an explosion of planned colocation facilities will strain the European grid to its limit
Most computers use switched-mode power supplies. These are a mainly INDUCTIVE load on the grid.
"When the grid was made", most of the stuff on it was (well, MOSTLY still IS) RESISTIVE loads like filament bulbs and heating elements.
I understand that the big increase in INDUCTIVE loads, though not providing an actual POWER CONSUMPTION problem, does provide some kind of a STABILITY problem. The grid people can add in all kinds of filters and stuff to balance the effect of too much inductive load, but then when any tiny section of the grid drops out, the resulting spike upsets the inductive loads and the filters in adjoining sections of the grid, which will also pop their big oil-filled grid fuses, which will in turn produce a spike that upsets THEIR neighbours, etc etc etc... In a nutshell, the entire grid is balancing on a knife edge, which is getting sharper and sharper every day as we add more inductive loads to it.
There's no problem actually generating ENOUGH POWER... The problem is keeping the whole grid stable.
... or so I've been led to believe...
This is probably less of an issue if, instead of using a big unstable grid, you're generating your own electricity from solar arrays, and filtering and balancing it however you want.
If the cornershop sells the delicious strawberry jam I make, but the show owner also sells illegal weapons (nukes and the like)
No, you've got the wrong end of the stick. Napster isn't a corner store. It's not selling nukes, it's just letting other people swap them. It's more like a car boot sale, or a bring-and-buy sale, except, again, NOBODY is making money... But continuing my example for a few seconds... If a farmer organises a car boot sale in a spare field, and someone decides to bring a couple of disused nukes along to sell them there... It's the TRADER who's breaking the law, not the FARMER who just allowed people to use his field for their (mostly 100% legal) sales.
I remember my first sysadmin job, running out of space in/home. You don't expect your landlord to help you clear out your closet when it's full, but for some reason you DO expect your sysadmin to help you clean out your/home partition when THAT is full... whatever...
... so I do a scan of/home looking for core files. Delete a couple of them. Helps a bit, but still very full. OK, scan for the biggest files...
(readable only by the owner - at least the boss had HALF a clue...)
Er, right... OK... This is the boss that asked me to make space, OK... how to be tactful about this? Hmm, OK, how about I just "du/home | sort -n -r | head | mail -s 'these are the biggest directories on/home - please tidy them up' allstaff"...
... and of course, a bit more space appears shortly afterwards...
... and of course, a few weeks later, the space is full again, the boss is back again asking to make more space... "Can I buy a bigger drive?", "No, we can't afford it" (those were the days!)...
Interestingly enough, the largest directory was now called ~name-of-boss/p/m/. The largest file was still ~name-of-boss/p/m/fisting.mpg...
I figured, what the hell, delete a couple of them, 20% of disk space restored, let's see if he's going to ask me to restore THEM from a backup!:-)
And NO, I'm not going to name the boss, or even the company that I used to work for then...:-p
This question is not likely to get high moderation unless the moderators know the story, I guess, but...
At a "Global village" talk in London a couple of years ago, you told a very funny story "which REALLY happenned to YOU" about eating biscuits whilst waiting for a train. A couple of months later, I caught up with "So Long..." and "Mostly Harmless", and I can't remember which one, but basically I was shocked to discover that the same thing had "REALLY happenned to ARTHUR DENT"!
For the benefit of those that haven't heard it, could you briefly re-tell in your own great style, and could you also tell us which station it was, whether it really DID happen to you, or Arthur (well, ok), or both, or whether it's entirely made up, or what? Are you Arthur Dent?
I mean let's face it, the Amiga sucks in todays computing environment. The only people who are still in love with the Amiga are die-hard crazies who don't have the wherewithal to setup and run a more complicated and modern system like Linux or Windows.
I'm still in love with the Amiga.
I may be a die-hard crazy, if it helps your argument;-)
I CAN set up AmigaOS, Linux, OpenBSD, NetBSD, FreeBSD, Solaris, Windows, Irix, HP-(s)UX, AIX, and probably half a dozen other OSes I've forgotten.
Some of these, I'm PAID to set up and look after for a living...
...for a multinational company.
I have the first 3 (and have had the 4th) of the above OSes set up on my PPC Amiga at home.
At home, I still run AmigaOS 99% or the time. I feel as though I have the others set up "just to prove I can". I CAN run Linux (etc) on my Amiga, but AmigaOS is still CLEARLY nicer, easier, and more pleasant to use, otherwise I wouldn't be using it!!!
Nearly all of the people who flame the Amiga aren't aware of the fact that anything above an Amiga500 exists, let alone PPC-based multi-CPU Amigas that are quite capable of playing quake at 50fps with the big boys.
I first read Ender's Game aged about 12, loved it, and to this day it still remains my favourite book ever. The rest of the ender trilogy/quartet are OK too, and some other classics like Hitchhiker's come close, but Ender's Game is still the best. They're also making a film of it at the moment, so now would be a good time to read it!
What about us in the UK, who don't want to convert all our money to dollars and back again? Has anyone found a decent UK online bank yet?
Most of the high-street banks have SOME kind of online-banking, but most of them require windoze software, or some of them have nice java software but it checks you're running windoze before letting you run it! (yes, there are hacks, but I'd rather not give THOSE kind of people my business)...
Egg has a nice interest rate, and has done it The Way It Should Be Done with no java, just plain HTML, CGI, HTTPS... but they only allow you to pay out into your one or two nominated accounts, so you can't use it to pay bills, give money to friends, etc etc, and anyway, their security panics and locks you out if you dare to use the wrong capitalisation in any of the security questions.
marbles isn't a bank after all. anyone tried first-e? any good? what about any of the others?
I'm after something that will take my pay-cheque, and look after it, preferably earning a little interest. Something that will let me pay bills, pay money to friends, or transfer to other accounts. It MUST NOT make a fuss about me using any more secure OS than most of the rest of the planet. It should PREFERABLY not use huge java apps either, but I'd probably put up with java if it met all my other requirements.
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Most computers use switched-mode power supplies. These are a mainly INDUCTIVE load on the grid.
"When the grid was made", most of the stuff on it was (well, MOSTLY still IS) RESISTIVE loads like filament bulbs and heating elements.
I understand that the big increase in INDUCTIVE loads, though not providing an actual POWER CONSUMPTION problem, does provide some kind of a STABILITY problem. The grid people can add in all kinds of filters and stuff to balance the effect of too much inductive load, but then when any tiny section of the grid drops out, the resulting spike upsets the inductive loads and the filters in adjoining sections of the grid, which will also pop their big oil-filled grid fuses, which will in turn produce a spike that upsets THEIR neighbours, etc etc etc... In a nutshell, the entire grid is balancing on a knife edge, which is getting sharper and sharper every day as we add more inductive loads to it.
There's no problem actually generating ENOUGH POWER... The problem is keeping the whole grid stable.
This is probably less of an issue if, instead of using a big unstable grid, you're generating your own electricity from solar arrays, and filtering and balancing it however you want.
No, you've got the wrong end of the stick. Napster isn't a corner store. It's not selling nukes, it's just letting other people swap them. It's more like a car boot sale, or a bring-and-buy sale, except, again, NOBODY is making money... But continuing my example for a few seconds... If a farmer organises a car boot sale in a spare field, and someone decides to bring a couple of disused nukes along to sell them there... It's the TRADER who's breaking the law, not the FARMER who just allowed people to use his field for their (mostly 100% legal) sales.
... so I do a scan of /home looking for core files. Delete a couple of them. Helps a bit, but still very full. OK, scan for the biggest files...
(readable only by the owner - at least the boss had HALF a clue...)Er, right... OK... This is the boss that asked me to make space, OK... how to be tactful about this? Hmm, OK, how about I just "du /home | sort -n -r | head | mail -s 'these are the biggest directories on /home - please tidy them up' allstaff"...
Interestingly enough, the largest directory was now called ~name-of-boss/p/m/. The largest file was still ~name-of-boss/p/m/fisting.mpg...
I figured, what the hell, delete a couple of them, 20% of disk space restored, let's see if he's going to ask me to restore THEM from a backup! :-)
And NO, I'm not going to name the boss, or even the company that I used to work for then... :-p
At a "Global village" talk in London a couple of years ago, you told a very funny story "which REALLY happenned to YOU" about eating biscuits whilst waiting for a train. A couple of months later, I caught up with "So Long..." and "Mostly Harmless", and I can't remember which one, but basically I was shocked to discover that the same thing had "REALLY happenned to ARTHUR DENT"!
For the benefit of those that haven't heard it, could you briefly re-tell in your own great style, and could you also tell us which station it was, whether it really DID happen to you, or Arthur (well, ok), or both, or whether it's entirely made up, or what? Are you Arthur Dent?
No $#!+? Whereas most other DVD players play the movie whilst it's still encrypted, and let you watch the white noise, I suppose?
April Fool! April Fool! April Fool!
I first read Ender's Game aged about 12, loved it, and to this day it still remains my favourite book ever. The rest of the ender trilogy/quartet are OK too, and some other classics like Hitchhiker's come close, but Ender's Game is still the best. They're also making a film of it at the moment, so now would be a good time to read it!
Most of the high-street banks have SOME kind of online-banking, but most of them require windoze software, or some of them have nice java software but it checks you're running windoze before letting you run it! (yes, there are hacks, but I'd rather not give THOSE kind of people my business)...
Egg has a nice interest rate, and has done it The Way It Should Be Done with no java, just plain HTML, CGI, HTTPS... but they only allow you to pay out into your one or two nominated accounts, so you can't use it to pay bills, give money to friends, etc etc, and anyway, their security panics and locks you out if you dare to use the wrong capitalisation in any of the security questions.
marbles isn't a bank after all. anyone tried first-e? any good? what about any of the others?
I'm after something that will take my pay-cheque, and look after it, preferably earning a little interest. Something that will let me pay bills, pay money to friends, or transfer to other accounts. It MUST NOT make a fuss about me using any more secure OS than most of the rest of the planet. It should PREFERABLY not use huge java apps either, but I'd probably put up with java if it met all my other requirements.
Help! :-)