i couldn't figure out how to get past this, so i abandoned the project...
How about crosslinking the wheels so that when you turn the handlebars left, the front wheel turns left and the back wheel turns right. That's how the 4 wheel steering cars work.
Copper losses are created by current and are described by the equation I^2 * R. So as you double your current, you quadruple your power losses.
Conversely, if you halve your current by boosting the voltage, you can reduce your transmission losses by 75%. Thats a pretty good reason to go with higher voltage. And since this is in the datacenter, you can train your people not to pee on the red wire.
Both cultures had similiar beginning points (stone age man). The better environment lead to better crops which led to better technology which led to better "culture".
Had the native Americans had access to the resources that the Europeans had, they would have advanced in much the same way.
The mideast is an excellent place to look how environment shapes our society. While many of the plants and animlas that we depend on came from the mideast (wheat, goats, etc) the erratic climate means that there is less of a surplus and that people are periodically forced back to farming and sustinece culture. This interrupts development on all levels - techological social, and political.
So yes, European culture can be considered "superior" in that they are more advanced socially and politically. But this advancement has been strongly influenced by their environment.
Also, the culture did not lead the technilogical advance. It followed it. Better technology leads to better culture as the people put the technology to work.
Read the book, "Guns Germs and Steel", by Jared Diamond.
Essentially...
The Europeans had the following things going for them. 1) Temperate cliamte which could sustain many non-naitive plants and animals. This allowed them to have a significant surplus of food. 2) Food surplus means that more people can do things other than farming (like figuring out how to build better weapons). 3) Fractured geology in this environment (mountians, straits, rivers, etc) helped kingdoms evolve that were difficult to conquer and keep conquered. Thus you have several cultures constantly competing (and driving the need for better weapons). 4) Close contact with a variety of non-naitive species encouraged the development of diseases and immune responses.
So it wasn't that the Europeans were better or superior. They just had a superior environment in which to develop.
The argument about 'let's do it when it becomes affordable' is, indeed, also very much heard, but I think this is a bit of false argument.
It is false because it will never become affordable until the early adopters (NASA) work out all the kinks. The process of making it affordable means that we have to spend a lot of money up front to develop the technology to the point where it can be reliably mass produced.
There was a Bloom County cartoon where Opus is preparing for the debate, looking in the mirror and talking himself up. The converstion goes something like this...
-- Opus (to himself in the mirror) : Yessir, you are looking like one fine statesman.
Imagine that the USA would expand to include Mexico and middle-american states "because there are so many people there that want to work and expand our economy". That would be like what the EU does.
We have. It is called NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement).
There are many instances of companies going "south of the border" to get cheap labor. In fact, many "American" cars are less american than the imported brands. So we lose good manufacturing jobs _and_ we still have to import a signifcant amount of service labor.
In general, I am more capitalist and tend not to trust the government to solve my problems. I don't trust my employer to take care of me in the long term, either. I have to rely on my wits and keep my skills to the point where it would do the company more harm than good to outsource me. I make it a point to subtly remind my managers of this.
Big game houses will have this problem. Smaller outfits, with lower overheads (maybe only a few full time employees) will often be able to offer a superior game at a much lower cost.
There was an article not too long ago about "shareware kings" where individuals or small groups make products and rake in the money.
$750,000 won't even pay for EA's advertising budget, but that is damn good pay for a few friends.
We're shopping for the house right now, but one of my qualifications is for it to be out of the flood zones. Oh, one of those pesky things that people forget about until their house gets flooded.
All those jokes about people buying Florida swampland are true. Only now those people have built houses on that swampland and are making millions.
...The Board of Directors and the stockholders might have to cut back on Cuban cigars...
It puzzles me why people who complain about the profits of various industries do not invest their money in them. If they have these record profits, why not invest in those companies and use the growth and dividends to improve your life and be able to afford the product?
The government provides insurance at lower than market rates even for inland properties and will rebuild the same (up to) $250,000 property an unlimited number of times.
I don't know what government you speak of, but Citizen's Insurance (the FL owned provider) has to charge (by law) above the highest rate for a given property. It is about 20-50 percent higher than a private provider.
The private providers *must* provide coverage for homes if they want to sell any other insurance in the state. But the way the insurance companies get around that requirement is by limiting their exposure and writing the minimum number of homeowner's policies to keep the regulators at bay.
For high risk properties, the insurance can be a significant (about 30%) amount of your monthly payment. If you don't pay the insurance then the bank can forclose on your house because one of the items in your contract is maintaining homeowner's insurance. So while your mortgage payment is set in stone, your insurance rates can price you out of a home. Your house may be rock solid and not in a flood zone, but some accountant in St Louis sees a Florida zip code and decides to raise the premium by another 10% this year.
The point is, they're NOT going to be able to do a goddamn thing about flying debris (well, they could build all houses out of 10" of tempered steel), what they are trying to do is make houses designed to be as hurricane resistant as possible.
A cement brick house (standard in Florida) is able to stop any debris hurled at it by a hurricane. The standard test is usually a 2x4 at 120mph or somesuch. One weak spot is the connection between the roof and the wall. If these are not properly secured, the roof will be lifted up into the windstream, and you've seen the video of this happening. Protecing the openings of the house (windows, doors, etc) is important because of this same effect. As long as you protect your openings and your house was properly constructed, hurricanes are not a problem. And we have known how to build hurricane proof houses for a long time. People just like being cheap and want to know how much they can get away with.
Here in the States, the tests are used to determine if a student is qualified or not (insert testing debate here). Most public universities have their criteria and have to accept anyone who meets it. So if 75 out of 100 people meet or exceed the requirements, then those that passed all get to attend the school. They might have trouble registering for classes because of overcrowding, but they are still "in".
This is in contrast to 100 people competing for 10 seats. Even if 75 meet or exceed the requirements, only 10 will be seated. This model is similiar to private schools, with "ability to pay tuition" added as a criteria. If they consistently get a surplus of otherwise qualified applicants, they know that they can raise tuition.
The problem isn't Floridians. We know how to get through a hurricane. It is all the immigrants who come down and don't know how, and won't listen until they go through one. And then they bitch and moan when their services are not there the next day.
Hurricanes are a piece of cake to deal with. I'd rather deal with them then earthquakes or tornados.
The problem here is that people want to put everything into neat little boxes where all the objects are alike and they are all different from objects in other boxes. This discrete nature of thinking is the root problem, and some people spend way too much time trying to figure out which box to put it in instead of trying to understanding the object.
This applies to every endeavor of human thought, not just science.
File permissions will minimize the damage to lost data. The OS should still function nicely. This is assuming that the user is running as a user account, which is the default behavior for most of the Free OS'es.
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i couldn't figure out how to get past this, so i abandoned the project...
How about crosslinking the wheels so that when you turn the handlebars left, the front wheel turns left and the back wheel turns right. That's how the 4 wheel steering cars work.
Copper losses are created by current and are described by the equation I^2 * R. So as you double your current, you quadruple your power losses.
Conversely, if you halve your current by boosting the voltage, you can reduce your transmission losses by 75%. Thats a pretty good reason to go with higher voltage. And since this is in the datacenter, you can train your people not to pee on the red wire.
Both cultures had similiar beginning points (stone age man). The better environment lead to better crops which led to better technology which led to better "culture".
Had the native Americans had access to the resources that the Europeans had, they would have advanced in much the same way.
The mideast is an excellent place to look how environment shapes our society. While many of the plants and animlas that we depend on came from the mideast (wheat, goats, etc) the erratic climate means that there is less of a surplus and that people are periodically forced back to farming and sustinece culture. This interrupts development on all levels - techological social, and political.
So yes, European culture can be considered "superior" in that they are more advanced socially and politically. But this advancement has been strongly influenced by their environment.
Also, the culture did not lead the technilogical advance. It followed it. Better technology leads to better culture as the people put the technology to work.
Read the book, "Guns Germs and Steel", by Jared Diamond.
Essentially...
The Europeans had the following things going for them.
1) Temperate cliamte which could sustain many non-naitive plants and animals. This allowed them to have a significant surplus of food.
2) Food surplus means that more people can do things other than farming (like figuring out how to build better weapons).
3) Fractured geology in this environment (mountians, straits, rivers, etc) helped kingdoms evolve that were difficult to conquer and keep conquered. Thus you have several cultures constantly competing (and driving the need for better weapons).
4) Close contact with a variety of non-naitive species encouraged the development of diseases and immune responses.
So it wasn't that the Europeans were better or superior. They just had a superior environment in which to develop.
The argument about 'let's do it when it becomes affordable' is, indeed, also very much heard, but I think this is a bit of false argument.
It is false because it will never become affordable until the early adopters (NASA) work out all the kinks. The process of making it affordable means that we have to spend a lot of money up front to develop the technology to the point where it can be reliably mass produced.
There was a Bloom County cartoon where Opus is preparing for the debate, looking in the mirror and talking himself up. The converstion goes something like this...
--
Opus (to himself in the mirror) : Yessir, you are looking like one fine statesman.
Mirror: You're a politician.
Opus: I am not a politician! I am a statesman!
Mirror: A statesman is a dead politician.
--
Truer words have never been said.
Imagine that the USA would expand to include Mexico and middle-american states "because there are so many people there that want to work and expand our economy". That would be like what the EU does.
We have. It is called NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement).
There are many instances of companies going "south of the border" to get cheap labor. In fact, many "American" cars are less american than the imported brands. So we lose good manufacturing jobs _and_ we still have to import a signifcant amount of service labor.
In general, I am more capitalist and tend not to trust the government to solve my problems. I don't trust my employer to take care of me in the long term, either. I have to rely on my wits and keep my skills to the point where it would do the company more harm than good to outsource me. I make it a point to subtly remind my managers of this.
Big game houses will have this problem. Smaller outfits, with lower overheads (maybe only a few full time employees) will often be able to offer a superior game at a much lower cost.
There was an article not too long ago about "shareware kings" where individuals or small groups make products and rake in the money.
$750,000 won't even pay for EA's advertising budget, but that is damn good pay for a few friends.
We're shopping for the house right now, but one of my qualifications is for it to be out of the flood zones. Oh, one of those pesky things that people forget about until their house gets flooded.
All those jokes about people buying Florida swampland are true. Only now those people have built houses on that swampland and are making millions.
If we can get people off of government entitlements, I'm willing to refer them to Jesus.
...The Board of Directors and the stockholders might have to cut back on Cuban cigars...
It puzzles me why people who complain about the profits of various industries do not invest their money in them. If they have these record profits, why not invest in those companies and use the growth and dividends to improve your life and be able to afford the product?
The government provides insurance at lower than market rates even for inland properties and will rebuild the same (up to) $250,000 property an unlimited number of times.
I don't know what government you speak of, but Citizen's Insurance (the FL owned provider) has to charge (by law) above the highest rate for a given property. It is about 20-50 percent higher than a private provider.
The private providers *must* provide coverage for homes if they want to sell any other insurance in the state. But the way the insurance companies get around that requirement is by limiting their exposure and writing the minimum number of homeowner's policies to keep the regulators at bay.
For high risk properties, the insurance can be a significant (about 30%) amount of your monthly payment. If you don't pay the insurance then the bank can forclose on your house because one of the items in your contract is maintaining homeowner's insurance. So while your mortgage payment is set in stone, your insurance rates can price you out of a home. Your house may be rock solid and not in a flood zone, but some accountant in St Louis sees a Florida zip code and decides to raise the premium by another 10% this year.
The point is, they're NOT going to be able to do a goddamn thing about flying debris (well, they could build all houses out of 10" of tempered steel), what they are trying to do is make houses designed to be as hurricane resistant as possible.
A cement brick house (standard in Florida) is able to stop any debris hurled at it by a hurricane. The standard test is usually a 2x4 at 120mph or somesuch. One weak spot is the connection between the roof and the wall. If these are not properly secured, the roof will be lifted up into the windstream, and you've seen the video of this happening. Protecing the openings of the house (windows, doors, etc) is important because of this same effect. As long as you protect your openings and your house was properly constructed, hurricanes are not a problem. And we have known how to build hurricane proof houses for a long time. People just like being cheap and want to know how much they can get away with.
It's a pity...I actually like their product. Time to give postgres a gander I suppose.
Voting with your wallet, eh?
I guess my wife has some mod points.
...20 years or so being able to see my wife in the morning...
Watch what you wish for, you just may get it.
Here in the States, the tests are used to determine if a student is qualified or not (insert testing debate here). Most public universities have their criteria and have to accept anyone who meets it. So if 75 out of 100 people meet or exceed the requirements, then those that passed all get to attend the school. They might have trouble registering for classes because of overcrowding, but they are still "in".
This is in contrast to 100 people competing for 10 seats. Even if 75 meet or exceed the requirements, only 10 will be seated. This model is similiar to private schools, with "ability to pay tuition" added as a criteria. If they consistently get a surplus of otherwise qualified applicants, they know that they can raise tuition.
The problem isn't Floridians. We know how to get through a hurricane. It is all the immigrants who come down and don't know how, and won't listen until they go through one. And then they bitch and moan when their services are not there the next day.
Hurricanes are a piece of cake to deal with. I'd rather deal with them then earthquakes or tornados.
The problem here is that people want to put everything into neat little boxes where all the objects are alike and they are all different from objects in other boxes. This discrete nature of thinking is the root problem, and some people spend way too much time trying to figure out which box to put it in instead of trying to understanding the object.
This applies to every endeavor of human thought, not just science.
Isn't that what they do now?
Just make sure you sell the service of downloading, burning and mailing instead of the software itself.
File permissions will minimize the damage to lost data. The OS should still function nicely. This is assuming that the user is running as a user account, which is the default behavior for most of the Free OS'es.
Also, if you do not have the cables then the system is much more flexible to changes.
From the manual: Changes to the airplane confuguration are not recommended while in flight.
DO NOT under any circumstances try giving caffiene to the kids to make them "yes-men".
I assumed it was the beer.