Who started the slave trade and ingrained it into colonial culture for a hundred years before the USA existed, when it was owned, lock stock, and barrel, by European companies? The UK abolished slavery in 1833, a whopping 30 some years before the USA, then took the position of how "enlightened" they were compared to the USA, when they started the whole thing in the first place. Hypocrites.
I drive a pick-up with a perfect paint job and I think your attitude is sterotypically elitist. Spare us this "I work with my hands and know what Real Work is like and you guys are all wusses." crap and get your head out of your butt. The only one who is impressed with your supercilious definition of your perfect self is yourself.
The US has done both for decades. Not a measuring cup nor speedometer made does not have metric measurements on it. Sure, we use miles and Fahrenheit. Big deal. No mechanic doesn't have a metric set of sockets and wrenches. No serious scientific research doesn't use metric measurements.
The fact is, we can multi-task using two measuring systems and the rest of the world can't.
I built a house many years ago and very carefully wired it with telephone wire terminated in standard D-blocks so I could run the Lantastic WAN system.
Then along came Wi-Fi.
I also pre-wired speaker wire into a second set of electrical outlets, which worked pretty well, actually. But today I would use conduit because, well, Lantastic was great, but....
Government exists by confiscating money earned by others. This is supposed to be "for the public good," or so we are led to believe. And government taxes to exert public policy objectives. For example, it taxes tobacco and liquor because "they're bad" and gives tax "breaks" in the form of deductions for home owner interest because "owning a house is good." Pick your own examples. Insofar as taxes work, such as when government uses taxes to build roads, it's not an unreasonable system. But that part of government is relatively rare. Most of the time government confiscates our money to give to someone else government has decided is more deserving or needs it more. And the one thing government itself needs more is money for itself because government always has another "program" that needs funding, including its own bureaucracy.
Basically government is a huge confiscation scheme designed to bleed as much wealth from its citizens as it can without killing them and thus stopping the flow of wealth from private hands where it is created into public hands which, more often than not, wastes it on dubious programs.
The interesting part is the way the public perceives all this and gets upset when it is discovered that government is stealing less money from one part than another. Rather than say, "That's a good start" we say, "That's not fair!" meaning we think the government should be confiscating more from companies such as Musk's, which are doing well, and (just a minor point) promoting those policies and technologies the government wants promoted.
So where is the collective outrage over the billions spent by this administration on "shovel ready" jobs that provided a few dozen? Where is the outrage when the government subsidized a "solar business" to much hoopla and coverage only to see them go bankrupt a few months later because, of all things, cost of production exceeded revenue? (Government is such an astute student of proper business practices, after all.)
But when Musk shows how to run a business properly the media gets all upset and says the public is shouldering all the costs. Not really. It's just a matter of disparate confiscation assuming government ought to steal the same amount (or percentage, or whatever) from everyone.
I, for one, am quite happy to "bear this burden" for something that hopes to increase my own independence and wealth in contrast to government taking a trillion dollars a year from us only to redistribute down a rat hole that doesn't work anyway.
That's your experience, maybe, assuming you really keep tabs on them, but it isn't mine. With the two stations I frequent, one a 30 pump station, it is often difficult to even find an empty pump.
Point being that none of us here get to tell the gas station how to handle this situation. The gas station gets to tell us how to handle the situation. We're here trying to find an elegant solution to a problem we think we can create without regard for the users just so we don't have to work so hard.
So what are you going to do about the lost revenue? You know, the revenue that ultimately helps pay your salary? IT still has not learned that the world does not revolve around it and seems blissfully unaware of the utter contempt the rest of the world has toward it. It's a reputation that is not unearned.
The REAL solution here is to network the pumps and push the software from afar, one at a time, late at night, laying off OP in the process. There is no reason you can't be replaced by a droid. Face it: You're doing grunt work. No particular expertise required.
OP said "day to day" activities. He's updating one pump at a time. What are the other pumps doing? Dispensing gasoline. To update all 16 pumps at once would render all 16 pumps out of service for half an hour. That is simply unacceptable for the station. They would not want to just shut everything down and eliminate a half-hour's worth of revenue from 15 pumps just so OP is not inconvenienced.
This is a typical IT viewpoint. We have a technical problem to solve, and to hell with the users. They're just in the way of our supreme elegance anyway.
Distance and time in Europe are much shorter. It's 3000 miles across one way and nearly 2000 the other. I just did a cross country with some zigs and zags and traveled 6,788 miles: Savannah to Seattle via Delaware and San Antonio. And you want me to take a train? Going from London to Paris is one thing. Going from LA to New York is quite another. That doesn't make me an idiot; it makes you one for not factoring that in.
Fact is it takes quite a lot of time to string one of these people along. Last time I did more or less what is on this tape, and stopped it just shy of downloading anything. I asked the guy, "What does your mother think about this?" He seemed confused, so I said, "Is your mother proud of what you are doing, trying to trick old people into hacking their little computer?" Then I yelled at him a little bit more.
So yeah, you can do it, but as someone else said here, your time is more valuable than theirs.
But if you look at the facts of that rpisode you will find some serious truth there. It's the same with this issue. It may be that global warming is entirely true. You all seem to think so, having studied the issue so closely over the years. And it is certainly true that some of the criticism, especially of Michael Mann, has been over the top.
BUT.......
It is ALSO true that there has been some serious fraud and disarray in the climate science field that cannot be simply explained away by some of you "climate scientists" doing the same thing to critics that climate scientists are claiming is being done to them. Watch this post get modded down if you doubt that.
For example, (and this is one of dozens), do you know what the phrase "Hide the decline" means? It was featured prominently in a YouTube post Mann didn't care for and is part of numerous howlers uncovered by the Climategate emails. Here's what happened.
In a multi-variable graph these scientists put together several plottings of temperature measurements that showed the temperature was rising. This included bona fide modern thermometers. ONE of the measurements, however, showed temperatures DECLINING during the same period when every other measurement showed temperatures RISING.
Hmm. That didn't look so good because if they published it with that sole line going down, they would have to EXPLAIN it, and they didn't want to do it. So what did they do? The Climategate emails show this clearly:
They erased the line. They HID THE DECLINE by showing it as it went into the decline, but then it disappeared and was absent as the graph showed a rising temperature, sans this errant line that wasn't behaving itself.
Tsk, tsk, you say. They shouldn't have done that. In the interests of full-disclosure and, you know, TRUTH, they should have published their results and not HIDDEN THE DECLINE.
But it gets worse:
The DECLINE was shown by the line representing tree-ring data. Now you all know about tree-ring data, right? And you know the rings get fatter when it's hot (or wet, let's not forget) and thinner if it's cold. AND since there were no accurate thermometers thousands of years ago, guess what these scientists used as a "proxy" for thermometers. This is what Michael Mann is famous for. He used tree ring data from a few trees in Siberia, among other places, but FEW TREES, to "prove" that the climate has been warming.
SO, if the modern tree-ring data is showing a decline in temperatures when every other measuring device they used was showing an increase, HOW could you reliably use tree ring data from thousands of years ago to prove anything at all? The DATA SHOWS THE OPPOSITE.
This shows and roves fraud. The emails confirm it because they are a smoking gun. They've been caught red-handed.
But you guys don't want to hear that and you don't want to investigate the truth of it. You just resort to doing what Michael Mann says is being done to him by calling the critics of global warming cooks and conspiracy nuts and suggesting they ought to be thrown in jail.
Now, do you want to hear about the famous climate scientist Al Gore who, in his huge graph on sea water temperature and CO2 levels, mixed up cause and effect when he claimed rising CO2 made the oceans warmer when, in fact, the warming oceans out gassed CO2 and made the levels rise? You don't want to hear that, do you? Al Gore refuses to debate it, too. Then he'd have to defend his screw up.
The most astonishing thing here is the attitude that if a scientist said it, it must be true, but when Michael Mann complains that he's being called names you perk up your ears. Here we have proof of massive fraud in this area and you don't seem to care.
So? What can you do about it? When we travel we tell our kids not to expect constant contact. If someone dies, we can't do anything about it. If someone is hurt, they don't need us there to observe them. We're not cutting our vacation short. WHY do people need to be in constant contact or "available"? It isn't necessary.
He said he had both. "I am a felon with several misdemeanors." He may have been unclear, but he did not mix them up.
He also did not enumerate any of them. That doesn't automatically mean they were for non-serious crimes and has nothing to do with the fact that the US has some idiotic laws on the books that can make felons out of "really nice people." This "poor baby, I'm so sorry you live in the US" crap just turns criminals into victims.
He had at least one felony and several misdemeanors in his background. That points to some sort of "life of crime" that is likely more than youthful indiscretions. Without more information we can only speculate what those were. This is information OP has not provided, perhaps willfully, as the type of crimes would surely would surely influence our answers.
When a company does a background check, they get back more than just "1 felony, 3 misdemeanors." They get back what he did. And if they don't want to hire him under those circumstances, they may have very good reasons.
Sometime what you do actually does influence your future. But "He was just turning his life around" is a stock phrase in nearly every article about yet another arrest. What you do shows your character, and if that messes you up, that's really too bad, but tough.
It's all relative. If the spouse is looking for zero noise and a whisper-quiet front room, turning on a cell phone will be too loud. But compare a laptop to a tricked-out gaming box with multiple cooling fans and a huge power supply, with all the attendant cables and peripherals and a laptop is relatively benign.
I have an Alienware 17" and when the graphics card fan starts up you can definitely hear it, but I've never had a complaint. It's unclear from the OP if it's just box noise that is the issue here, or if it's possibly surround sound with deep bass explosion that is driving spouse nuts. If it's the latter I can certainly understand the issue and suggest a pair of good headphones,
Hard core gamers will tell you a laptop is inappropriate, but I can't imagine playing at a desk in front of a large monitor. On a soft couch with the laptop propped in my lap is far more comfortable, though a touchpad mouse does not bode well for quick reaction times.
BTW, I have to laugh at those slashdotters telling OP to grow up and stop gaming. I'm 65 and play Star Wars, the Old Republic and Dragon Age: Inquisition with my grandson.
Although I realize you are a "physicist," not a "psychologist," it's still one of those "phy" type words. What do you think of Slashdot's (so far) overwhelmingly negative reaction to its editors asking for questions about the SCIENCE of the show for the show's SCIENCE ADVISOR and instead getting comments about the show's characterizations, humor, laugh track, and a fixation on the size of Kaley Cuoco's breasts? As the show's SCIENCE ADVISOR are you in a position to change or influence any of these "transgressions?"
Is this proof that the Geekdom of Slashdot is not capable of paying attention to the question at hand and has completely missed the point, were all forced to play the cello as kids, are letting their pent up emotions get in the way of asking an intelligent question and instead choose to lash out at a show they all watch, or still, after all these years, are incapable of getting laid? Or all of the above?
So it's perfectly OK to "hide the decline." After all, it doesn't really matter if tree ring data shows a decline in temperature in modern times when the temperature is obviously rising as shown by accurate thermometers. We'll just use the tree ring data as a proxy for past temperatures anyway. And when we discover the "anomaly" we'll just neglect to extend that graph line because it would be awkward to explain just why that green line is headed down, down, down while everything else is headed up.
After all, we're only coming off the "Little Ice Age" and are in an inter-glacial period. We can explain the "Medieval Warming Period" and the "Roman Warming Period" They're just "local variations," you know.
And so what if Al Gore got his CO2 readings and his temperature readings backwards, thus claiming CO2 caused temperature rises when the rises came first? It makes a very scary looking graph.
And what about the ice core samples from Greenland that show the "Hockey Stick" is such a minor glitch it can't be seen? Don't worry. We can change the scale to make it look bad and besides, no matter what input we use, as long as it's "red noise" (like stock prices) we get a hockey stick anyway! So no matter what we do, we can show how alarming it is!
Oh, and did we put some of our temperature gauges in asphalt parking lots in the south? Don't worry, we've "adjusted" those readings artificially.
After all, we're SCIENTISTS and we can explain everything. Move along. There's nothing to see here.
Slashdot Mirror
"has also uncovered some of the secrets of Pluto's largest moon, Charon. It has found indications of impact craters on the moon's gray surface."
Wow! Who would have thought? That's a big secret for sure!
Who started the slave trade and ingrained it into colonial culture for a hundred years before the USA existed, when it was owned, lock stock, and barrel, by European companies? The UK abolished slavery in 1833, a whopping 30 some years before the USA, then took the position of how "enlightened" they were compared to the USA, when they started the whole thing in the first place. Hypocrites.
I drive a pick-up with a perfect paint job and I think your attitude is sterotypically elitist. Spare us this "I work with my hands and know what Real Work is like and you guys are all wusses." crap and get your head out of your butt. The only one who is impressed with your supercilious definition of your perfect self is yourself.
The US has done both for decades. Not a measuring cup nor speedometer made does not have metric measurements on it. Sure, we use miles and Fahrenheit. Big deal. No mechanic doesn't have a metric set of sockets and wrenches. No serious scientific research doesn't use metric measurements.
The fact is, we can multi-task using two measuring systems and the rest of the world can't.
I built a house many years ago and very carefully wired it with telephone wire terminated in standard D-blocks so I could run the Lantastic WAN system.
Then along came Wi-Fi.
I also pre-wired speaker wire into a second set of electrical outlets, which worked pretty well, actually. But today I would use conduit because, well, Lantastic was great, but....
Government exists by confiscating money earned by others. This is supposed to be "for the public good," or so we are led to believe. And government taxes to exert public policy objectives. For example, it taxes tobacco and liquor because "they're bad" and gives tax "breaks" in the form of deductions for home owner interest because "owning a house is good." Pick your own examples. Insofar as taxes work, such as when government uses taxes to build roads, it's not an unreasonable system. But that part of government is relatively rare. Most of the time government confiscates our money to give to someone else government has decided is more deserving or needs it more. And the one thing government itself needs more is money for itself because government always has another "program" that needs funding, including its own bureaucracy.
Basically government is a huge confiscation scheme designed to bleed as much wealth from its citizens as it can without killing them and thus stopping the flow of wealth from private hands where it is created into public hands which, more often than not, wastes it on dubious programs.
The interesting part is the way the public perceives all this and gets upset when it is discovered that government is stealing less money from one part than another. Rather than say, "That's a good start" we say, "That's not fair!" meaning we think the government should be confiscating more from companies such as Musk's, which are doing well, and (just a minor point) promoting those policies and technologies the government wants promoted.
So where is the collective outrage over the billions spent by this administration on "shovel ready" jobs that provided a few dozen? Where is the outrage when the government subsidized a "solar business" to much hoopla and coverage only to see them go bankrupt a few months later because, of all things, cost of production exceeded revenue? (Government is such an astute student of proper business practices, after all.)
But when Musk shows how to run a business properly the media gets all upset and says the public is shouldering all the costs. Not really. It's just a matter of disparate confiscation assuming government ought to steal the same amount (or percentage, or whatever) from everyone.
I, for one, am quite happy to "bear this burden" for something that hopes to increase my own independence and wealth in contrast to government taking a trillion dollars a year from us only to redistribute down a rat hole that doesn't work anyway.
Might be a pretty good gamer.
Network the pumps. Push the software one at a time. Lay off the tech. Problem solved.
That's your experience, maybe, assuming you really keep tabs on them, but it isn't mine. With the two stations I frequent, one a 30 pump station, it is often difficult to even find an empty pump.
Point being that none of us here get to tell the gas station how to handle this situation. The gas station gets to tell us how to handle the situation. We're here trying to find an elegant solution to a problem we think we can create without regard for the users just so we don't have to work so hard.
So what are you going to do about the lost revenue? You know, the revenue that ultimately helps pay your salary? IT still has not learned that the world does not revolve around it and seems blissfully unaware of the utter contempt the rest of the world has toward it. It's a reputation that is not unearned.
The REAL solution here is to network the pumps and push the software from afar, one at a time, late at night, laying off OP in the process. There is no reason you can't be replaced by a droid. Face it: You're doing grunt work. No particular expertise required.
OP said "day to day" activities. He's updating one pump at a time. What are the other pumps doing? Dispensing gasoline. To update all 16 pumps at once would render all 16 pumps out of service for half an hour. That is simply unacceptable for the station. They would not want to just shut everything down and eliminate a half-hour's worth of revenue from 15 pumps just so OP is not inconvenienced.
This is a typical IT viewpoint. We have a technical problem to solve, and to hell with the users. They're just in the way of our supreme elegance anyway.
Distance and time in Europe are much shorter. It's 3000 miles across one way and nearly 2000 the other. I just did a cross country with some zigs and zags and traveled 6,788 miles: Savannah to Seattle via Delaware and San Antonio. And you want me to take a train? Going from London to Paris is one thing. Going from LA to New York is quite another. That doesn't make me an idiot; it makes you one for not factoring that in.
It does work just fine. Unfortunately the coffee they use in them is terrible. I have a whole box of French Roast that is unpalatable.
Fact is it takes quite a lot of time to string one of these people along. Last time I did more or less what is on this tape, and stopped it just shy of downloading anything. I asked the guy, "What does your mother think about this?" He seemed confused, so I said, "Is your mother proud of what you are doing, trying to trick old people into hacking their little computer?" Then I yelled at him a little bit more.
So yeah, you can do it, but as someone else said here, your time is more valuable than theirs.
But if you look at the facts of that rpisode you will find some serious truth there. It's the same with this issue. It may be that global warming is entirely true. You all seem to think so, having studied the issue so closely over the years. And it is certainly true that some of the criticism, especially of Michael Mann, has been over the top.
BUT.......
It is ALSO true that there has been some serious fraud and disarray in the climate science field that cannot be simply explained away by some of you "climate scientists" doing the same thing to critics that climate scientists are claiming is being done to them. Watch this post get modded down if you doubt that.
For example, (and this is one of dozens), do you know what the phrase "Hide the decline" means? It was featured prominently in a YouTube post Mann didn't care for and is part of numerous howlers uncovered by the Climategate emails. Here's what happened.
In a multi-variable graph these scientists put together several plottings of temperature measurements that showed the temperature was rising. This included bona fide modern thermometers. ONE of the measurements, however, showed temperatures DECLINING during the same period when every other measurement showed temperatures RISING.
Hmm. That didn't look so good because if they published it with that sole line going down, they would have to EXPLAIN it, and they didn't want to do it. So what did they do? The Climategate emails show this clearly:
They erased the line. They HID THE DECLINE by showing it as it went into the decline, but then it disappeared and was absent as the graph showed a rising temperature, sans this errant line that wasn't behaving itself.
Tsk, tsk, you say. They shouldn't have done that. In the interests of full-disclosure and, you know, TRUTH, they should have published their results and not HIDDEN THE DECLINE.
But it gets worse:
The DECLINE was shown by the line representing tree-ring data. Now you all know about tree-ring data, right? And you know the rings get fatter when it's hot (or wet, let's not forget) and thinner if it's cold. AND since there were no accurate thermometers thousands of years ago, guess what these scientists used as a "proxy" for thermometers. This is what Michael Mann is famous for. He used tree ring data from a few trees in Siberia, among other places, but FEW TREES, to "prove" that the climate has been warming.
SO, if the modern tree-ring data is showing a decline in temperatures when every other measuring device they used was showing an increase, HOW could you reliably use tree ring data from thousands of years ago to prove anything at all? The DATA SHOWS THE OPPOSITE.
This shows and roves fraud. The emails confirm it because they are a smoking gun. They've been caught red-handed.
But you guys don't want to hear that and you don't want to investigate the truth of it. You just resort to doing what Michael Mann says is being done to him by calling the critics of global warming cooks and conspiracy nuts and suggesting they ought to be thrown in jail.
Now, do you want to hear about the famous climate scientist Al Gore who, in his huge graph on sea water temperature and CO2 levels, mixed up cause and effect when he claimed rising CO2 made the oceans warmer when, in fact, the warming oceans out gassed CO2 and made the levels rise? You don't want to hear that, do you? Al Gore refuses to debate it, too. Then he'd have to defend his screw up.
The most astonishing thing here is the attitude that if a scientist said it, it must be true, but when Michael Mann complains that he's being called names you perk up your ears. Here we have proof of massive fraud in this area and you don't seem to care.
is 3400 miles? Really??
So? What can you do about it? When we travel we tell our kids not to expect constant contact. If someone dies, we can't do anything about it. If someone is hurt, they don't need us there to observe them. We're not cutting our vacation short. WHY do people need to be in constant contact or "available"? It isn't necessary.
He said he had both. "I am a felon with several misdemeanors." He may have been unclear, but he did not mix them up.
He also did not enumerate any of them. That doesn't automatically mean they were for non-serious crimes and has nothing to do with the fact that the US has some idiotic laws on the books that can make felons out of "really nice people." This "poor baby, I'm so sorry you live in the US" crap just turns criminals into victims.
He had at least one felony and several misdemeanors in his background. That points to some sort of "life of crime" that is likely more than youthful indiscretions. Without more information we can only speculate what those were. This is information OP has not provided, perhaps willfully, as the type of crimes would surely would surely influence our answers.
When a company does a background check, they get back more than just "1 felony, 3 misdemeanors." They get back what he did. And if they don't want to hire him under those circumstances, they may have very good reasons.
Sometime what you do actually does influence your future. But "He was just turning his life around" is a stock phrase in nearly every article about yet another arrest. What you do shows your character, and if that messes you up, that's really too bad, but tough.
It's all relative. If the spouse is looking for zero noise and a whisper-quiet front room, turning on a cell phone will be too loud. But compare a laptop to a tricked-out gaming box with multiple cooling fans and a huge power supply, with all the attendant cables and peripherals and a laptop is relatively benign.
I have an Alienware 17" and when the graphics card fan starts up you can definitely hear it, but I've never had a complaint. It's unclear from the OP if it's just box noise that is the issue here, or if it's possibly surround sound with deep bass explosion that is driving spouse nuts. If it's the latter I can certainly understand the issue and suggest a pair of good headphones,
Hard core gamers will tell you a laptop is inappropriate, but I can't imagine playing at a desk in front of a large monitor. On a soft couch with the laptop propped in my lap is far more comfortable, though a touchpad mouse does not bode well for quick reaction times.
BTW, I have to laugh at those slashdotters telling OP to grow up and stop gaming. I'm 65 and play Star Wars, the Old Republic and Dragon Age: Inquisition with my grandson.
result? No noise.
With a story like this, it's clear you are 48.
Why this would be marked a Troll is puzzling in that it is an absolute fact.
Although I realize you are a "physicist," not a "psychologist," it's still one of those "phy" type words. What do you think of Slashdot's (so far) overwhelmingly negative reaction to its editors asking for questions about the SCIENCE of the show for the show's SCIENCE ADVISOR and instead getting comments about the show's characterizations, humor, laugh track, and a fixation on the size of Kaley Cuoco's breasts? As the show's SCIENCE ADVISOR are you in a position to change or influence any of these "transgressions?"
Is this proof that the Geekdom of Slashdot is not capable of paying attention to the question at hand and has completely missed the point, were all forced to play the cello as kids, are letting their pent up emotions get in the way of asking an intelligent question and instead choose to lash out at a show they all watch, or still, after all these years, are incapable of getting laid? Or all of the above?
Actually, she had them "augmented." She said it was the best thing she has ever done.
So it's perfectly OK to "hide the decline." After all, it doesn't really matter if tree ring data shows a decline in temperature in modern times when the temperature is obviously rising as shown by accurate thermometers. We'll just use the tree ring data as a proxy for past temperatures anyway. And when we discover the "anomaly" we'll just neglect to extend that graph line because it would be awkward to explain just why that green line is headed down, down, down while everything else is headed up.
After all, we're only coming off the "Little Ice Age" and are in an inter-glacial period. We can explain the "Medieval Warming Period" and the "Roman Warming Period" They're just "local variations," you know.
And so what if Al Gore got his CO2 readings and his temperature readings backwards, thus claiming CO2 caused temperature rises when the rises came first? It makes a very scary looking graph.
And what about the ice core samples from Greenland that show the "Hockey Stick" is such a minor glitch it can't be seen? Don't worry. We can change the scale to make it look bad and besides, no matter what input we use, as long as it's "red noise" (like stock prices) we get a hockey stick anyway! So no matter what we do, we can show how alarming it is!
Oh, and did we put some of our temperature gauges in asphalt parking lots in the south? Don't worry, we've "adjusted" those readings artificially.
After all, we're SCIENTISTS and we can explain everything. Move along. There's nothing to see here.
Chemtrails are real, too....
How many gasoline cars catch on fire every year? Thousands.
How many Teslas have caught on fire ever? Two
Conclusion: Teslas catch on fire.