I think the specialists have a harder time finding work.
I'm primarily an Oracle DBA, but I have enough skills in other areas (sysadmin, network admin) that I'm seeing a whole lot more opportunities than I would if I specialized in one thing.
The biggest obstacle that I'm having right now - yes, I'm out of work - is bumping up against a slow market - hiring freezes, general layoffs, delayed projects - but, I'm able to look at a wide range of positions.
Maybe the difference is that I have setup a unix box, installed a database instance, and touched a router all in the last several months and have spent a career avoiding management.
I've also been an SE at an ISP. For the first year it was the best, most fun job I ever had, but I got tired of talking about things technical all day and wanted to get my hands dirty actually doing it.
Which...blows away your theory of "much less time to charge a cell than to draw it down".
Theory?! You flatter me. It's much worse than that, it's an assumption of a technical breakthrough: that it takes substantially less time to charge a battery than to discharge it. Also, that the batteries can withstand innumerable cycles of charging/discharging
Say, for a room full of machines at a point in time, half would be on grid while the other half were on battery, rather than all machines on grid.
Laptops have an advantage over desktops and servers when the lights go out: an on-board battery that keeps the machine running when the lights go out. With advances in battery technology, it should soon be possible to design-in UPSs into server cases without the limitations of weight/size and expense.
The system I envision would have two batteries. When both batteries are fully charged, the server would disconnect itself from the grid and draw power from one cell until it's nearly discharged. Then, it would switch to the other battery, reconnect itself to the grid to recharge the first, then disconnect itself again when fully charged. Like a normal UPS, it would detect when grid power is no longer available, and could initiate a shutdown. At any given time, there would be at least one fully-charged or nearly-fully-charged cell from which to draw power. All of this assumes, of course, that it takes much less time to charge a cell than to draw it down.
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eComstation Standard $329.00
eComstation Std. with 30 Day Support $418.00
eComStation PRO $464.00
eComStation PRO with 30 Day Support $553.00
Who's going to pay that much? Maybe someone who has a big investment in OS/2, but that's not too many people anymore.
I think using an incendiary daisy cutter bomb. is more creative.
This is still under consideration as a weapon that a very high altitude bomber (300,000 feet up) could carry. In fact, it was a Slashdot story:
h tm l
http://slashdot.org/articles/01/07/29/1310255.s
And, yes, I do wish that amount of devastation on certain Afghans...and Iraqis...and Iranians...and Chinese...
The only problem with this is the US would be expected to come to the aid of the survivors.
My bad, the headset port is for "listening to MP3 audio files".
But, is the "secure digital" expansion slot still a concession to the copyright nazis?
Is this what I think it is, namely for the "secure digital music initiative"?
I see a slot for headphones, but I don't see a claim for "plays MP3s".
I'm primarily an Oracle DBA, but I have enough skills in other areas (sysadmin, network admin) that I'm seeing a whole lot more opportunities than I would if I specialized in one thing.
The biggest obstacle that I'm having right now - yes, I'm out of work - is bumping up against a slow market - hiring freezes, general layoffs, delayed projects - but, I'm able to look at a wide range of positions.
Maybe the difference is that I have setup a unix box, installed a database instance, and touched a router all in the last several months and have spent a career avoiding management.
I've also been an SE at an ISP. For the first year it was the best, most fun job I ever had, but I got tired of talking about things technical all day and wanted to get my hands dirty actually doing it.
Theory?! You flatter me. It's much worse than that, it's an assumption of a technical breakthrough: that it takes substantially less time to charge a battery than to discharge it. Also, that the batteries can withstand innumerable cycles of charging/discharging
Say, for a room full of machines at a point in time, half would be on grid while the other half were on battery, rather than all machines on grid.
The system I envision would have two batteries. When both batteries are fully charged, the server would disconnect itself from the grid and draw power from one cell until it's nearly discharged. Then, it would switch to the other battery, reconnect itself to the grid to recharge the first, then disconnect itself again when fully charged. Like a normal UPS, it would detect when grid power is no longer available, and could initiate a shutdown. At any given time, there would be at least one fully-charged or nearly-fully-charged cell from which to draw power. All of this assumes, of course, that it takes much less time to charge a cell than to draw it down.