I would not imply, I would state there is a movement away from study, learning for learnings sake, and... reading. People today are not nearly as success oriented as they were 3 or 4 generations back. When in college I discovered in sociology that few of the other students even knew the difference between being successful and being success oriented. I think our of 40 some, only 3 of us actually knew the difference.
We are much more inclined toward instant gratification. Movies instead of reading. I have to admit I like escapist fare and particularly the new special effects. Still I enjoy reading a good book while my mind creates the scenes and characters with far more background than any movie has the time of budget to inform the viewer. OTOH none of us could stand to set though a movie like that in the first place.Books, by necessity have to give the reader an insight into all of the characters while the movies "infer" much of this. I also have to admit I like having information at my finger tips with the internet even if half of it is questionable.
When reading and creating the settings our minds work differently than watching a movie. It's amazing how that works too. In the movie Jaws, the first move was excitement and surprise while the book was... well, calling it boring would be kind. The second book was grea while I found the movie to be on the boring side.
Am I average? Probably not, but I've always been a voracious reader. My daughter had read nearly every book in the town library by the time she started high school (it's a small town). After the kids were grown, I quit work and went to college because I wanted to. I had nearly 2000 books in my library and my daughter may have had another 1000. . I started a new life, and have again amassed more than that. I still read for both enjoyment and learning. I read a lot on computer screens and e-books, but much prefer to curl up with a "real book".
Did the average person read "so many books" and learn for its own sake. I don't know about average, but many people did even when I was young.so I think his statement whether intended or not, has a lot of truth to it without romanticizing at all. People's goals seems to have changed a lot in the last century. Many learned for learning's sake. I've often said, I need 5 lifetimes just to lean what I want in this one. Communism, socialism, and Marxism were not only in their heyday but known for their brutality and toll on the working "man" as well. They did not help the working man, they subjugated him. IOW they were unacceptable and there were people who could tell you how poorly they did work in the totalitarian societies required for them to exist. If you know of any Europeans, or immigrants from the Russian block, ask them about that background.
My living room and family room both have one wall that is a floor to ceiling bookcase. In addition I have 5 more bookcases in the family room, 3 in my den and a couple more out in my work shop..I've read nearly every book from cover to cover although after 3 starts I've never made it all the way through Godel, Escher, and Bach. BTW I still have all of my college text books from both under grad and graduate. What did I as an old man choose as a profession? Computer Science as in CS, not CIS!
If I were 10 years younger I'd go back to college again.. There is always something new I want to learn. For me, college was fun and I don't mean by going out and partying every night. I'd like to learn a couple of languages, meteorology, climatology, physics, math (have a minor in math), Aeronautical Engineering, (I was a pilot until recently) Electrical Engineering, geology, archeology, history, anthropology, and many others fields. With the money I could become a professional student and still not have enough time.
The problem with digitizing anything is being able to read it in the future and keeping a digital copy uncorrupted. This requires a continuous back-up-and-verify process on eery page of every volume. Every time I check the photos I find at least 5 to 10 images corrupted on the hard drives. So far I've been able to refresh them from DVDs, but I still have the originals which are likely to outlast the DVDs.
I have a huge photo and AVI library with both the originals and digital copies.. There have been photographers in the family since photography existed. It takes a lot of time just to keep checking the more recent photos, let alone the "old stuff". To do this on the scale in the article would take a very large, full time staff.
It would be funny if it weren't sad:. I'm referring to keeping paper books in card board boxes in a warehouse someplace. People do not seem to realize that the paper used in books is not archival. Even good, expensive books likely have paper with a high sulfur content. To preserve regular books requires they be kept in an inert atmosphere with temperature and humidity controlled. I've done archival photography and that pager is a bit pricey.
I have many books that are fairly old. Although some are copies of masterpieces, none are rare. Even though they have been kept in a temperature and humidity controlled environment they look and smell old! I doubt many will last another 50 years, let alone to the end of this century. Which BTW, saying only to the end of the century is nearly a full century!. .
How can Apple sue anyone for using the word App? App is a generic term that is short for application and has been in use for at least a decade or more.
This is just a new interpretation of a study that shows a very *slight* increase in brain tumors over a long period. There is no way to tie scientifically the cell phone use and brain tumors together as there are so many other possible causes since cell phones have come about as well as no "control group" against which they can compare.
This is only one study out of many and it shows no specific link.
Add to that if you look at their history, the WHO is getting a reputation for being a bit "alarmist".
Most of what I've read about the press release talks about cell phone "RF" radiation as being a lower frequency form of radiation like X-Rays, but makes no distinction between *ionizing* radiation which can and does break molecular bonds and RF radiation which can cause heating. As the brain is electrochemical it stands to reason some frequencies *might* have an effect on some areas of the brain. A whole chain of might, maybe , and possibly, could be. It falls in the area of carrots must be poison because everyone who ate carrots back in 1750 died.
I'd not deny the possibility of a link, but no one knows, nor do we presently have a way of comparing the tremendous number who do use cell phones (or how much and how) against the tiny number who don't.
One of, if not the most important reason I oppose using the cloud for anything personal or business related. True those who know how can get access to your own machine, but out in the cloud it's far easier as many more hands are on it. Then there is data integrity. It appears that several major pieces on the cloud caused some expensive breaches. At one time I was a project manager, installing and working on FDA validated systems. The companies at that time had to retain physical control and possession of all parts of the system including networking. Validation started out as a 1" thick stack and resulted in about a 3 to 4' high stack of printouts.
If even a single line of code were changed, or a router replaced, anything using that routine had to be revalidated and the replacement of the router had to be fully documented and validated again.
Plain and simple, I do not trust the cloud for either security or integrity.
This should be interesting as to sue a US person or company in this case would be a violation of the US free speech and thus civil rights. So if the UK company sues over here, wouldn't they be subject to being prosecuted for violation of US civil rights and subject to the likely hood of monetary fortiture? IOW we have two countries with diametrically opposed laws and penalties for breaking those laws.
I do have to admit the present emperor and his helpers are working to rapidly remove and/or limit those rights.
Lunch breaks are fine with friends if you work with them. They are fine for socializing if you have anything in common. If you have nothing in common with those with whom you work and your friends work elsewhere, then lunch can be a nice quiet time. It all depends on the person, their mood, and the people around them. Having to eat with a bunch of people you have nothing in common with, and no common interests is far more stressful than some nice quiet time.
Meetings and lunch...I'd do one or the other. I'd go early to eat and then attend the meeting, or attend the meeting and then eat. Work sessions at lunch are not good for the digestion.
Sounds a bit too Orwellian to me. Apple nor any one else should have a legitimate need for information that detailed about any one's movements. If the information is there and has the possibility of being misused it will be misused.
It's very much an issue as to what companies are trust worthy.and the total is not many. OTOH I trust private companies more than the government with this kind of information. If they didn't come up with this stuff then there would be no need for more privacy laws and regulations. We have become far too much of a Nanny state as it is.
Technology can be forced by infusing tremendous amounts of money, but it progresses most efficiently at its own pace, neither hindered no forced. Either way ends up making it cost more in the long run. Subsidies have to come from some where and there is really only one source. As the rich 5% already pay over 50% of taxes and half the population pays no taxes that only leaves the working man and woman.
It really sounds good when "they say" say, spread the wealth around, but there is really little wealth to spread, particularly when You see now much the country is already going into debt.
Solar might be the answer to CO2 free energy, but it is far from being pollution free. I worked in the industry for 3 decades and I can say for sure that no state of the production from raw materials to finished devices is pollution free, while the actual generation of the cells has a great deal of pollution. BUT as one example, in the years I was involved with the materials end of the system I saw the requirement for a huge tank farm of liquid H2 and a truck a day topping off the tanks go to a single little tank that lasts for many, many weeks while the production went from a few tons of poly crystalline Silicon per year to thousands of tons AND the price of a multi pass single crystal went from 165 dollars a gram to a few dollars per kilo for poly crystal of a higher purity. I saw huge changes in the industry when sawing technology was able to cut the loss in half almost bankrupt many in the business. By making saw blades only half as thick they immediately doubled the production at no extra cost and this was long ago.
However even with thin film tech, PV solar is still expensive due to the cost of installation. Add to the physical cost, a patchwork of regulations specific to locals within regions and huge differences in output between regions. We are, or have reached the point where the installation is the major portion of the installation cost. New constructions techniques where "solar shingles" are integrated into new construction, or retrofit into the time when homes have to be reshingled. Prices are coming down and drastically, BUT IF you want a fully PV solar home it's still going to cost close to 50,000 dollars. A combination of approaches, efficient constructions, efficient insulation, efficient windows, efficient heating and cooling. All of these combined can and do produce energy neutral homes even up here in the frozen North at a medium premium in construction. Energy neutral is a far cry from independence from the mains. What some call independence many of us would not be willing to accept. *HOWEVER* we are headed in that direction, as long as no one gets carried away and tries to force the technology it will come at a relatively reasonable price.
Here in Lower MI we have 3 huge wind farms coming on line and the grid structure is already in place to handle the power, unlike many places in the country.
We need to get away from subsidies and that applies to both coal and crude as well; which are highly subsidized. We need to get away from alcohol subsidies which are taking land used for food production for fuel instead. That raises the cost of food. Last winter I read a study that showed each gallon of alcohol that is relatively inexpensive costs over 10 dollars in subsidies.
Yes at present we have lots of cheap and abundant coal, some of which is actually good anthracite coal along with lots of bituminous or soft coal with high sulfur content. China is moving away from coal even with all the new plants they are bringing on line. Still, both China and India are going to need LOTS of coal and crude. With each having more college educated middle class within about a decade than there are people in the US (man woman and child) resources are going to become both scarce and expensive. 5.00 gas this summer and 6.00 within a year or two. If Soros has his way and the US dollar is no longer the the world standard those prices will look cheap! Don't forget too, that every dollar the treasury prints (real or electronically) the value of our dollars and what they can purchase goes down which is only one of the many reasons for the current high price of crude and gas.
It just isn't as simple as many believe.
"My Guess" would be he/she has the same mind set of a lot of people in they can not see an economic payback buying a Hybrid then there isn't a reason for purchasing one, and there isn't when compared to non hybrid cars that get high mileage. OTOH they don't see the gas saved as a positive because of the increased price of the hybrid. They think only in terms of money saved instead of fuel saved.
We have a Hybrid and an older, mid sized SUV. When you figure the overall cost per mile of the hybrid compared to the SUV there is little if any difference even though the hybrid gets twice the mileage of the SUV. Cars are by far the most expensive form of transportation *unless* you keep them a very long time and gas at 5.00 a gallon is still the cheapest part of driving. If you purchase a car and trade it in as soon it's paid for, be it 3, 4, or 5 years, or worse, before it's paid for, the cost per mile is staggering. The cost per mile is not only the gas, oil, and maintenance, but insurance, AND the difference between what you paid including interest and what you get out of it. If you finance a car for 4 or 5 years you can easily pay a considerable portion of the purchase price in interest. That means a 34,000 (or more) Hybrid really costs 50,000 and if you get 12,000 in trade it cost 38,000. At 100,000 miles that was 38 cents per mile just in the cost of the car. Add insurance, gas and oil and you have easily passed 50 cents per mile and this is for an economy car. With gas likely to hit 5.00 or more by summer that at 50 MPG it's another 10 cents per mile. Typically we are more likely looking at 15 to 20 cents per mile just for gas.
Electric cars? At 40,000 plus for 100,000 miles we are looking at 40 cents per mile with no gas purchased. Maybe a 2 or 3 dollar charge for 40 or 50 miles adds another 6 to 7.5 cents per mile or close to that 50 cents per mile. Unfortunately long term ownership of hybrids and electrics means replacing a battery that is likely to run some where between another 4,000 and 7,000, not counting other expenses. BUT even with the extra expense we have saved considerable pollution and CO2. Unfortunately most of the population can't afford to save that much. Still our most efficient fuel savings comes from conservation. Plan trips for the fewest miles, minimize trips, car pool! With gas going up and the value of the dollar going down I'll bet that car pooling becomes popular again (along with small cars)
BTW not everyone qualifies for tax writeoffs and someone still has to pay one way or another. For me the savings in the amount of fuel used is fine.
Brakes lights and LCDs in cars do not, or "should not" flicker. CFLs do, but it normally takes something to make it visible like the moving pencil. They are no different than any other fluorescent. They all flicker, but as with the CFL it takes a moving object to make them visible.
LDC screens (IE monitors) do not normally flicker regardless of refresh rate as only the portions of the screen that change between frames get rewritten unlike the old CRT where every other line on the screen is refreshed 30 times a second. . OTOH if you are a gamer, then refresh rates can become important.
I have two 20 " monitors that do flicker, but it's due to the power supply and not the normal refresh. Those two need to be fixed!
And here I just read that new home construction was up substantially. OTOH in the Midland Mi area we really never did see much of a drop in home value.and have had a lot of continuing construction. Most of these homes are well built and in the 300,000 plus range.
We live in an older, relatively small home (we're retired with kids grown and don't need a large home). We were going to put in Geo Thermal, but the payback was on the order of 45 years compared to what it currently costs us. Multiple bids all come out within a few dollars. We've reinsulated, installed new thermopane windows with Argon gas fill and added a sun porch that is heated and air conditioned. Geo thermal would save us about 340 dollars per year. and of that about 45 was for air conditioning over our 12 year old gas furnace with central air. Cost of electricity is about 12 cents per KWH with all charges. 20K wouldn't come close on a solar installation that would make us independent. More like 50 K and that's for a small home.. When you look at the pay-back maps Lower Michigan isn't even listed.
but I think what people are missing is how vulnerable using the cloud makes us, not how much we depend on Amazon.. When our own systems go down, they affect us. When just one supplier in the cloud goes down it affects many.and can have wide reaching consequences.
There are many positive aspects to cloud computing, but we tend to ignore its shortcomings in our enthusiasm.
This is really not new, although it may have taken some types a decade or two to notice the aluminum foil vapor barrier on the insulation. What would most of us do if we could not receiver Wi Fi outside the house...assuming we'd want to? We'd complain to who ever sold the equipment to us. They would tell us to add antennas in the windows. I can't receive it in my shop from the house and it's well within range. Of course the inside of my shop is lined with bonded metal and so far Wi Fi has been much too slow for backups (I do a lot of AVI work and have huge files) so even with CAT5 or 6 some backups can take hours. OTOH I've had the CAT6 in for quite a while so Wi Fi has quite a ways to go before becoming attractive and backing up laptops indoors is no problem..
Ethanol was supposed to be an interim fuel. It's inefficient, costly, and hard on fuel systems. It also impacts land use as more land is used to grow corn for Ethanol and less for food. Corn is also one of those crops that is very hard on the land requiring the return of organic material to the soil. Fertilizers can not do that.
Switch Grass was supposed to be the "better alcohol" as it did would grow anywhere and did not require crop land. What do we see? Large tracts of good farm land growing Switch Grass in the Mid West. Switch grass is harder on the land than corn and can virtually turn good land into a non productive dessert within a few years.
They keep proposing greater methods and then turn around and misuse them.
Alcohol is not a good fuel at 60% of the energy in gasoline. We need a good, economically viable and renewable energy source that does not compete with food crops and that source needs to be both readily available and plentiful.
Nuclear power and electric cars? Small reactors, SMR, sometimes called pocket reactors are supposed to be able to produce electricity at less than the cost of coal power and they do not add to the load on the national grid. They should actually reduce it. Distributed wind and solar? Distributed is capable of giving a base load. Solar is *supposed* to be able to compete on a level field with coal power within the next 5 years. Claims aside these have not been implemented though they may be in the future. That means these claims are just that, claims that are unsubstantiated. It's likely that *eventually* these will become true for any number of reasons. Manufacturing and implementation costs are going down and will not require subsidies but at the same time the cost of fossil fuels is going up rapidly and in no small part due to devaluation of the dollar. As the cost of fossil fuels go up the renewable sources become more attractive and economically viable.
Considering the IBM ran about 4 grand the Osborn wasn't such a bad deal. I was going to purchase one of the IBMs but the price with a little monitor (12" was big in those days), some expansion memory, and some basic programs was way over $4,000. Closer to $5,000 IIRC. My OSI C2-8P was 4 Grand and I still had to come up with a monitor and keyboard... But it did have dual 8" single sided floppies. (160 or 180K I think). Basic ran something like $400 while Fortran and Pascal compilers were $900 each.
The Yellowstone "super volcano" is an isolated "hot spot" or magma chamber that is slowly moving to the NE. It is not related to any fault zones such as the San Andreas or subduction zones. Movement of the magma does cause earthquakes due to areas either sinking or rising.
Yes a Tsunami is a wave as it travels across the ocean and is measured by sensors floating on the surface. The difference is that where the water is deep the volume is large so the height of the wave is quite low, from a few inches to a few feet. Even at a couple of feet it's likely to go unnoticed where the average waves are far larger than that. It also travels at high speed in deep water and slows drastically when reaching shallow water. As it slows the water behind the crest catches up building height.
Although it's called a "wave" it would be more correct to think of it is the same terms as a storm surge. If you notice in the images it is more a wall of water and not a wave just rolling through as the water behind the leading edge is about as deep as the front. It gets deep and keeps getting deeper to the max. Then following waves come though for an hour or even hours.
This thing was 33 feet high where it came ashore in Northern Japan and where funneled through inlets was probably quite a bit higher. This is what is expected in the Seattle area and could run several hundred miles North and South of that area. It would likely affect the entire area from the subduction zone (several hundred miles at sea) all the way to the mountains and from Norther California to Alaska. The San Andreas is a "Strike Slip" fault where the sides move laterally. The fault in the Pacific North West is a Subduction Zone and not part of the San Andreas.
I would think the Pacific North West would be more likely as it's a more dangerous megafault like the one off the coast of Japan, that would be likely to trigger a Tsunami in addition to a large quake. Plus it's over due according to records.
My guess it that nation wide a good 10% neither need, nor want broadband. I think we could coordinate the implementation of broadband, help those that need it, skip those who nether want nor need it, and save hundreds of millions.
200 million for a map. Sounds like the military's $2,000 toilet seat.
Check out the FCC's fast track of LighSpeed's high powered ground based transmitters in the satellite band right next to GPS. Not even any buffer space for 40,000 transmitters authorized to run an effective radiated power of 45,000 watts. It can cause interference (loss of signal) to ground based GPS (automotive) in cities to over 3 miles and aviation GPS (complete loss of signal) at over 5 miles. Isn't that a comforting thought with most aircraft now using GPS for instrument navigation. Watch for line wrap on link.
http://www.gpsworld.com/gnss-system/news/data-shows-disastrous-gps-jamming-fcc-approved-broadcaster-11029
Even the comment period was far shorter than normal with the FCC giving the OK against the wishes of the Department of Defense, Department of Transportation, and Homeland Security. it was also against the FCC's own policy. Lots of conspiracy theories about this one.:-))
According to the article LightSpeed *apparently* expects the GPS community to fix the problem and not them. They are also the ones who will turn in any report to the FCC on a study of interference to GPS. Basically if they get their way anything presently using GPS would likely need to be either upgraded or replaced which includes all modern cell phones along with both automotive and aircraft GPS receivers.
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I would not imply, I would state there is a movement away from study, learning for learnings sake, and ... reading. People today are not nearly as success oriented as they were 3 or 4 generations back. When in college I discovered in sociology that few of the other students even knew the difference between being successful and being success oriented. I think our of 40 some, only 3 of us actually knew the difference.
We are much more inclined toward instant gratification. Movies instead of reading. I have to admit I like escapist fare and particularly the new special effects. Still I enjoy reading a good book while my mind creates the scenes and characters with far more background than any movie has the time of budget to inform the viewer. OTOH none of us could stand to set though a movie like that in the first place.Books, by necessity have to give the reader an insight into all of the characters while the movies "infer" much of this. I also have to admit I like having information at my finger tips with the internet even if half of it is questionable.
When reading and creating the settings our minds work differently than watching a movie. It's amazing how that works too. In the movie Jaws, the first move was excitement and surprise while the book was ... well, calling it boring would be kind. The second book was grea while I found the movie to be on the boring side.
Am I average? Probably not, but I've always been a voracious reader. My daughter had read nearly every book in the town library by the time she started high school (it's a small town). After the kids were grown, I quit work and went to college because I wanted to. I had nearly 2000 books in my library and my daughter may have had another 1000. . I started a new life, and have again amassed more than that. I still read for both enjoyment and learning. I read a lot on computer screens and e-books, but much prefer to curl up with a "real book". Did the average person read "so many books" and learn for its own sake. I don't know about average, but many people did even when I was young.so I think his statement whether intended or not, has a lot of truth to it without romanticizing at all. People's goals seems to have changed a lot in the last century. Many learned for learning's sake. I've often said, I need 5 lifetimes just to lean what I want in this one. Communism, socialism, and Marxism were not only in their heyday but known for their brutality and toll on the working "man" as well. They did not help the working man, they subjugated him. IOW they were unacceptable and there were people who could tell you how poorly they did work in the totalitarian societies required for them to exist. If you know of any Europeans, or immigrants from the Russian block, ask them about that background. My living room and family room both have one wall that is a floor to ceiling bookcase. In addition I have 5 more bookcases in the family room, 3 in my den and a couple more out in my work shop..I've read nearly every book from cover to cover although after 3 starts I've never made it all the way through Godel, Escher, and Bach. BTW I still have all of my college text books from both under grad and graduate. What did I as an old man choose as a profession? Computer Science as in CS, not CIS! If I were 10 years younger I'd go back to college again.. There is always something new I want to learn. For me, college was fun and I don't mean by going out and partying every night. I'd like to learn a couple of languages, meteorology, climatology, physics, math (have a minor in math), Aeronautical Engineering, (I was a pilot until recently) Electrical Engineering, geology, archeology, history, anthropology, and many others fields. With the money I could become a professional student and still not have enough time. The problem with digitizing anything is being able to read it in the future and keeping a digital copy uncorrupted. This requires a continuous back-up-and-verify process on eery page of every volume. Every time I check the photos I find at least 5 to 10 images corrupted on the hard drives. So far I've been able to refresh them from DVDs, but I still have the originals which are likely to outlast the DVDs. I have a huge photo and AVI library with both the originals and digital copies.. There have been photographers in the family since photography existed. It takes a lot of time just to keep checking the more recent photos, let alone the "old stuff". To do this on the scale in the article would take a very large, full time staff. It would be funny if it weren't sad:. I'm referring to keeping paper books in card board boxes in a warehouse someplace. People do not seem to realize that the paper used in books is not archival. Even good, expensive books likely have paper with a high sulfur content. To preserve regular books requires they be kept in an inert atmosphere with temperature and humidity controlled. I've done archival photography and that pager is a bit pricey. I have many books that are fairly old. Although some are copies of masterpieces, none are rare. Even though they have been kept in a temperature and humidity controlled environment they look and smell old! I doubt many will last another 50 years, let alone to the end of this century. Which BTW, saying only to the end of the century is nearly a full century!. .
How can Apple sue anyone for using the word App? App is a generic term that is short for application and has been in use for at least a decade or more.
This is just a new interpretation of a study that shows a very *slight* increase in brain tumors over a long period. There is no way to tie scientifically the cell phone use and brain tumors together as there are so many other possible causes since cell phones have come about as well as no "control group" against which they can compare. This is only one study out of many and it shows no specific link. Add to that if you look at their history, the WHO is getting a reputation for being a bit "alarmist". Most of what I've read about the press release talks about cell phone "RF" radiation as being a lower frequency form of radiation like X-Rays, but makes no distinction between *ionizing* radiation which can and does break molecular bonds and RF radiation which can cause heating. As the brain is electrochemical it stands to reason some frequencies *might* have an effect on some areas of the brain. A whole chain of might, maybe , and possibly, could be. It falls in the area of carrots must be poison because everyone who ate carrots back in 1750 died. I'd not deny the possibility of a link, but no one knows, nor do we presently have a way of comparing the tremendous number who do use cell phones (or how much and how) against the tiny number who don't.
One of, if not the most important reason I oppose using the cloud for anything personal or business related. True those who know how can get access to your own machine, but out in the cloud it's far easier as many more hands are on it. Then there is data integrity. It appears that several major pieces on the cloud caused some expensive breaches. At one time I was a project manager, installing and working on FDA validated systems. The companies at that time had to retain physical control and possession of all parts of the system including networking. Validation started out as a 1" thick stack and resulted in about a 3 to 4' high stack of printouts. If even a single line of code were changed, or a router replaced, anything using that routine had to be revalidated and the replacement of the router had to be fully documented and validated again. Plain and simple, I do not trust the cloud for either security or integrity.
This should be interesting as to sue a US person or company in this case would be a violation of the US free speech and thus civil rights. So if the UK company sues over here, wouldn't they be subject to being prosecuted for violation of US civil rights and subject to the likely hood of monetary fortiture? IOW we have two countries with diametrically opposed laws and penalties for breaking those laws. I do have to admit the present emperor and his helpers are working to rapidly remove and/or limit those rights.
Lunch breaks are fine with friends if you work with them. They are fine for socializing if you have anything in common. If you have nothing in common with those with whom you work and your friends work elsewhere, then lunch can be a nice quiet time. It all depends on the person, their mood, and the people around them. Having to eat with a bunch of people you have nothing in common with, and no common interests is far more stressful than some nice quiet time. Meetings and lunch...I'd do one or the other. I'd go early to eat and then attend the meeting, or attend the meeting and then eat. Work sessions at lunch are not good for the digestion.
Sounds a bit too Orwellian to me. Apple nor any one else should have a legitimate need for information that detailed about any one's movements. If the information is there and has the possibility of being misused it will be misused. It's very much an issue as to what companies are trust worthy.and the total is not many. OTOH I trust private companies more than the government with this kind of information. If they didn't come up with this stuff then there would be no need for more privacy laws and regulations. We have become far too much of a Nanny state as it is.
Technology can be forced by infusing tremendous amounts of money, but it progresses most efficiently at its own pace, neither hindered no forced. Either way ends up making it cost more in the long run. Subsidies have to come from some where and there is really only one source. As the rich 5% already pay over 50% of taxes and half the population pays no taxes that only leaves the working man and woman. It really sounds good when "they say" say, spread the wealth around, but there is really little wealth to spread, particularly when You see now much the country is already going into debt. Solar might be the answer to CO2 free energy, but it is far from being pollution free. I worked in the industry for 3 decades and I can say for sure that no state of the production from raw materials to finished devices is pollution free, while the actual generation of the cells has a great deal of pollution. BUT as one example, in the years I was involved with the materials end of the system I saw the requirement for a huge tank farm of liquid H2 and a truck a day topping off the tanks go to a single little tank that lasts for many, many weeks while the production went from a few tons of poly crystalline Silicon per year to thousands of tons AND the price of a multi pass single crystal went from 165 dollars a gram to a few dollars per kilo for poly crystal of a higher purity. I saw huge changes in the industry when sawing technology was able to cut the loss in half almost bankrupt many in the business. By making saw blades only half as thick they immediately doubled the production at no extra cost and this was long ago. However even with thin film tech, PV solar is still expensive due to the cost of installation. Add to the physical cost, a patchwork of regulations specific to locals within regions and huge differences in output between regions. We are, or have reached the point where the installation is the major portion of the installation cost. New constructions techniques where "solar shingles" are integrated into new construction, or retrofit into the time when homes have to be reshingled. Prices are coming down and drastically, BUT IF you want a fully PV solar home it's still going to cost close to 50,000 dollars. A combination of approaches, efficient constructions, efficient insulation, efficient windows, efficient heating and cooling. All of these combined can and do produce energy neutral homes even up here in the frozen North at a medium premium in construction. Energy neutral is a far cry from independence from the mains. What some call independence many of us would not be willing to accept. *HOWEVER* we are headed in that direction, as long as no one gets carried away and tries to force the technology it will come at a relatively reasonable price. Here in Lower MI we have 3 huge wind farms coming on line and the grid structure is already in place to handle the power, unlike many places in the country. We need to get away from subsidies and that applies to both coal and crude as well; which are highly subsidized. We need to get away from alcohol subsidies which are taking land used for food production for fuel instead. That raises the cost of food. Last winter I read a study that showed each gallon of alcohol that is relatively inexpensive costs over 10 dollars in subsidies. Yes at present we have lots of cheap and abundant coal, some of which is actually good anthracite coal along with lots of bituminous or soft coal with high sulfur content. China is moving away from coal even with all the new plants they are bringing on line. Still, both China and India are going to need LOTS of coal and crude. With each having more college educated middle class within about a decade than there are people in the US (man woman and child) resources are going to become both scarce and expensive. 5.00 gas this summer and 6.00 within a year or two. If Soros has his way and the US dollar is no longer the the world standard those prices will look cheap! Don't forget too, that every dollar the treasury prints (real or electronically) the value of our dollars and what they can purchase goes down which is only one of the many reasons for the current high price of crude and gas. It just isn't as simple as many believe.
"My Guess" would be he/she has the same mind set of a lot of people in they can not see an economic payback buying a Hybrid then there isn't a reason for purchasing one, and there isn't when compared to non hybrid cars that get high mileage. OTOH they don't see the gas saved as a positive because of the increased price of the hybrid. They think only in terms of money saved instead of fuel saved. We have a Hybrid and an older, mid sized SUV. When you figure the overall cost per mile of the hybrid compared to the SUV there is little if any difference even though the hybrid gets twice the mileage of the SUV. Cars are by far the most expensive form of transportation *unless* you keep them a very long time and gas at 5.00 a gallon is still the cheapest part of driving. If you purchase a car and trade it in as soon it's paid for, be it 3, 4, or 5 years, or worse, before it's paid for, the cost per mile is staggering. The cost per mile is not only the gas, oil, and maintenance, but insurance, AND the difference between what you paid including interest and what you get out of it. If you finance a car for 4 or 5 years you can easily pay a considerable portion of the purchase price in interest. That means a 34,000 (or more) Hybrid really costs 50,000 and if you get 12,000 in trade it cost 38,000. At 100,000 miles that was 38 cents per mile just in the cost of the car. Add insurance, gas and oil and you have easily passed 50 cents per mile and this is for an economy car. With gas likely to hit 5.00 or more by summer that at 50 MPG it's another 10 cents per mile. Typically we are more likely looking at 15 to 20 cents per mile just for gas. Electric cars? At 40,000 plus for 100,000 miles we are looking at 40 cents per mile with no gas purchased. Maybe a 2 or 3 dollar charge for 40 or 50 miles adds another 6 to 7.5 cents per mile or close to that 50 cents per mile. Unfortunately long term ownership of hybrids and electrics means replacing a battery that is likely to run some where between another 4,000 and 7,000, not counting other expenses. BUT even with the extra expense we have saved considerable pollution and CO2. Unfortunately most of the population can't afford to save that much. Still our most efficient fuel savings comes from conservation. Plan trips for the fewest miles, minimize trips, car pool! With gas going up and the value of the dollar going down I'll bet that car pooling becomes popular again (along with small cars) BTW not everyone qualifies for tax writeoffs and someone still has to pay one way or another. For me the savings in the amount of fuel used is fine.
Depends on your line frequency. If you are in the US it's 60 Hz while most other countries are 50 Hz.
Brakes lights and LCDs in cars do not, or "should not" flicker. CFLs do, but it normally takes something to make it visible like the moving pencil. They are no different than any other fluorescent. They all flicker, but as with the CFL it takes a moving object to make them visible. LDC screens (IE monitors) do not normally flicker regardless of refresh rate as only the portions of the screen that change between frames get rewritten unlike the old CRT where every other line on the screen is refreshed 30 times a second. . OTOH if you are a gamer, then refresh rates can become important. I have two 20 " monitors that do flicker, but it's due to the power supply and not the normal refresh. Those two need to be fixed!
And here I just read that new home construction was up substantially. OTOH in the Midland Mi area we really never did see much of a drop in home value.and have had a lot of continuing construction. Most of these homes are well built and in the 300,000 plus range. We live in an older, relatively small home (we're retired with kids grown and don't need a large home). We were going to put in Geo Thermal, but the payback was on the order of 45 years compared to what it currently costs us. Multiple bids all come out within a few dollars. We've reinsulated, installed new thermopane windows with Argon gas fill and added a sun porch that is heated and air conditioned. Geo thermal would save us about 340 dollars per year. and of that about 45 was for air conditioning over our 12 year old gas furnace with central air. Cost of electricity is about 12 cents per KWH with all charges. 20K wouldn't come close on a solar installation that would make us independent. More like 50 K and that's for a small home.. When you look at the pay-back maps Lower Michigan isn't even listed.
They have made the installation of solar panels and wind generators illegal in our township...At least fot he time being.
but I think what people are missing is how vulnerable using the cloud makes us, not how much we depend on Amazon.. When our own systems go down, they affect us. When just one supplier in the cloud goes down it affects many.and can have wide reaching consequences. There are many positive aspects to cloud computing, but we tend to ignore its shortcomings in our enthusiasm.
This is really not new, although it may have taken some types a decade or two to notice the aluminum foil vapor barrier on the insulation. What would most of us do if we could not receiver Wi Fi outside the house...assuming we'd want to? We'd complain to who ever sold the equipment to us. They would tell us to add antennas in the windows. I can't receive it in my shop from the house and it's well within range. Of course the inside of my shop is lined with bonded metal and so far Wi Fi has been much too slow for backups (I do a lot of AVI work and have huge files) so even with CAT5 or 6 some backups can take hours. OTOH I've had the CAT6 in for quite a while so Wi Fi has quite a ways to go before becoming attractive and backing up laptops indoors is no problem..
Ethanol was supposed to be an interim fuel. It's inefficient, costly, and hard on fuel systems. It also impacts land use as more land is used to grow corn for Ethanol and less for food. Corn is also one of those crops that is very hard on the land requiring the return of organic material to the soil. Fertilizers can not do that. Switch Grass was supposed to be the "better alcohol" as it did would grow anywhere and did not require crop land. What do we see? Large tracts of good farm land growing Switch Grass in the Mid West. Switch grass is harder on the land than corn and can virtually turn good land into a non productive dessert within a few years. They keep proposing greater methods and then turn around and misuse them. Alcohol is not a good fuel at 60% of the energy in gasoline. We need a good, economically viable and renewable energy source that does not compete with food crops and that source needs to be both readily available and plentiful. Nuclear power and electric cars? Small reactors, SMR, sometimes called pocket reactors are supposed to be able to produce electricity at less than the cost of coal power and they do not add to the load on the national grid. They should actually reduce it. Distributed wind and solar? Distributed is capable of giving a base load. Solar is *supposed* to be able to compete on a level field with coal power within the next 5 years. Claims aside these have not been implemented though they may be in the future. That means these claims are just that, claims that are unsubstantiated. It's likely that *eventually* these will become true for any number of reasons. Manufacturing and implementation costs are going down and will not require subsidies but at the same time the cost of fossil fuels is going up rapidly and in no small part due to devaluation of the dollar. As the cost of fossil fuels go up the renewable sources become more attractive and economically viable.
Considering the IBM ran about 4 grand the Osborn wasn't such a bad deal. I was going to purchase one of the IBMs but the price with a little monitor (12" was big in those days), some expansion memory, and some basic programs was way over $4,000. Closer to $5,000 IIRC. My OSI C2-8P was 4 Grand and I still had to come up with a monitor and keyboard. .. But it did have dual 8" single sided floppies. (160 or 180K I think). Basic ran something like $400 while Fortran and Pascal compilers were $900 each.
I had the use of one. (Company I worked for had one) and thought it was a good rig for what was available at the time.
It's to teach them the meaning of "Side Effects"
The Yellowstone "super volcano" is an isolated "hot spot" or magma chamber that is slowly moving to the NE. It is not related to any fault zones such as the San Andreas or subduction zones. Movement of the magma does cause earthquakes due to areas either sinking or rising.
Yes a Tsunami is a wave as it travels across the ocean and is measured by sensors floating on the surface. The difference is that where the water is deep the volume is large so the height of the wave is quite low, from a few inches to a few feet. Even at a couple of feet it's likely to go unnoticed where the average waves are far larger than that. It also travels at high speed in deep water and slows drastically when reaching shallow water. As it slows the water behind the crest catches up building height. Although it's called a "wave" it would be more correct to think of it is the same terms as a storm surge. If you notice in the images it is more a wall of water and not a wave just rolling through as the water behind the leading edge is about as deep as the front. It gets deep and keeps getting deeper to the max. Then following waves come though for an hour or even hours. This thing was 33 feet high where it came ashore in Northern Japan and where funneled through inlets was probably quite a bit higher. This is what is expected in the Seattle area and could run several hundred miles North and South of that area. It would likely affect the entire area from the subduction zone (several hundred miles at sea) all the way to the mountains and from Norther California to Alaska. The San Andreas is a "Strike Slip" fault where the sides move laterally. The fault in the Pacific North West is a Subduction Zone and not part of the San Andreas.
I would think the Pacific North West would be more likely as it's a more dangerous megafault like the one off the coast of Japan, that would be likely to trigger a Tsunami in addition to a large quake. Plus it's over due according to records.
My guess it that nation wide a good 10% neither need, nor want broadband. I think we could coordinate the implementation of broadband, help those that need it, skip those who nether want nor need it, and save hundreds of millions. 200 million for a map. Sounds like the military's $2,000 toilet seat.
Check out the FCC's fast track of LighSpeed's high powered ground based transmitters in the satellite band right next to GPS. Not even any buffer space for 40,000 transmitters authorized to run an effective radiated power of 45,000 watts. It can cause interference (loss of signal) to ground based GPS (automotive) in cities to over 3 miles and aviation GPS (complete loss of signal) at over 5 miles. Isn't that a comforting thought with most aircraft now using GPS for instrument navigation. Watch for line wrap on link. http://www.gpsworld.com/gnss-system/news/data-shows-disastrous-gps-jamming-fcc-approved-broadcaster-11029 Even the comment period was far shorter than normal with the FCC giving the OK against the wishes of the Department of Defense, Department of Transportation, and Homeland Security. it was also against the FCC's own policy. Lots of conspiracy theories about this one. :-))
According to the article LightSpeed *apparently* expects the GPS community to fix the problem and not them. They are also the ones who will turn in any report to the FCC on a study of interference to GPS. Basically if they get their way anything presently using GPS would likely need to be either upgraded or replaced which includes all modern cell phones along with both automotive and aircraft GPS receivers.