My health insureance company called. First thing they want is my birthday. I hesitate, and they say they have to confirm who I am before they can talk to me. (Federal privacy regs, HIPAA, and all that).
I refuse, because I don't know if they are who they say they are. They immediately understand, and give me a tool-free number that I can call into. After I hang up, I realize that their number doesn't help me, becuase *they* gave it to me.
It isn't the number on my health insurance card. I can't find it on their web page. I google for it and get no hits. So I still don't know who they are. So I don't call the number.
Phishing? Probably not. It probably was my health insurance company. But it's been a couple of weeks now, and they haven't called back. In the past, when they've wanted to talk to me, they've called every few days until they got hold of me.
Electricity comes from the utility in alternating current (AC). [...] AC is converted to DC at the power distribution unit, then converted to AC again to push out to the servers, and is converted one more time to DC at each individual server.
Later on, the article talks about batteries, so I'm guessing that the "power distribution unit" is actually a UPS, and that's why they need the extra conversions:
mains -> AC -> DC -> UPS -> DC -> AC -> DC -> server
The proposal is to do
mains -> AC -> DC -> UPS -> DC -> server
which does save two conversions.
But picture the bus bars running around the facility to carry the current.
Copper futures, anyone?:)
I worked in the video game (console) industry in the early 1980's. The market was destroyed by ATARI, which did, indeed, produce many poor-quality games, and then stuffed them down the retailer's throats. What's more, ATARI induced the retailers to buy each year's new games by giving them credit for unsold games from previous years--a scheme that was structurally similar to check kiting.
Eventually, it all came crashing down, ATARI collapsed, and it was years before retailers were willing to stock console games again. The damage was done by businessmen, marketers, salemen, retailers--all of them professionals.
In my area (small town) we lose maybe 1 kid/year in an auto accident (average). The accident reports tend to be sketchy, but if you read between the lines, a common thread is a driver who doesn't have a good feel for how 2000 Kg of metal behaves at 20 m/s.
I blame too many hours spent watching stunt cars on TV, and not enough time skidding real bicycles on real gravel.
...it was the case until recently that the people who wrote manuals and created customer support websites for commercial OSes seemed to have been barred, by their employers' legal or PR departments, from admitting, even obliquely, that the software might contain bugs or that the interface might be suffering from the blinking twelve problem. They couldn't address users' actual difficulties. The manuals and websites were therefore useless, and caused even technically self-assured users to wonder whether they were going subtly insane.
Although they now have some actual market data (i.e. bids) on which to base that estimate.
Picture it: somewhere inside Google is a screen that displays the demand curve for their stock--as defined by actual bids--being updated in real time as people place bids.
It probably also computes - the market-clearing price for the number of shares in the offering - the volume/price point on the demand curve that maximizes revenue from the offering
With data like that, economics could be an empirical science...
I'm positive that MS prefers you using Apache on Windows to you using Apache on Linux.
Not necessarily.
If all your apps are portable across platforms, then the platform is reduced to a commodity, and you can choose the best one based on price/performance. This is not a place where Microsoft wants to be.
Microsoft would prefer that you didn't use Apache at all, but if you do use it, they might rather you ran it on a different platform, separated from Windows by an impenetrable wall of subtle but maddening incompatabilities (big-endian vs. little-endian, ASCII vs. EBCDIC, drive letters vs. mount points, findfirst/findnext vs. opendir/readdir, etc., etc.)
MPD is iatrogenic, i.e. it is caused by the therapists who diagnose it. If you remove the therapists from the patient, the disorder goes away. (They may still have other problems, but not MPD.)
Schizophrenia isn't like that. Schizophrenia has observable symptoms that persist even if the patient is not in treatment.
A monopolist charges the price that maximizes their revenue under the demand curve. This price depends *only* on the demand curve.
Fining Microsoft doesn't change the demand curve for their products (aside from the bad PR) so it doesn't change the price that maximizes their revenue.
So the fine really does come out of Microsoft's profits.
BBC streams their feeds in RM format, and advises their web listeners to download the free Real player to hear them.
Real (apparently) decided that this was a Revenue Opportunity. Recent versions of the free Real player *don't* play BBC feeds (you get some bogus error message about missing codecs), while the Real webpage has big links inviting you to pay them money to hear the BBC.
You can still play BBC if you downgrade to version 7.x or thereabouts.
InterVote98 is a turnkey web service sold by Assets New Media to TV stations. TV stations use InterVote98 to provide web-based campaign and election coverage for their viewers.
InterVote98 was a few years ahead of its time. It didn't change the world; in fact, it's defunct.
Slashdot Mirror
Why I gave up on Apple: A tale of unrequited love
http://world.std.com/~swmcd/steven/rants/mac.html
Cutting of televison to the poor could be just the thing to precipitate major political change in the United States.
Or at least major urban riots in the summer of '09.
My health insureance company called.
First thing they want is my birthday.
I hesitate, and they say they have to confirm who I am before they can talk to me.
(Federal privacy regs, HIPAA, and all that).
I refuse, because I don't know if they are who they say they are.
They immediately understand, and give me a tool-free number that I can call into.
After I hang up, I realize that their number doesn't help me, becuase *they* gave it to me.
It isn't the number on my health insurance card.
I can't find it on their web page.
I google for it and get no hits.
So I still don't know who they are.
So I don't call the number.
Phishing? Probably not.
It probably was my health insurance company.
But it's been a couple of weeks now, and they haven't called back.
In the past, when they've wanted to talk to me,
they've called every few days until they got hold of me.
So I don't really know...
But picture the bus bars running around the facility to carry the current. :)
Copper futures, anyone?
"Our belief is that the winner in this space will be those that have the largest ecosystem.
We lose money on every sale, and make it up in volume!
I worked in the video game (console) industry in the early 1980's. The market was destroyed by ATARI, which did, indeed, produce many poor-quality games, and then stuffed them down the retailer's throats. What's more, ATARI induced the retailers to buy each year's new games by giving them credit for unsold games from previous years--a scheme that was structurally similar to check kiting.
Eventually, it all came crashing down, ATARI collapsed, and it was years before retailers were willing to stock console games again. The damage was done by businessmen, marketers, salemen, retailers--all of them professionals.
I call it the the Dukes of Hazzard syndrome.
In my area (small town) we lose maybe 1 kid/year in an auto accident (average). The accident reports tend to be sketchy, but if you read between the lines, a common thread is a driver who doesn't have a good feel for how 2000 Kg of metal behaves at 20 m/s.
I blame too many hours spent watching stunt cars on TV,
and not enough time skidding real bicycles on real gravel.
erp...let's get the numbers right
6500eV * 6x10^23 * 1.6x10^-19 J/eV = 624 MJ/mole
You get half of that in 12 years
0.5 * 624 MJ/mole / 12 years = 825 mW/mole
So a 25W laptop needs
25 W / 825 mW/mole = 30 moles
Now that we have something worth talking about,
let's look at packgaging.
Gaseous T2
30 moles / 2 atoms/molecule * 22.4 l/mole = 680 liters
mmm...maybe not
Heavy water T2O
30 moles / 2 atoms/molecule * 22 g/mole = 330 g = 330 ml
Lithium Tritide LiT
30 moles / 1 atom/molecule * 10 g/mole = 300 g
Water is a bit heavier, but doesn't leave metallic lithium behind.
At 25% efficiency, we need 1.3 Kg. The p-n junction and a case bring it up to, say, 2 Kg. It's within field goal range.
Avg decay energy = 6500 Ev
Half-life = 12 years
Avagadro's number = 6^23
Atomic weight = 3
6^23 * 6500 Ev * 1.6^-19 J/eV = 96 KJ/mole
exp(-12/tau) = 0.5
tau = 17 years = 2^7 seconds
decay rate = -1/tau
96 KJ/mole / 2^7 seconds = 5 mW/mole
5 mW/mole / 3g/mole = 1 mW/g
And that's at 100% efficiency.
I don't think I'm going to be runing my laptop on one these things.
Is The Browser Part of the Operating System?
An exercise in misdirection
I've been in a bunch of places where the backups worked better than the restores...
Another proposal along the same lines
a r. html
http://world.std.com/~swmcd/steven/rants/calend
I mean, really?
See Flying to Orbit, with an update for SpaceShipOne
losetup -e AES
was broken in 10.0
Chatter on the mailing lists refered to the 2.6 kernel not supporting the encryption modules--or something--I never really understood the issue.
Neither could I figure out whether or not
- it is fixed
- they think it is fixed
- they intend to fix it
- they think it can be fixed
Although they now have some actual market data (i.e. bids) on which to base that estimate.
Picture it: somewhere inside Google is a screen that displays the demand curve for their stock--as defined by actual bids--being updated in real time as people place bids.
It probably also computes
- the market-clearing price for the number of shares in the offering
- the volume/price point on the demand curve that maximizes revenue from the offering
With data like that, economics could be an empirical science...
Not necessarily.
If all your apps are portable across platforms, then the platform is reduced to a commodity, and you can choose the best one based on price/performance. This is not a place where Microsoft wants to be.
Microsoft would prefer that you didn't use Apache at all, but if you do use it, they might rather you ran it on a different platform, separated from Windows by an impenetrable wall of subtle but maddening incompatabilities (big-endian vs. little-endian, ASCII vs. EBCDIC, drive letters vs. mount points, findfirst/findnext vs. opendir/readdir, etc., etc.)
At the risk of starting a flame war...
MPD is iatrogenic, i.e. it is caused by the therapists who diagnose it. If you remove the therapists from the patient, the disorder goes away. (They may still have other problems, but not MPD.)
Schizophrenia isn't like that. Schizophrenia has observable symptoms that persist even if the patient is not in treatment.
...because they are a monopoly.
A monopolist charges the price that maximizes their revenue under the demand curve. This price depends *only* on the demand curve.
Fining Microsoft doesn't change the demand curve for their products (aside from the bad PR) so it doesn't change the price that maximizes their revenue.
So the fine really does come out of Microsoft's profits.
A better link
http://www.esa.int/export/SPECIALS/Mars_Express
BBC streams their feeds in RM format, and advises their web listeners to download the free Real player to hear them.
Real (apparently) decided that this was a Revenue Opportunity. Recent versions of the free Real player *don't* play BBC feeds (you get some bogus error message about missing codecs), while the Real webpage has big links inviting you to pay them money to hear the BBC.
You can still play BBC if you downgrade to version 7.x or thereabouts.
InterVote98 is a turnkey web service sold by Assets New Media to TV stations.
TV stations use InterVote98 to provide web-based campaign and election coverage for their viewers.
InterVote98 was a few years ahead of its time.
It didn't change the world; in fact, it's defunct.
There is some analysis at How InterVote98 Could Change the World.
You hear the cops finally busted Madame Marie
for telling fortunes better than they do?
- Bruce Springsteen