As part of any forenisc investigation, I always ask clients
to print out any incriminating emails they received with FULL
headers. The headers help establish an email fingerprint of a sort.
The resulting header fingerprint can lead an investigation to one
or more email servers, which relayed the message and still have some
discoverable records beyond the direct control of either party.
" I can't account for that discrepancy. I was using the latest revised 2002 figures from here:"
Well, I can....
That table lists output in Thermal power, (quadrillion BTU), which is a measure of the lowest grade of energy. Verses Electrical energy output, (Kwh), which a measure of a high grade energy, a huge difference.
Your calculation ignores the 2nd law of thermodynamics. Once you start factoring in conversion losses, the numbers start to line up. Note: A Nuke plant is thermodyanmically limited to a maximum (thermal to electrical) conversion rate around 33%.
In other words your numbers are off by a factor of THREE !!
What did you forget, are you using raw thermal power? Bad move,
thermodynamics dictates that you'll be able to convert only a
fraction of a Nuke's thermal output into Electrical power. The
remaining 2/3's of the heat energy gets
dumped into the environment.
"I've read that it costs $8000 (of course in US dollars,
you godless heathen!) to replace the batteries for electric and
hybrid cars. And furthermore, they need to be replaced every three
years. "
Err...
NO...
First,
Toyota warrants the expensive nickel-metal hydride
(NiMH) Prius batteries for 10 years and 100,000 miles (160,930 km),
and Honda warrants the batteries on the Civic Hybrid for eight years
and 80,000 miles (128,744 km). Note:
In California, there is no millage
limit. For the most part Hybrids limit
the State of Charge of the NiMH Battery pack which extends
life cycle considerably. And a very good reason why they can offer
these long warranties without losing their
shirt.
Second.. the
NiMH hybrid battery packs aren't all that big.. around
a 100 lbs. You could build a replacement NiMH pack for about a
dollar per watt or around 1500$. As volume ramps up, one should
expect the price of the components to drop even further.
Officemax is a serial rebate abuser. They put
all their rebate coupons in a little book with very small writing.
What you're unlikely to notice, are the absurd submission post
mark dates. Often less than one a week after purchase. That's hardly
time to even test the newly purchased equipment. To return a
defective item, the packaging must be intact which precludes
submitting the rebate paperwork on time. So they take advantage of the
customers inattentiveness/work load to scam them out of their
rebates.
Note: They'll often advertise the same item (with
similar rebate) every month or so.
It's been a while since I last tested Vonage's service. When we
tested it, Vonage configured the Cisco ATA-186 to use non-compressed
64Kbit/sec data streams as the default. (IP/UDP encapsulation
increases net bandwidth requirements to ~80Kb/sec in each
direction). Get enough of those puppies running and you'll suck down
a fair percentage of any smaller ISP's backbone. Note: This type of
VOIP encoding technique requires more data bandwidth than
carrying the same phone call over a POTS network!!!
At the time, you had to jump threw hoops to get Vonage to turn
ON compression and reduce the network loading by a factor of 10 to
20x, (down to 4 to 8Kb/sec). But at the time, activating compression
was a double edged sword, as quite a few of Vonage's
termination switches&gateways no longer worked properly with the
compression protocol activated.
Since then, they have improved things a bit. They've added a
user configured "Bandwidth" saver to the account management
web page, and "Probably?" fixed many of compression issues
with the termination switches&gateways.
But from what I hear, the nasty (2 * 80Kb/sec) is still the
default, and it inflicts a "Tragedy of the Commons"
type problem on smaller ISP's. Where no single user causes a
problem, but when dozens/hundreds of simultaneous users start placing
calls using their Vonage service, an ISP with limited resources is
forced to act. This problem can only be corrected at the source,
(Vonage), since most users are blissfully ignorant of the
implications. (I.E. A couple of intelligent users reseting their
compression settings will have little net effect on the overall
traffic patterns. )
In summary, Vonage is complaining about smaller phone
companies not providing enough IP bandwidth to carry a
significant portion of their PAID/Measured traffic over
Uncompensated long distance backbone connections. Ha,
fat chance! For the most part, I would say that Vonage's
problems are self inflicted, story over.
"If you're gonna shoot out
numbers at least endeaver to make them remotely accurate. The visa
caps varied over the last six years:"
Here are some corrections about the H-1B
numbers. One must remember there are many categories of H-1B's
which do not count against the cap. On Wednesday
(S. 2302) congress added another exemption from the H-1B cap.
Here are some of the ugly details
about the H-1B and L-1 visa programs.
The following list is for Newly
issued H-1B employment visas broken down per federal
fiscal year, initial term 3 years. Renewals(3 more years),
Application extensions(add another year), and transfers NOT
COUNTED.
Each plant operator is only required to carry $300
Million of private liability insurance per plant. In total the
nuclear industry carries only 8.5 Billion dollars of insurance,
enforced by a form a government socialism. (Post accident levy).
For an estimate of REAL damages
[nirs.org].. take a look a Chernobyl catastrophe
"If accident damages exceed that amount, taxpayers will be
asked to make up the difference. Compare that to the 1982 Sandia
National Laboratories study (CRAC-2
[ccnr.org]), which projected economic damages of up to $300 Billion
(in 1982 dollars) resulting from an accident at the Indian Point, NY
reactor site. The 1986 Chernobyl catastrophe already has cost Russia,
Ukraine and Belarus some $300 Billion, and the costs-from interdicted
land, from radioactive waste disposal, from ongoing health
effects-mount daily.";
Folks, that's $300 Billion in 1982 dollars!! Care to guess
what that number is today? I'll bet that it's in the Trillion
dollar range.
"Moreover, no other hazardous industry has such a subsidized insurance scheme. "
For the time being, I suggest
keeping our Nuclear power source a nice safe distance away, one AU
is a good number, and embark on a distributed program to harness the energy it
bestows to us all (wind, solar).
For the most part the ITAA == Professional Liars Association.
Remember them making all those tech worker shortage projections right in the middle of the dot com collapse? 1.6 Million, 900K, then 600K.
At the same time the tech industry was laying off workers faster than you can imagine. They did it to promote their H-1B agenda.. Note: They're still at it.
"Harris Miller (ITAA) Gives the intro spiel about the company and how
it can help the industry stave off short-term attacks" from academics
and "activists".
"Harris:.. And there can be two scenarios there: The companies may
want to hide behind me, they dont want to say anything... frequently
that happens in a trade association, you dont want to talk about the
issues as individual companies. We have that issue right now with the
Buy America Act, for example in congress. No company wants to act like
its against Buy America -- even though theyre all against it so I
take all the heat for them."
"This is where the problem lies. 121.5 MHz divided by
7722 is exactly the same frequency as the horizontal in an NTSC color
video signal. The 7722nd harmonic shouldn't really be that strong,
right?"
No, In this instance.. the TV set in question is radiating a strong Tempest
radiation signal which happens to
be at 121.5 MHz.
TV
set's are for the most part,aregiant
RF amps. Amplifying a video signal until it
reaches the phosphors
in picture tube, where some of that RF energy gets
converted into visible light. All
it takes is a tiny fraction(0.1%) of the TV set's overall power(120W)
consumption to leak out and it can cause problems like the one
described in this article.
IE. The rise/fall time of the picture
tube electron gun amp(s) happen to have some component(~4.115ns)
which emits a strong 121.5 MHz signal.
"If this started to happen,
the US would stop giving out H1-B visas." "They already have. The number
of H1B visa allocations for this year is half that of last year.
That includes existing H1B holders who are trying to renew, and
new people trying to come into the country."
"The first important matter
is to understand whether the cap applies to a particular case. It
only applies for NEW employment. Individuals in H1B
status, who previously have been counted against the cap, are not
counted against the cap again when they file to extend H1B status,
whether through the same or a new employer."
Here are some of the ugly details about
the H-1B and L-1 visa programs.
Current tech worker importation stats..
The following list is for Newly issued H-1B employment
visas broken down per federal fiscal year, initial
term 3 years. Renewals(3 more years), Application
extensions(add another year), and transfers NOT
COUNTED.
Federal Fy1999..
138,385 (from KMPG audit) 2000.. 136,787 2001..
201,079 2002.. 103,584 2003.. 105,314 2004..
Final numbers not in yet. (~65K+at least 30K in exempt from cap
categories and growing in number each year). 2005.. Blew threw
58.1K of the quota in one day (Oct 1).
P.S. I'm not
even counting all the foreign workers being imported on L-1's visas,
(5 year term, currently somewhere around 100K per year).
Net
result: The globalists have imported in excess of 1/2 Mil+ foreign
tech workers into a shrinking (Sept 00) US tech job market.
Then tack on a the insult of offshoring.
Care to guess who is
getting the short end of the stick?
"Especially given the massive trend towards outsourcing (which has few
quality controls and little oversight) and replacing skilled employees
with H1Bs. "
Funny you should mention H1-B's !
Entering "Green Hills" as the company name into the LCA
database yields eleven(11) Labor certification applications for the
purpose of importing foreign tech workers. I suspect that's just
the tip of the iceberg, who knows how many H1-B's and L-1's they got from
body shops?
"This patent has to be struck down for being overly broad. It patents
the entire idea of looking at information already on the local station
and then downloading new stuff from a server. Surely USENET is prior art
for this even though it wasn't specifically limited to software, and didn't
automatically install the software."
Agreed... from RFC977,
Brian Kantor (U.C. San Diego), Phil Lapsley (U.C. Berkeley)
February 1986
"NNTP specifies a protocol for the distribution, inquiry, retrieval,
and posting of news articles using a reliable stream-based transmission
of news among the ARPA-Internet community."
Note: Usenet was not limited to TCP/IP. Before the internet was deployed
we used modems, 800 numbers and uucp to transfer the article streams.
The protocol allowed the receiving system to specify which newsgroups to
fetch articles and updates from. Each server only fetched what it
didn't have. And one shouldn't forget about the NNRP protocol used
between server and clients which uses many of the same principles.
B.T.W. In unix land we used CRON to automatically schedule NNTP/UUCP
updates.
Also from the RFC.."Such news provides for the rapid dissemination of
items of interest such as software bug fixes,"
As for menu based stuff.. Virtually all of the old text clients RN,
Tin, NN news readers had curses driven menus (text of course). Xn and large
number of other news readers cover the GUI arena. Heck, I've
been using the Agent
since 1995.
The patent appears to have been filed in Apr 20, 2000.
Microsoft had their windows 98 update feature deployed long before
that date.
I think that just about covers most of the Method and Apparatus claims.
As usual, the USPTO has once again demonstrated it's gross incompetence.
"I would be alarmed by that article if most of it were even misleading
instead of simply false."
It would be nice it you got your facts straight... Most of your
statements are outright lies !!
"The Price-Andersen Act simply allows the government to act as an
insurance broker for nuclear power plants. The plants PAY for the insurance,
and it only covers small accidents-- maximum liability for the government
is something like $10 million. Furthermore, the act allows for private
companies to step in to take over the insurance after a period of some
years-- something that private companies have indeed done. (The PA Act
has actually made taxpayers money, as plants have paid out more than they
have received, just like any successful insurance company. So it doesn't
count as subsidy at all.)"
Wow.. talk about deception.... Time for a dose of the truth
and here.
"NRC's procedures for ensuring that licensees comply with Price-Anderson
Act liability insurance provisions include requirements that licensees
provide proof of primary and secondary insurance coverage. NRC requires
each licensee to show proof that it has liability insurance that includes
the $300 million of primary insurance coverage per site required by the
Price Anderson Act. NRC and the licensee also sign an indemnity agreement
that requires the licensee to maintain an insurance policy in this amount.
This agreement is in effect as long as the owner is licensed to operate
the plant."
Note: This is a per plant policy.
"in the event of a nuclear incident causing damages exceeding $300 million,
would be collected from each nuclear power plant licensee at a rate of
up to $10 million per year and up to a maximum of $95.8 million per incident
for each nuclear power plant."
Or roughly 8.5 Billion dollars in total, enforced by a form a
government socialism. (Post accident levy).
As for maximum liability.. it goes into the Tragedy
of the commons category..
"The key to the tragedy of the commons is when individuals use
a public good, they do not bear the entire cost of their several actions."
As for estimate of REAL damages..
take a look a Chernobyl catastrophe
"If accident damages exceed that amount, taxpayers will be asked to
make up the difference. Compare that to the 1982 Sandia National Laboratories
study (CRAC-2), which projected
economic damages of up to $300 Billion (in 1982 dollars) resulting from
an accident at the Indian Point, NY reactor site. The 1986 Chernobyl catastrophe
already has cost Russia, Ukraine and Belarus some $300 Billion, and the
costs-from interdicted land, from radioactive waste disposal, from ongoing
health effects-mount daily."
"Moreover, no other hazardous industry has such a subsidized insurance
scheme. "
Yes, the Feds and ultimately the Taxpayers are on the hook
for unlimited liability, since no company has that type of resources to
pay the real cost of a catastrophe, and someone will have to pay for the
damages.
Furthermore.. "The Price Anderson Act directs DOE to fully indemnify
its contractors for any and all public liability in connection with nuclear
activities - even with accidents resulting from a contractor's bad
faith, reckless behavior, gross negligence, or willful misconduct."
"I have a fujitsu scanpartner fi-4120c desktop scanner. only offers
a page feeder, though, no scan bed, so you will need everything to be loose
pages."
Along that same line..
If you have access to a PC, Fujitsu's ScanSnap
is somewhat cheaper and will automatically create a single large PDF
file in a single pass. It will scan both sides at 150, 200
or 300 dpi resolution in a single pass and the input tray has a capacity for 50 pages. But, you can scan larger documents merely
by adding more pages to the front of the input tray while it scanning
documents from the back of the input tray. Note: Don't forget
to remove pages from output tray periodically.
I've scanned 500+ page documents in about an hour using that technique.
It comes with a full version of Adobe Acrobat 5.0/6.0 and scanned documents
will automatically appear as one or more PDF files. User selects number of pages per PDF.
You can also fire up the paper capture plug in/function and OCR
the scanned images in the PDF.
"Collected
SS receipts.. (You know that little old flat tax on Salaries and wages,
no deductibles or exemptions allowed) Has not been keeping up with inflation..
(And that's assuming zero job growth in the intervening year !!!)"
"Employers are required to pay social security taxes quarterly."
Wrong you are..
1st... Your link claims..quarterly reporting on 941 forms..
.
"Employers must report
income and employment taxes withheld from their employees on an Employer's
Quarterly Federal Tax Return (Form 941)"
Deposit penalties.. calender days and personal liability is attached
to all payments.
2%.. 1 to 5 days late.
5%... 6 to 15 days late.
10%.. 16 or more days late.
15%.. 10 days after 1st IRS notice.
(and it goes up from there)..
3rd.. The SS receipts comparison was for the first six
months(that is two quarters in laymens terms) for each Federal fiscal
year.
"I'm not an expert on tax law, and tax documentation makes my eyes
water, so I may be misunderstanding. "
Agreed, you are obviously not an expert, and you do not understand
tax law/payment requirements.
"Jobless recovery my ass...April employment stats released this
morning reveal 625K new nonfarm jobs the last two months."
All the claimed job growth is smoke and mirrors.. the globalists are
manipulating the survey results.
It fairly easy to make up fake claims of hiring, especially since they
are the one's filling out the DOL questionnaires!!
Now for a dose of the truth
! Collected SS receipts.. (You know that little old flat
tax on Salaries and wages, no deductibles or exemptions allowed)
Has not been keeping up with inflation.. (And
that's assuming zero job growth in the intervening year !!!)
That truth link also covers half of April's supposed growth,
since the DOL survey uses 2nd week of each month as the benchmark.
(a double whammy..)
In summary.. you've been conned!! Just more job losses and cut backs, buried
under a pile of bogus statistics !
( B.T.W. Seasonal adjustment shifts this number to 5.6%, In the
last month we really lost 2.8 Million jobs, but seasonal adjustments make
it look like a net gain of 112K.)
"Recent research finds a 60% jump in number of disability recipients keeping unemployment low."
"The "labor force," 142.5 million strong, does not include people who draw disability benefits from the Social Security Administration(SSA). As of December 2002, there were about 5.5 million adults getting disability benefits, totaling about $4.6 billion a month. "
OK.. so tack in 3,000K partially disabled, get federal checks, want
work, but not counted.
(9,144K+3,000K) / (146,068K + 3,000K) == ~8.1% unemployment rate..
---
Factor in that there are the 10.3 Million self employed workers
who are paying estimated (self employment) taxes(14.1%) for LESS THAN a
2.4 million FULL TIME MINIMUM WAGE workers. (Shift another 8 million
from the employed to the unemployment category). If they're not filling
form 1040-ES's, then they're not making any money. (Equivalent to unemployed)..
raw
tax collection data. Table IV.. (individual estimated tax payments)
3,371 Million(2003 1040ES data)/.141(SE tax rate)/10.3Million == average
SE income $2,321/yr..
[Notes: Uses 2003 tax collection data as a baseline, and ignores federal
income tax liability and the contributions by people paying in for capital
gains.] [Full time job at Federal Min wage pays $10,300/yr.]
Add in the FACT, that there have been workforce adjustments which
lop off a couple of million (unemployed) workers each year, despite the
Census numbers that workforce should be growing by 2 Million per year.
[B.T.W. We've added ~9 Million to the 16 and over Civilian NI population
since the tech bust started, at least 65% would have taken a job if it
was available.]
Undo the recent changes to workforce
participation percentages. (revert back to 2000 average
67.1% verses current 65.7%) It's obvious they want to work.
Just no work to be had.. That adds back in 1.4% percent of
overall work population.. 3.0 Million workers..
Add in the FACT that the DOL changed(1994) the household survey
data collection method and resulting in the almost doubling of the non-parcipation
rate,
from 4.3 to 7.5 Percent. The DOL accomplished this feat by
substituting a scientifically sound MAIL IN form, with scientifically discredited
IN PERSON interviews.
Well, I don't know about you, but being unemployed is not a badge of
honor. Most people do not like to admit that they are unemployed,
and would be even less likely to do so while being interviewed in person.
I.E. It demeans their social status and self esteem.
If they managed to convince/intimidate those households, with
at least one unemployed worker not to participate. That would add another
3.4 Million to the unemployment/workforce figures, thusly increasing
unemployment by another 2 to 3 of percent.
[Another item in the DOL household survey is the incredible number of
Ineligible households!! Thats 12,000 out of a sample lot of 72,000 or 16.6%..
"digital video, broadcast web sites, business data services and new
interactive media. "
"Echostar DISH customers will be able to personalize the direct satellite
connection to receive selected data services, web sites and multimedia`content.
The direct broadcast satellite's high bandwidth enables it to efficiently
"push" content to office PCs and home PC/TVs."
"Programs delivered with a direct satellite connection feature extremely
high-quality video "
Note: Tivo.. isn't much different from a PC.. roughly the same components..
(Minus the sat receiver and smart card.)
So much for that lawsuit...
It's fairly open and shut case.. Case dismissed... costs for defendant awarded..
Tivo's patents were based upon other manufacturers existing
products and stolen ideas..
"ECMA 168 is a volume and file format standard for write-once
CD and CD-ROM.
It was approved as a European standard by the ECMA General Assembly
in June
of 1992. It provides for full Orange Book functionality, including
multisession recording, track-at-once recording, and
packet recording."
Looks like these bozo's just tried to patent the standard three(3)
years after the fact!!
I suspect they where hoping the defense wouldn't find these references
to prior art.
I think Roxio should press for sanctions..
"SCO are on very weak ground complaining about XFS."
If SCO revokes SGI's unix license, I suspect SCO will loose all rights to use XFS and any derivatives. After all, if SGI's unix license gave them rights to use XFS, then revoking it would automatically undo those rights! I can see SGI coming back and nailing SCO with a huge counterclaim.
"We quickly and carefully re-reviewed our contributions to open source,
and found brief fragments of code matching System V code in three generic
routines (ate_utils.c, the atoi function and systeminfo.h header file),
all within the I/O infrastructure support or SGI's platform."
"Following this occurrence, we continued our investigation to determine
whether any other code in the Linux kernel was even conceivably implicated.
As a result of that exhaustive investigation, SGI has discovered a few
additional code segments (similar in nature to the segments referred to
above and trivial in amount) that may arguably be related to UNIX code.
We are in the process of removing and replacing these segments."
It would be nice if they (IBM, SGI) ran the ENTIRE Linux/GPL code
base through a tokenized comparison with their reference SCO Unix trees.
Thus GPL community could start identifying and removing any suspect
code NOW, rather than wait for a trial outcome.
"The firewalls were doing a good job of blocking the viruses until one
of the upper management decided to take their laptop home and plug it into
an open internet connection and get infected with it."
These days I never go into a client site without my OWN
firewall/NAT, which has it's own little 4 port switching hub. I use a Dlink
DI-604, which cost me a whole $20 after rebate. The firewall/NAT lets me connect both my laptops and set up a "Whitelist" of client systems and
internet sites I need to access. Thus one can avoid needless exposure of one's own systems to Client/Internet and vice a versa without some extra protection.
A side benefit is that I don't have to change the network settings
between Office and Client work sites.:-)
Saves a lot of headaches about installing the client's latest
XXX corporate anti-virus whatever. Note: Installing the client's site licensed AV Software
would make me a pirate the moment my laptops left the job site.
Never did use M$ security hole infested email programs. I also recently retired IE to backup browser status, it's no longer worth the patching nightmare. I now use Firebird as my default browser.
"I think this issue is blown way out of proportion. We are talking about
65,000 H1-B's per year on one side and millions of outsourced jobs on the
other side. These are simply in different weight categories."
Updated stats on importation of H-1B workers.
H-1B import levels, based on Federal government Fiscal Year, Oct 1 -
Sep 30. Initial H1-B visa length 3 years, + 3 year extension,+N years
if GC or new LCA application pending. (Total length 6+N years). Note: Bush
recently signed into Public Law No: 107-273, renewable one year extensions
if GC or LCA is pending approval. (I.E. No more effective time limit.)
Note: Approved initial H-1B applications per year as follows.
FY 1995, ~50,000
FY 1996, ~50,000
FY 1997, 65,000 (H1-B cap first reached)
FY 1998, 65,000
HR 4328, Signed Oct 1998, Public law 105-277 raises quota to 115,000
for FYs 99, 00. But, the INS can't count, and let's in more workers
than allowed !
SB 2045, Signed Oct 17, 2000, Public law 106-313 raises quota
to 195,000 for FY 01, 02, and 03. But, It also adds a number
of uncounted/uncapped categories, and it also provides amnesty to both
INS and over the limit's visa holders for FYs 99, 00.. I.E. No effective
H1-B visa limits. (tech crash ensues)..
FY
2003 Q3 Update. press release from INS indicates the number of
H-1B employment applications being approved for FY 2003 may be over
~180,000. With 141,520 H-1B applications already been approved during first
nine(9) months of Federal Fiscal Year 2003.
Don't forget to add those yearly numbers up.. upwards of 7 years.
It only takes a moderate over-supply too start a crash in the price
of any commodity. That has happened in the US tech labor market.
Slashdot Mirror
As part of any forenisc investigation, I always ask clients to print out any incriminating emails they received with FULL headers. The headers help establish an email fingerprint of a sort. The resulting header fingerprint can lead an investigation to one or more email servers, which relayed the message and still have some discoverable records beyond the direct control of either party.
I see that you are unable to evaluate scientific facts or read footnotes.
Only the renewable columns are measured in "(1) Electricity net generation from conventional hydroelectric power, geothermal, solar, and wind;"
Well, I can....
That table lists output in Thermal power, (quadrillion BTU), which is a measure of the lowest grade of energy. Verses Electrical energy output, (Kwh), which a measure of a high grade energy, a huge difference.
Your calculation ignores the 2nd law of thermodynamics. Once you start factoring in conversion losses, the numbers start to line up. Note: A Nuke plant is thermodyanmically limited to a maximum (thermal to electrical) conversion rate around 33%.
"That's 2.38647772 × 10^12 kiloWatt hours per year to generate .."
In who's book... 2004 numbers indicate only 7.88x10^11 Kwh(table 7) were generated by Nuclear power plants. (Just a little bit above 2003 numbers)..
In other words your numbers are off by a factor of THREE !! What did you forget, are you using raw thermal power? Bad move, thermodynamics dictates that you'll be able to convert only a fraction of a Nuke's thermal output into Electrical power. The remaining 2/3's of the heat energy gets dumped into the environment.
"I've read that it costs $8000 (of course in US dollars, you godless heathen!) to replace the batteries for electric and hybrid cars. And furthermore, they need to be replaced every three years. "
Err... NO...
First, Toyota warrants the expensive nickel-metal hydride (NiMH) Prius batteries for 10 years and 100,000 miles (160,930 km), and Honda warrants the batteries on the Civic Hybrid for eight years and 80,000 miles (128,744 km). Note: In California, there is no millage limit. For the most part Hybrids limit the State of Charge of the NiMH Battery pack which extends life cycle considerably. And a very good reason why they can offer these long warranties without losing their shirt.
Second.. the NiMH hybrid battery packs aren't all that big.. around a 100 lbs. You could build a replacement NiMH pack for about a dollar per watt or around 1500$. As volume ramps up, one should expect the price of the components to drop even further.
Officemax is a serial rebate abuser. They put all their rebate coupons in a little book with very small writing.
What you're unlikely to notice, are the absurd submission post mark dates. Often less than one a week after purchase. That's hardly time to even test the newly purchased equipment. To return a defective item, the packaging must be intact which precludes submitting the rebate paperwork on time. So they take advantage of the customers inattentiveness/work load to scam them out of their rebates.
Note: They'll often advertise the same item (with similar rebate) every month or so.
It's been a while since I last tested Vonage's service. When we tested it, Vonage configured the Cisco ATA-186 to use non-compressed 64Kbit/sec data streams as the default. (IP/UDP encapsulation increases net bandwidth requirements to ~80Kb/sec in each direction). Get enough of those puppies running and you'll suck down a fair percentage of any smaller ISP's backbone. Note: This type of VOIP encoding technique requires more data bandwidth than carrying the same phone call over a POTS network!!!
At the time, you had to jump threw hoops to get Vonage to turn ON compression and reduce the network loading by a factor of 10 to 20x, (down to 4 to 8Kb/sec). But at the time, activating compression was a double edged sword, as quite a few of Vonage's termination switches&gateways no longer worked properly with the compression protocol activated.
Since then, they have improved things a bit. They've added a user configured "Bandwidth" saver to the account management web page, and "Probably?" fixed many of compression issues with the termination switches&gateways.
But from what I hear, the nasty (2 * 80Kb/sec) is still the default, and it inflicts a "Tragedy of the Commons" type problem on smaller ISP's. Where no single user causes a problem, but when dozens/hundreds of simultaneous users start placing calls using their Vonage service, an ISP with limited resources is forced to act. This problem can only be corrected at the source, (Vonage), since most users are blissfully ignorant of the implications. (I.E. A couple of intelligent users reseting their compression settings will have little net effect on the overall traffic patterns. )
In summary, Vonage is complaining about smaller phone companies not providing enough IP bandwidth to carry a significant portion of their PAID/Measured traffic over Uncompensated long distance backbone connections. Ha, fat chance! For the most part, I would say that Vonage's problems are self inflicted, story over.
"If you're gonna shoot out numbers at least endeaver to make them remotely accurate. The visa caps varied over the last six years:"
Here are some corrections about the H-1B numbers.
One must remember there are many categories of H-1B's which do not count against the cap.
On Wednesday (S. 2302) congress added another exemption from the H-1B cap.
Here are some of the ugly details about the H-1B and L-1 visa programs.
The following list is for Newly issued H-1B employment visas broken down per federal fiscal year, initial term 3 years. Renewals(3 more years), Application extensions(add another year), and transfers NOT COUNTED.
Fed Fy
1999.... 138,385 (from KMPG audit)
2000.... 136,787
2001.... 201,079
2002.... 103,584
2003.... 105,314
2004.... Final numbers not in yet.
............ (~65K+at least 30K in exempt from cap categories and growing in number each year).
2005..... Blew threw 58.1K of the quota in one day (Oct 1).
P.S. I'm not even counting all the foreign workers being imported on L-1's visas,
(5 year term, currently somewhere around 100K per year).
Net result: The globalists have imported in excess of 1/2 Mil+ foreign tech workers into a shrinking (Sept 00) US tech job market.
Then tack on a the insult of offshoring.
Care to guess who is getting the short end of the stick?
Just one class 9 meltdown .
Each plant operator is only required to carry $300 Million of private liability insurance per plant. In total the nuclear industry carries only 8.5 Billion dollars of insurance, enforced by a form a government socialism. (Post accident levy).
For an estimate of REAL damages [nirs.org].. take a look a Chernobyl catastrophe
"If accident damages exceed that amount, taxpayers will be asked to make up the difference. Compare that to the 1982 Sandia National Laboratories study (CRAC-2 [ccnr.org]), which projected economic damages of up to $300 Billion (in 1982 dollars) resulting from an accident at the Indian Point, NY reactor site. The 1986 Chernobyl catastrophe already has cost Russia, Ukraine and Belarus some $300 Billion, and the costs-from interdicted land, from radioactive waste disposal, from ongoing health effects-mount daily.";
Folks, that's $300 Billion in 1982 dollars!! Care to guess what that number is today?
I'll bet that it's in the Trillion dollar range.
"Moreover, no other hazardous industry has such a subsidized insurance scheme. "
For the time being, I suggest keeping our Nuclear power source a nice safe distance away, one AU is a good number, and embark on a distributed program to harness the energy it bestows to us all (wind, solar).
"this is the ITAA?"
For the most part the ITAA == Professional Liars Association.Remember them making all those tech worker shortage projections right in the middle of the dot com collapse? 1.6 Million, 900K, then 600K.
At the same time the tech industry was laying off workers faster than you can imagine. They did it to promote their H-1B agenda.. Note: They're still at it.
Debunking the Myth of a Desperate Software Labor Shortage...."The congressional General Accounting Office found ``serious analytical and methodological weaknesses'' in the [ITAA/Dept. of Commerce] reports.";
The ITAA was counting all the positions held by Computer consultants and contractors as UNFILLED!!
Yikes !!!
---
Now for a little bit about the ITAA with electronic voting and Mr. Miller's pitch to the electronic machine manufacturers. August 22, 2003, Democracy for Sale, CHEAP!
"Harris Miller (ITAA) Gives the intro spiel about the company and how it can help the industry stave off short-term attacks" from academics and "activists".
"Harris: .. And there can be two scenarios there: The companies may
want to hide behind me, they dont want to say anything... frequently
that happens in a trade association, you dont want to talk about the
issues as individual companies. We have that issue right now with the
Buy America Act, for example in congress. No company wants to act like
its against Buy America -- even though theyre all against it so I
take all the heat for them."
"This is where the problem lies. 121.5 MHz divided by 7722 is exactly the same frequency as the horizontal in an NTSC color video signal. The 7722nd harmonic shouldn't really be that strong, right?"
No, In this instance.. the TV set in question is radiating a strong Tempest radiation signal which happens to be at 121.5 MHz.
TV set's are for the most part,aregiant RF amps. Amplifying a video signal until it reaches the phosphors in picture tube, where some of that RF energy gets converted into visible light. All it takes is a tiny fraction(0.1%) of the TV set's overall power(120W) consumption to leak out and it can cause problems like the one described in this article.
IE. The rise/fall time of the picture tube electron gun amp(s) happen to have some component(~4.115ns) which emits a strong 121.5 MHz signal.
"They already have. The number of H1B visa allocations for this year is half that of last year.
That includes existing H1B holders who are trying to renew, and new people trying to come into the country."
You've made a couple of mistakes. Renewals, transfers or extensions do not count against the H-1B cap.
"The first important matter is to understand whether the cap applies to a particular case. It only applies for NEW employment. Individuals in H1B status, who previously have been counted against the cap, are not counted against the cap again when they file to extend H1B status, whether through the same or a new employer."
Here are some of the ugly details about the H-1B and L-1 visa programs.
Current tech worker importation stats..
s /h1bcap_FS.pdf
The following list is for Newly issued H-1B employment visas broken down per federal fiscal year, initial term 3 years. Renewals(3 more years), Application extensions(add another year), and transfers NOT COUNTED.
http://uscis.gov/graphics/publicaffairs/factsheet
Federal
Fy1999.. 138,385 (from KMPG audit)
2000.. 136,787
2001.. 201,079
2002.. 103,584
2003.. 105,314
2004.. Final numbers not in yet. (~65K+at least 30K in exempt from cap categories and growing in number each year).
2005.. Blew threw 58.1K of the quota in one day (Oct 1).
P.S. I'm not even counting all the foreign workers being imported on L-1's visas,
(5 year term, currently somewhere around 100K per year).
Net result: The globalists have imported in excess of 1/2 Mil+ foreign tech workers into a shrinking (Sept 00) US tech job market. Then tack on a the insult of offshoring.
Care to guess who is getting the short end of the stick?
Funny you should mention H1-B's !
Entering "Green Hills" as the company name into the LCA database yields eleven(11) Labor certification applications for the purpose of importing foreign tech workers. I suspect that's just the tip of the iceberg, who knows how many H1-B's and L-1's they got from body shops?
Agreed ... from RFC977,
Brian Kantor (U.C. San Diego), Phil Lapsley (U.C. Berkeley)
February 1986
"NNTP specifies a protocol for the distribution, inquiry, retrieval, and posting of news articles using a reliable stream-based transmission of news among the ARPA-Internet community."
Note: Usenet was not limited to TCP/IP. Before the internet was deployed we used modems, 800 numbers and uucp to transfer the article streams. The protocol allowed the receiving system to specify which newsgroups to fetch articles and updates from. Each server only fetched what it didn't have. And one shouldn't forget about the NNRP protocol used between server and clients which uses many of the same principles.
B.T.W. In unix land we used CRON to automatically schedule NNTP/UUCP updates.
Also from the RFC.."Such news provides for the rapid dissemination of items of interest such as software bug fixes,"
As for menu based stuff.. Virtually all of the old text clients RN, Tin, NN news readers had curses driven menus (text of course). Xn and large number of other news readers cover the GUI arena. Heck, I've been using the Agent since 1995.
The patent appears to have been filed in Apr 20, 2000.
Microsoft had their windows 98 update feature deployed long before that date.
I think that just about covers most of the Method and Apparatus claims.
As usual, the USPTO has once again demonstrated it's gross incompetence.
It would be nice it you got your facts straight... Most of your statements are outright lies !!
"The Price-Andersen Act simply allows the government to act as an insurance broker for nuclear power plants. The plants PAY for the insurance, and it only covers small accidents-- maximum liability for the government is something like $10 million. Furthermore, the act allows for private companies to step in to take over the insurance after a period of some years-- something that private companies have indeed done. (The PA Act has actually made taxpayers money, as plants have paid out more than they have received, just like any successful insurance company. So it doesn't count as subsidy at all.)"
Wow.. talk about deception.... Time for a dose of the truth and here.
"NRC's procedures for ensuring that licensees comply with Price-Anderson Act liability insurance provisions include requirements that licensees provide proof of primary and secondary insurance coverage. NRC requires each licensee to show proof that it has liability insurance that includes the $300 million of primary insurance coverage per site required by the Price Anderson Act. NRC and the licensee also sign an indemnity agreement that requires the licensee to maintain an insurance policy in this amount. This agreement is in effect as long as the owner is licensed to operate the plant."
Note: This is a per plant policy.
"in the event of a nuclear incident causing damages exceeding $300 million, would be collected from each nuclear power plant licensee at a rate of up to $10 million per year and up to a maximum of $95.8 million per incident for each nuclear power plant."
Or roughly 8.5 Billion dollars in total, enforced by a form a government socialism. (Post accident levy).
As for maximum liability.. it goes into the Tragedy of the commons category..
"The key to the tragedy of the commons is when individuals use a public good, they do not bear the entire cost of their several actions."
As for estimate of REAL damages.. take a look a Chernobyl catastrophe
"If accident damages exceed that amount, taxpayers will be asked to make up the difference. Compare that to the 1982 Sandia National Laboratories study (CRAC-2), which projected economic damages of up to $300 Billion (in 1982 dollars) resulting from an accident at the Indian Point, NY reactor site. The 1986 Chernobyl catastrophe already has cost Russia, Ukraine and Belarus some $300 Billion, and the costs-from interdicted land, from radioactive waste disposal, from ongoing health effects-mount daily."
"Moreover, no other hazardous industry has such a subsidized insurance scheme. "
Yes, the Feds and ultimately the Taxpayers are on the hook for unlimited liability, since no company has that type of resources to pay the real cost of a catastrophe, and someone will have to pay for the damages.
Furthermore.. "The Price Anderson Act directs DOE to fully indemnify its contractors for any and all public liability in connection with nuclear activities - even with accidents resulting from a contractor's bad faith, reckless behavior, gross negligence, or willful misconduct."
Along that same line..
If you have access to a PC, Fujitsu's ScanSnap is somewhat cheaper and will automatically create a single large PDF file in a single pass. It will scan both sides at 150, 200 or 300 dpi resolution in a single pass and the input tray has a capacity for 50 pages. But, you can scan larger documents merely by adding more pages to the front of the input tray while it scanning documents from the back of the input tray. Note: Don't forget to remove pages from output tray periodically.
I've scanned 500+ page documents in about an hour using that technique.
Price is $389 after $100 rebate will an get you a turnkey solution for under $300.
It comes with a full version of Adobe Acrobat 5.0/6.0 and scanned documents will automatically appear as one or more PDF files. User selects number of pages per PDF. You can also fire up the paper capture plug in/function and OCR the scanned images in the PDF.
"Employers are required to pay social security taxes quarterly."
Wrong you are..
1st... Your link claims..quarterly reporting on 941 forms.. .
"Employers must report income and employment taxes withheld from their employees on an Employer's Quarterly Federal Tax Return (Form 941)"
2nd.. Employers must make deposits on either a monthly and a twice a week schedule. see pages17 thru 22..
Deposit penalties.. calender days and personal liability is attached to all payments. .. 1 to 5 days late.
2%
5%... 6 to 15 days late.
10%.. 16 or more days late.
15%.. 10 days after 1st IRS notice.
(and it goes up from there)..
3rd.. The SS receipts comparison was for the first six months(that is two quarters in laymens terms) for each Federal fiscal year.
"I'm not an expert on tax law, and tax documentation makes my eyes water, so I may be misunderstanding. "
Agreed, you are obviously not an expert, and you do not understand tax law/payment requirements.
All the claimed job growth is smoke and mirrors.. the globalists are manipulating the survey results.
It fairly easy to make up fake claims of hiring, especially since they are the one's filling out the DOL questionnaires!!
Now for a dose of the truth !
Collected SS receipts.. (You know that little old flat tax on Salaries and wages, no deductibles or exemptions allowed)
Has not been keeping up with inflation.. (And that's assuming zero job growth in the intervening year !!!)
That truth link also covers half of April's supposed growth,
since the DOL survey uses 2nd week of each month as the benchmark.
(a double whammy..)
In summary.. you've been conned!!
Just more job losses and cut backs, buried under a pile of bogus statistics !
Start with Dol official UI#/workforce == (non-seasonally adjusted UE rate. U3)
9144K/146,068K == 6.3% unemployment rate.
( B.T.W. Seasonal adjustment shifts this number to 5.6%, In the last month we really lost 2.8 Million jobs, but seasonal adjustments make it look like a net gain of 112K.)
--
Add IN.....
Disability rolls rise, skew labor data
"Recent research finds a 60% jump in number of disability recipients keeping unemployment low."
"The "labor force," 142.5 million strong, does not include people who draw disability benefits from the Social Security Administration(SSA). As of December 2002, there were about 5.5 million adults getting disability benefits, totaling about $4.6 billion a month. "
OK.. so tack in 3,000K partially disabled, get federal checks, want work, but not counted.
(9,144K+3,000K) / (146,068K + 3,000K) == ~8.1% unemployment rate..
---
Factor in that there are the 10.3 Million self employed workers who are paying estimated (self employment) taxes(14.1%) for LESS THAN a 2.4 million FULL TIME MINIMUM WAGE workers. (Shift another 8 million from the employed to the unemployment category). If they're not filling form 1040-ES's, then they're not making any money. (Equivalent to unemployed)..
raw tax collection data. Table IV.. (individual estimated tax payments)
3,371 Million(2003 1040ES data)/.141(SE tax rate)/10.3Million == average SE income $2,321/yr..
[Notes: Uses 2003 tax collection data as a baseline, and ignores federal income tax liability and the contributions by people paying in for capital gains.] [Full time job at Federal Min wage pays $10,300/yr.]
(9,144K+3,000K+8,000K) / (146,068K+3000K) == ~13.5% unemployment rate.
----
Add in the FACT, that there have been workforce adjustments which lop off a couple of million (unemployed) workers each year, despite the Census numbers that workforce should be growing by 2 Million per year. [B.T.W. We've added ~9 Million to the 16 and over Civilian NI population since the tech bust started, at least 65% would have taken a job if it was available.]
Undo the recent changes to workforce participation percentages. (revert back to 2000 average 67.1% verses current 65.7%) It's obvious they want to work. Just no work to be had.. That adds back in 1.4% percent of overall work population.. 3.0 Million workers..
(9,144K+3,000K+8,000K+3,000K) / (146,068K+3000K+3,000K) == ~15.2% unemployment rate.
-----
Add in the FACT that the DOL changed(1994) the household survey data collection method and resulting in the almost doubling of the non-parcipation rate, from 4.3 to 7.5 Percent. The DOL accomplished this feat by substituting a scientifically sound MAIL IN form, with scientifically discredited IN PERSON interviews.
Well, I don't know about you, but being unemployed is not a badge of honor. Most people do not like to admit that they are unemployed, and would be even less likely to do so while being interviewed in person. I.E. It demeans their social status and self esteem.
If they managed to convince/intimidate those households, with at least one unemployed worker not to participate. That would add another
3.4 Million to the unemployment/workforce figures, thusly increasing unemployment by another 2 to 3 of percent.
[Another item in the DOL household survey is the incredible number of Ineligible households!! Thats 12,000 out of a sample lot of 72,000 or 16.6%..
Echostar has prior art, back in 97.. ~16 months before the first TIVO patent application..
Echostar and Adaptec released a SAT receiver PC card.
Date: 1997/03/21
"PC and PC/TV users to direct satellite content such as high-resolution"
"digital video, broadcast web sites, business data services and new
interactive media. "
"Echostar DISH customers will be able to personalize the direct satellite connection to receive selected data services, web sites and multimedia`content. The direct broadcast satellite's high bandwidth enables it to efficiently "push" content to office PCs and home PC/TVs."
"Programs delivered with a direct satellite connection feature extremely high-quality video "
Note: Tivo.. isn't much different from a PC.. roughly the same components.. (Minus the sat receiver and smart card.)
... costs for defendant awarded..
So much for that lawsuit...
It's fairly open and shut case.. Case dismissed
Tivo's patents were based upon other manufacturers existing products and stolen ideas..
"Granted : September 9, 1997"
"This might be hard to beat. Anyone using a cd burner 8 years ago?"
Not really... plenty of prior art.. (1 year prior to patent filing)
Link to deja archive of cd-rom FAQ. (Mon, 11 Apr 1994 17:33:45 GMT)
here is a partial excerpt...
"29. What is ECMA 168?"
"ECMA 168 is a volume and file format standard for write-once CD and CD-ROM.
It was approved as a European standard by the ECMA General Assembly in June
of 1992. It provides for full Orange Book functionality, including
multisession recording, track-at-once recording, and packet recording."
Looks like these bozo's just tried to patent the standard three(3) years after the fact!!
I suspect they where hoping the defense wouldn't find these references to prior art.
I think Roxio should press for sanctions..
If SCO revokes SGI's unix license, I suspect SCO will loose all rights to use XFS and any derivatives. After all, if SGI's unix license gave them rights to use XFS, then revoking it would automatically undo those rights! I can see SGI coming back and nailing SCO with a huge counterclaim.
"Following this occurrence, we continued our investigation to determine whether any other code in the Linux kernel was even conceivably implicated. As a result of that exhaustive investigation, SGI has discovered a few additional code segments (similar in nature to the segments referred to above and trivial in amount) that may arguably be related to UNIX code. We are in the process of removing and replacing these segments."
It would be nice if they (IBM, SGI) ran the ENTIRE Linux/GPL code base through a tokenized comparison with their reference SCO Unix trees. Thus GPL community could start identifying and removing any suspect code NOW, rather than wait for a trial outcome.
These days I never go into a client site without my OWN firewall/NAT, which has it's own little 4 port switching hub. I use a Dlink DI-604, which cost me a whole $20 after rebate. The firewall/NAT lets me connect both my laptops and set up a "Whitelist" of client systems and internet sites I need to access. Thus one can avoid needless exposure of one's own systems to Client/Internet and vice a versa without some extra protection.
A side benefit is that I don't have to change the network settings between Office and Client work sites. :-)
Saves a lot of headaches about installing the client's latest XXX corporate anti-virus whatever. Note: Installing the client's site licensed AV Software would make me a pirate the moment my laptops left the job site. Never did use M$ security hole infested email programs. I also recently retired IE to backup browser status, it's no longer worth the patching nightmare. I now use Firebird as my default browser.
All in all, a few extra steps.. but worth it..
Updated stats on importation of H-1B workers.
H-1B import levels, based on Federal government Fiscal Year, Oct 1 - Sep 30. Initial H1-B visa length 3 years, + 3 year extension,+N years if GC or new LCA application pending. (Total length 6+N years). Note: Bush recently signed into Public Law No: 107-273, renewable one year extensions if GC or LCA is pending approval. (I.E. No more effective time limit.)
Note: Approved initial H-1B applications per year as follows.
FY 1995, ~50,000
FY 1996, ~50,000
FY 1997, 65,000 (H1-B cap first reached)
FY 1998, 65,000
HR 4328, Signed Oct 1998, Public law 105-277 raises quota to 115,000 for FYs 99, 00. But, the INS can't count, and let's in more workers than allowed !
FY 1999, 138,385
FY 2000, 136,787
SB 2045, Signed Oct 17, 2000, Public law 106-313 raises quota to 195,000 for FY 01, 02, and 03. But, It also adds a number of uncounted/uncapped categories, and it also provides amnesty to both INS and over the limit's visa holders for FYs 99, 00.. I.E. No effective H1-B visa limits. (tech crash ensues)..
FY 2001, 201,079
FY 2002, 103,584
FY 2003 Q3 Update. press release from INS indicates the number of H-1B employment applications being approved for FY 2003 may be over ~180,000. With 141,520 H-1B applications already been approved during first nine(9) months of Federal Fiscal Year 2003.
Don't forget to add those yearly numbers up.. upwards of 7 years.
It only takes a moderate over-supply too start a crash in the price of any commodity. That has happened in the US tech labor market.