your own computer, from cases, to mainboards, to every kind of add on card, with at least 3 manufacturers represented for each type of part, then I probably will go there, and probably even buy something. And this needs to include all the major manufacturers of hard disk drives (at least in IDE, SATA, and SCSI).
One problem is, at the rates they pay people, they would never be able to hire someone that actually knows what these products are, much less knows what they do or how to work with them.
Or would this just turn them into a scaled down version of Fry's?
Keep C and C++ separate. They really are different languages. And a lot of recruiters need a clue about that, too.
I've never seen a good way to find a good recruiter and make a reasonable contact with them. In a large city, they are a dime a dozen, way too many for me to filter through. In a small city, they don't seem to exist at all. Is there some kind of listing of recruiters in all areas that can truly give reliable evaluations of them?
Who out there really judges whether to followup and apply for a job based on the pumping the agency does about itself? Sometimes I do see agencies/recruiters pump the client/employer (even without identifying them). But what does it matter about the agency itself? It's the employer that is their (potential) client. I say leave the agency pumping crap out entirely, including the agency logo.
I ran across a recruiter once that specifically said he needed to have resumes in Microsoft Word format because he only uses Microsoft Word to "process" them (which as you say, probably means he removes identifying info). I managed to track this guy down and gave him a phone call and he seemed friendly enough. Then I spilled the beans on him. I told him that his precious Microsoft Word would actually work with resumes in ASCII text format, as well as resumes in HTML format, and would allow him to edit them and store them in Word format right on his hard drive. He had no idea that could be done. I spent the next 20 minutes telling him how to do it and was quite surprised that my HTML format resume looked just about like a Word format resume when loaded in Word. He thought I was some Word guru or something, but the fact is, I had by then accumulated perhaps no more than about 3 or 4 hours of time using Word (and all of that was at work, not at home). I'd bet a lot of the "please send resume in Word format, only" requests are based on this level of ignorance about the very tools they use every day.
I expected you might be like a lot of other employers, who state a dozen or so requirements, and that they all are absolute. Anyone that has even so much as one less in their list of experiences, even if they are eager to learn that one, get automatically excluded, even if no one better can be found for months. But I looked at your job postings site and found this is not the case. You're actually more flexible than the average employer. Sadly, that might also be why you get so many resumes of people that aren't well qualified. Qualified is a matter of degree, and what it comes down to is that your judgement and their judgement of how much is enough to get hired just doesn't meet. But a lot of the resumes you get are very likely to be from people that just found a keyword (like "Linux" or "Perl") and fired away and moved on to the next job posting somewhere, ending up sending a few hundred that day, as the have been doing for weeks.
A system to select and filter qualified candidates would be nice. What I am afraid of is that it would still be abused, or just might not even properly function, for jobs that could be successfully filled by someone whose qualifications would be described as "a matter of degree". But I think in your case, it could work, as long as that system is flexible enough to handle candidates that are less than having exactly every experience listed.
The signal to noise ratio, unfortunately, is doomed to go down simply because of the internet's ability to connect everyone to everyone, and the networked PCs' ability to automate that process. I remember when resumes were hand typed and mailed in an envelope with a stamp on it. There were mainframe computers but no fax machines and no PCs. But there was no shotgun mailing of resumes. What few recruiters there were, were mostly honest and really did their work. But it is different today, where sending resumes isn't all that much different than spamming. I do have some ideas how to fix it, but I'm holding on to them until I find the right business partners to make it fly.
You can get smoother DC from three phase with fewer capacitors. You'll need three transformers, or a three phase E-core transformer. To get all that smooth DC your rectifiers would be conducting in 6 different stages over the time of 1 AC cycle. That means your AC side would have current conduction in 1/3 time pulses. So while you get smooth DC, your get high harmonics in the AC current. Since the current phases won't line up, the neutral could have excess current at triple frequency. If you wire up with a delta-wye connection to avoid the neutral, you still can end up with the same problem in the source transformer at its grounding point of it's anything other than a delta-delta transformer.
High voltage DC arcs are a definite problem. But the parent of my previous comment was talking about DC needing larger wire to avoid losses with no mention that a lower voltage had to be used. Of course the original Slashdot question was about all these low voltage devices. DC does not by itself need larger conductors; when larger conductors are needed it's not because of the DC but rather because of the larger current. Higher voltage avoids the higher current, but that is harder to manage with DC (more expensive conversion, more difficult fault interruption). I'd feel safer working with 600 volts AC than with 120 volts DC. And I'd feel safer with AC as the distribution power leaving conversion to DC at the end of the line.
This is an example of why privacy has to be preserved and ideas like cameras in the home cannot be accepted. They ask "If you've done nothing wrong, why worry about cameras monitoring your every activity?" ... to which this case is the perfect example of exactly why cameras should never be forced into any private place, and not even in some public ones.
DC does not require any larger conductors than AC does, for the same voltage and current. You must be assuming low voltage in reference to DC.
Three phase is only marginally better than single phase for converting AC to DC. And unless the power supply is a very complex and expensive type, it will result in a high level of harmonics and a low power factor on the AC source due to the rectification cycles. On a large scale this could also overload the neutral conductor.
Three phase is generally good for motors only above the 1 horsepower level. Many home appliances would not benefit from it. A few might (the big ones), but not all areas get three phase power, so the dominant appliance products use single phase power.
If you have a cluster of devices of all the same voltage at the same location, then it would make sense to have a common power supply. Otherwise, it makes more sense to use a higher voltage for distribution purposes. The electric utility generally brings power down to your street in the 11kv to 14kv range, and a permanent transformer drops it down to the 120 to 240 volt range you get into your home. Distributing power at 240 volts would not even be considered beyond at most 100 to 200 meters. Every time the voltage goes up by 2, the distant can go up by 4 since the current is cut in half, which means the voltage drop is cut in half, which has even less effect on twice the voltage. When they run the voltage at 50 to 100 times as much, they can deliver power over substantial distances. Cutting voltage to 1/10 as much means you can deliver the same amount power to only 1/100 the distance.
Incandescent lights actually work better at lower voltage, especially for bulbs of lower wattage. Normally a low wattage bulb requires greater resistance in the filament. That means the filament must be longer and/or thinner. That means it is more prone to mechanical shock damage. It also has to run at a lower temperature, producing a more orange light (which in some cases is what is desired). The lower temperature wastes power since more is emitted as infrared instead of usable light. By changing the bulb design to a low voltage like 12 volts, the same power level can have a shorter, thicker, hotter filament, which can run more efficiently, even making up for the loss involved in having a transformer converting the voltage.
The reason I mention low voltage lights is to point out that they are rather standard at 12 volts (a few use 24 volts), yet transformers are generally located close to where the lights are, rather than in a central location which would require the power be distributed in low voltage form. If a central low voltage source were practical, low voltage lighting would be the first to use it. But with very few exceptions, they don't do it this way.
I once considered running lots of stuff in my house on lo
What is the point in having a TV license at all (in the UK)? Well, the obvious first answer is to fund the BBC. Fine. But why can't the BBC be funded from general tax funds? It could be, but in theory that would be unfair to those who don't own a TV. That argument would have worked well in the 1950's and 1960's when TV ownership was smaller. But what portion of people in countries like UK and USA do not own a TV today? I believe the figure is so small at this point of a modern connected society that if the BBC funding were switched to general tax funds, there would be overall savings because the overhead of maintaining all the individual TV license fee accounts, and the enforcement (the guys driving around in the trucks scanning for the carrier frequencies typically emitted by a TV), would no longer have to be paid for. I'm sure you can find many government services that get paid for by taxes which not everyone can make use of.
FYI, I don't live in the UK, so I cannot be certain of any of this (I live in a country that didn't think very highly of British taxes on tea and surely would not like a TV tax at all). I could be wrong ... maybe lots and lots of people in the UK don't have a TV. If not, I wonder why that is.
This does make me wonder if the TV licensing people are trying to keep the licensing just to keep their jobs (as opposed to doing some work that actually produces something of value for the country).
... for their internet connections just like everyone else.
The whole idea of the internet is everyone pays their provider to be connected into the "cloud", which is some combination of public peering points, private peering points, and peering agreements directly between providers. If Verizone thinks Google is getting a free ride, maybe Verizon should have a talk with Google's access providers about it. And what about all the other customers of those same providers?
Clearly, Verizon is just not wanting to play fair with peering. They want to raise the revenues and profits, but are afraid to raise the prices on their own end. Maybe other providers should start fussing about Verizon customer's getting a free ride.
Yes, it is a system where you need to trust the seller. A system where two parties cannot trust each other is one which can be highly abused, anyway. The current credit card system in the US is just that. Merchants can rip off credit card owners by charging extra things. Credit card owners can harm merchants by reversing charges. There's no real control in the system. It forces both parties to not trust each other.
If you can't trust the seller, don't buy. Or at least buy through an escrow agent you both can trust.
For small things, a fer dollars perhaps, the system can let you deal with untrusted sellers. You can lose a few dollars, but simply not come back if you get ripped off. You simply have to understand that it's a cash transaction and your money is gone.
One thing this has over current bank payment systems is that it is fast. Payments can be processed in a few seconds if one side is automated, or a few minutes if both parties are doing it manually. What seller's info are you expecting to get?
... and PayPal certainly is not it. To begin with, such a payment system needs to work on a basis where you cannot ever have an account frozen except by court order. A payment system which gives a definitely point of guarantee is also needed, and credit cards certainly don't do that (charges can be reversed for a lengthy period of time). And such a system needs to be available to anyone who can properly identify themselves regardless of things like credit rating (i.e. don't grant credit and you won't need to check creditworthiness).
One possible system could work like this. You have a bank account with a bank that participates. You visit any web site offering to sell you something over this system and select your purchase. When the purchase reaches payment stage in checkout, you get a special code string from the seller that exactly identifies this one transaction, including final price. You take that code string (perhaps with the help of an added feature in the browser to avoid cut/paste operations) to your bank web site. You authenticate yourself to your bank to login, and provide this code string to make the payment. The bank does checks like having you verify the price. If you finalize the payment, it sends that information to a central clearinghouse and gives you back a new code string identifying the payment completion. This code string is passed back to the seller web site, who uses gives it to his bank to pick up the payment at the same central clearinghouse. At this point, it's now an irreversible cash payment.
While this system does not have the advantage of being able to reverse the payment as you might do with a credit card, it does have the advantage that the seller you sent payment to will not have any information about you, your bank account, or even which bank your account is with. They cannot double charge you. They cannot come back some other day and apply new charges. They cannot drain your bank account. All they got with their own bank verifying with the clearinghouse that someone paid the pending transaction, and the requested money really is in their account (and not in yours any longer).
The level of security you get with this system depends on your own bank. Just how much your bank demands of you to prove you have the authority to make payments from your account depends on how secure your bank wants to be ... and which bank you chose based on their security reputation. Unlike a credit card where your security depends on the seller's honesty and security vigilance, where you could lose money because of someone you didn't establish a security relationship with, this system would make your bank the focus of all your financial security (or banks if you choose to spread out in more than one). Thus you control the level of security you want by which bank you choose to do business with.
Most individuals would interface with their bank through a web interface accessed manually. You can be a seller and receive payments in low volume that way, too, if you want. Merchants would establish an automated arrangement with their bank (from among those that offer such) so they can generate transaction payment requests and verify payment completion messages quickly, rather than wait for some human to get around to doing it.
If you want to actually make payment under terms of credit, instead of using your own cash, then that's up to your bank to offer you the credit if they choose to do so. The seller won't know if the payment was based on a credit offering or not as that is just between you and your bank.
Of course, there will continue to be phishing scams to try to access your bank account so they can run some irreversible payments through to themselves from your money. But it is up to you and your bank to establish a level of security to prevent that. That could mean one of those smart cards that generates a password that changes every 30 seconds. Again, the level of security is something you choose
I think $10 is a bit too high, especially for apartment management agencies that often have many apartments come available each month. Maybe $1 per listing would be better. I guess they need to find the sweet-spot where the price doesn't drive away listings altogether, but keeps down the repeats.
I've never needed to look for an apartment on Craigslist anyway, so I don't know how this issue might be handled. It would be nice to be sure a listing goes away when the unit is rented. But you can't really be sure the person listing it will come back and remove it when it's rented. So, some kind of "yup, this is still available" action would be a good thing, while still a means to keep it from being up high, or even show at all, if I've seen it before. So maybe a $1 placement and $0.05 renewal to keep it active.
What about a pay-for-placement approach? Let them pay whatever they want to pay and the listing shows up with highest payer first. Also provide an option for viewing listings to limit the range of what was paid ... such as few apartments for which no more than $15 nor no less than $0.50 was paid to list.