But people often overlook that you get 1000 prints from the starter cart & 3000 from the full one. (These are for lasers, anyway - I stopped buying inkjets because of the cost.)
Start with outdoor lighting. Outdoor lights, by their very nature, must be sealed. CFLs contain lots of electronic components, including electrolytic capacitors. In a sealed enclosure, these parts can heat up beyond the thermal limits of their components within minutes. Therefore, for outdoor use, you should not use CFLs, period. (Yes, some manufacturers claim that their bulbs can be used outdoors in certain circumstances, but if you install them, be aware that the bulbs will fail much, much sooner than their rated lifespan would suggest, and if it is cold out, you should expect to have no light at all; in short, unless you life in California or Oregon, you shouldn't seriously consider CFLs as a viable outdoor light source.)
LED lamps will almost certainly have the same thermal failure problems for precisely the same reason. Electronic circuits are simply not designed to operate at such high temperatures, and when you try to use them that way, they will fail much, much sooner than they ordinarily would.
My porch light runs 24/7 (there's no switch for it) so I always use an efficient light. My last CFL out there lasted 2+ years, and here in MD that means up to 100 degrees F & down to 20 degrees F. Now I have a cheapo ebay 4w LED that has been going for about a year and a half, who knows how long it'll keep going. Either way it's longer than you'd hope for from an incandescent, meaning I don't have to get out the ladder as often, and using less power. So while in theory you may have issues, in practice I'm not seeing any, though I have had LED bulbs fail quite quickly indoors probably due to manufacturing defects. I just accept that it's new stuff and deal with it.
Or use one of the online backup services, though the limited bandwidth might make that less useful. But mailing a backup of pictures etc on an sd card to your parents every once in a while might not be a bad idea.
I like the VPN solution, it covers you for any non-ssl connections you might be using (POP, ftp) on an untrusted network. In addition, I have found while traveling that a lot of wireless hotspots have ridiculously messed up DNS, blocking tons of sites and redirecting you, etc. To me, that's been a real upside to using a VPN. Just make sure that everything gets routed through it, and still be as careful as you would without it, and you should be good. Have fun!
If USB sticks seem too fragile for you, you could try an SD card in a USB adapter - slightly larger, but easy to swap the SD card out if the USB connector gets broken. Decent SD cards should last a long time for just moving data around.
You're really just moving the hardware requirements to the server side as far as I can tell.
I get you, but it is more efficient - your local hardware requirements have to meet your peak demands, but are mostly underused; the datacenter is averaging out over a bunch of users.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is the *enemy*. He cannot be rehabilitated. He cannot be reconstructed. He and his comrades would seek the overthrow of our system of government and its replacement with Sharia law.
My view is, he's just like Timothy McVeigh, or an abortion clinic shooter. There's no way they can actually overthrow our system of government. They are non state terrorists, little more than common criminals, and really have very little power. Our system of the rule of law is much stronger and more important than any of them - and if we can't convict him in a court of law, then he should be freed. If he is freed and viewed as a serious threat, he should be kept under surveillance, but the rule of law is more important than any one individual.
Must be the same place I do, because I deal with this same issue all the time. I had a pair of Dell monitors which wouldn't scale below their native resolution; despite them being nice 23" monitors I tried them at 3 different users' desks before I found one who would use them.
The trouble with your proposal to just track "key" roads is that it encourages traffic to do rat-runs along secondary roads. I experienced this personally when tolling was brought in on a freeway near my house; the alternative routes were suddenly jam-packed with traffic, particularly at off-peak times when they were previously quiet.
That's why variable pricing (if implemented sensibly) is a good idea. Off peak, rates should be low or free; peak, prices should rise enough to keep the volume to the point where it's just below congested. People often don't like the idea much, but it's a rational model.
Wait, so Apple fixed a hardware error and we should cheer them for it? After they gave her the runaround twice?
It's pretty well established that if you screw up, and then fix the problem in a generous manner, the customer is going to be even happier with you than if you'd never screwed up at all. This case seems to be yet another confirmation of this principle.
then there's the one above that says put them all on a slip but don't say which is which...oh yeah, ok, now I only have to try 10 things or so...which with most default configs means I have a 100% chance of getting the right one eventually, since all I have to do is try twice, wait an hour, try to others, wait an hour...etc.
No, first you need to steal/find his wallet, then you have to figure out his username for a particular site, THEN try all the passwords. And at the end of that, you have control over a slashdot account. Seriously, this method would be good enough for me, although I still use strip on a Palm. But the intersection of people who know what my username is on any site of any importance and who would abuse that if they were to steal my password list is vanishingly small. I trust my friends, and a stranger wouldn't know where to start with a random list of gibberish that may or may not be passwords.
(e.g. from cooking on the stove... there is no way I'm moving to Electric)
You should check out induction cooktops - the quick response of gas, the convenience of electric, and a sleek look. It's what I'm going with in our kitchen remodel.
I have considered keeping an old cell phone on a charger & showing the kids how to use it to dial 911 in case of emergency; I still keep a landline because it's much more likely that they'll need to call me than 911. An old cell phone isn't a bad backup, though maybe not for a 3 year old. Of course a 3 year old isn't going to be home alone anyway.
People with kids who are old enough to be home alone for a while, but not old enough to have their own mobile phone, still need landlines. That's in addition to all the other valid reasons people are listing here.
Maryland has the Bay, which is awesome. But we also have (in the DC area) the 2nd worst traffic in the nation. Overall, I think it's a pretty good place to be. Takoma Park, it should be noted, is not really representative of Maryland as a whole - it's generally marching to the beat of its own drummer, for both good and bad (mostly good, imo).
it just isn't worth it, unless you only need the power short term
But as they said, they only needed it short term. It was more effective to just rent the 100 instances to get the cracking done reasonably quickly, since the client had no need for extra machines once the job was done.
My wife leaves Firefox open on Vista with 50+ tabs open, some with flash & some with pdfs, for weeks on end. It actually rarely crashes, much to my amazement. Usually after a few weeks it starts acting a little weird, I close a few tabs, shut down Firefox & re-open (it's set to keep all the tabs) and it takes a couple of minutes for all the tabs to load. Then it's good for another few weeks.
Do the advertisements really bring in more revenue than, say, the bulk price of a Windows license?
From what I've read previously, yes. I've heard they can make over $50 on the crapware, while the Windows license is $50. Even if they didn't, most would be ordered with Windows anyway, so it's still generating revenue.
Your newspaper will await you when you pick up the device, silently downloaded and updated in the background over 3G/wifi without the need for a carrier contract.
I fail to see how this is better than just using the wifi I already have at my house to visit the website & see the current news, instead of what they had assembled for a print version last night. If I want a summary of trends etc, a weekly like the Economist is good, but for news, a paper's website is usually going to be better for me than a digital version of the printed paper. It's unfortunate for the papers, but I really don't care about "silently downloaded" stuff that will be more current on Google News. And I know that one way or another, I'd be paying for that 3G access.
But why, exactly, does a consumer want Windows? For Excel? Word?
Here's what I do with my netbook: Simple browsing - Linux works fine (but is ARM flash support as good? My kids request YouTube funny cats videos on a regular basis) Email - Linux works fine, using Outlook Web Access is much better with IE Watching movies while travelling - Linux works ok, with some issues with sound & volume levels Importing AVCHD files from camcorder while traveling - Could be done with Linux but more awkward Dreamweaver - I haven't found a WYSIWYG editor for Linux that is as easy to use as even a very old version of Dreamweaver. So I bought an XP EEE, and have Ubuntu on an SD card for when I want it. For most of what I want to do, XP is easier or the same; nothing I want to do regularly is actually easier in Linux. And most of the shell scripting stuff I ever do in Linux, I can do with Cygwin.
Slashdot Mirror
But people often overlook that you get 1000 prints from the starter cart & 3000 from the full one. (These are for lasers, anyway - I stopped buying inkjets because of the cost.)
Yes, but your heat pump is currently 300% efficient, though that may drop to 100% when it gets really cold.
Start with outdoor lighting. Outdoor lights, by their very nature, must be sealed. CFLs contain lots of electronic components, including electrolytic capacitors. In a sealed enclosure, these parts can heat up beyond the thermal limits of their components within minutes. Therefore, for outdoor use, you should not use CFLs, period. (Yes, some manufacturers claim that their bulbs can be used outdoors in certain circumstances, but if you install them, be aware that the bulbs will fail much, much sooner than their rated lifespan would suggest, and if it is cold out, you should expect to have no light at all; in short, unless you life in California or Oregon, you shouldn't seriously consider CFLs as a viable outdoor light source.)
LED lamps will almost certainly have the same thermal failure problems for precisely the same reason. Electronic circuits are simply not designed to operate at such high temperatures, and when you try to use them that way, they will fail much, much sooner than they ordinarily would.
My porch light runs 24/7 (there's no switch for it) so I always use an efficient light. My last CFL out there lasted 2+ years, and here in MD that means up to 100 degrees F & down to 20 degrees F. Now I have a cheapo ebay 4w LED that has been going for about a year and a half, who knows how long it'll keep going. Either way it's longer than you'd hope for from an incandescent, meaning I don't have to get out the ladder as often, and using less power. So while in theory you may have issues, in practice I'm not seeing any, though I have had LED bulbs fail quite quickly indoors probably due to manufacturing defects. I just accept that it's new stuff and deal with it.
Or use one of the online backup services, though the limited bandwidth might make that less useful. But mailing a backup of pictures etc on an sd card to your parents every once in a while might not be a bad idea.
I like the VPN solution, it covers you for any non-ssl connections you might be using (POP, ftp) on an untrusted network. In addition, I have found while traveling that a lot of wireless hotspots have ridiculously messed up DNS, blocking tons of sites and redirecting you, etc. To me, that's been a real upside to using a VPN. Just make sure that everything gets routed through it, and still be as careful as you would without it, and you should be good. Have fun!
If USB sticks seem too fragile for you, you could try an SD card in a USB adapter - slightly larger, but easy to swap the SD card out if the USB connector gets broken. Decent SD cards should last a long time for just moving data around.
You're really just moving the hardware requirements to the server side as far as I can tell.
I get you, but it is more efficient - your local hardware requirements have to meet your peak demands, but are mostly underused; the datacenter is averaging out over a bunch of users.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is the *enemy*. He cannot be rehabilitated. He cannot be reconstructed. He and his comrades would seek the overthrow of our system of government and its replacement with Sharia law.
My view is, he's just like Timothy McVeigh, or an abortion clinic shooter. There's no way they can actually overthrow our system of government. They are non state terrorists, little more than common criminals, and really have very little power. Our system of the rule of law is much stronger and more important than any of them - and if we can't convict him in a court of law, then he should be freed. If he is freed and viewed as a serious threat, he should be kept under surveillance, but the rule of law is more important than any one individual.
3. Move the monitor closer to the user.
You don't have any users, do you? ;)
Where do you work? :)
Must be the same place I do, because I deal with this same issue all the time. I had a pair of Dell monitors which wouldn't scale below their native resolution; despite them being nice 23" monitors I tried them at 3 different users' desks before I found one who would use them.
The trouble with your proposal to just track "key" roads is that it encourages traffic to do rat-runs along secondary roads. I experienced this personally when tolling was brought in on a freeway near my house; the alternative routes were suddenly jam-packed with traffic, particularly at off-peak times when they were previously quiet.
That's why variable pricing (if implemented sensibly) is a good idea. Off peak, rates should be low or free; peak, prices should rise enough to keep the volume to the point where it's just below congested. People often don't like the idea much, but it's a rational model.
Wait, so Apple fixed a hardware error and we should cheer them for it? After they gave her the runaround twice?
It's pretty well established that if you screw up, and then fix the problem in a generous manner, the customer is going to be even happier with you than if you'd never screwed up at all. This case seems to be yet another confirmation of this principle.
then there's the one above that says put them all on a slip but don't say which is which...oh yeah, ok, now I only have to try 10 things or so...which with most default configs means I have a 100% chance of getting the right one eventually, since all I have to do is try twice, wait an hour, try to others, wait an hour...etc.
No, first you need to steal/find his wallet, then you have to figure out his username for a particular site, THEN try all the passwords. And at the end of that, you have control over a slashdot account. Seriously, this method would be good enough for me, although I still use strip on a Palm. But the intersection of people who know what my username is on any site of any importance and who would abuse that if they were to steal my password list is vanishingly small. I trust my friends, and a stranger wouldn't know where to start with a random list of gibberish that may or may not be passwords.
(e.g. from cooking on the stove... there is no way I'm moving to Electric)
You should check out induction cooktops - the quick response of gas, the convenience of electric, and a sleek look. It's what I'm going with in our kitchen remodel.
I have considered keeping an old cell phone on a charger & showing the kids how to use it to dial 911 in case of emergency; I still keep a landline because it's much more likely that they'll need to call me than 911. An old cell phone isn't a bad backup, though maybe not for a 3 year old. Of course a 3 year old isn't going to be home alone anyway.
People with kids who are old enough to be home alone for a while, but not old enough to have their own mobile phone, still need landlines. That's in addition to all the other valid reasons people are listing here.
Maryland has the Bay, which is awesome. But we also have (in the DC area) the 2nd worst traffic in the nation. Overall, I think it's a pretty good place to be.
Takoma Park, it should be noted, is not really representative of Maryland as a whole - it's generally marching to the beat of its own drummer, for both good and bad (mostly good, imo).
Imagine if it were possible to do more than one thing at a time. Then we could provide food aid as needed, AND work on raising education levels.
Nah, it'd never work.
it just isn't worth it, unless you only need the power short term
But as they said, they only needed it short term. It was more effective to just rent the 100 instances to get the cracking done reasonably quickly, since the client had no need for extra machines once the job was done.
Check out this lifehacker post:
http://lifehacker.com/5391308/build-a-silent-standalone-xbmc-media-center-on-the-cheap
The Acer AspireRevo is $199 & seems to do it all.
Maybe Debian, but Ubuntu uses Firefox.
My wife leaves Firefox open on Vista with 50+ tabs open, some with flash & some with pdfs, for weeks on end. It actually rarely crashes, much to my amazement. Usually after a few weeks it starts acting a little weird, I close a few tabs, shut down Firefox & re-open (it's set to keep all the tabs) and it takes a couple of minutes for all the tabs to load. Then it's good for another few weeks.
Do the advertisements really bring in more revenue than, say, the bulk price of a Windows license?
From what I've read previously, yes. I've heard they can make over $50 on the crapware, while the Windows license is $50. Even if they didn't, most would be ordered with Windows anyway, so it's still generating revenue.
Your newspaper will await you when you pick up the device, silently downloaded and updated in the background over 3G/wifi without the need for a carrier contract.
I fail to see how this is better than just using the wifi I already have at my house to visit the website & see the current news, instead of what they had assembled for a print version last night. If I want a summary of trends etc, a weekly like the Economist is good, but for news, a paper's website is usually going to be better for me than a digital version of the printed paper. It's unfortunate for the papers, but I really don't care about "silently downloaded" stuff that will be more current on Google News. And I know that one way or another, I'd be paying for that 3G access.
But why, exactly, does a consumer want Windows? For Excel? Word?
Here's what I do with my netbook:
Simple browsing - Linux works fine (but is ARM flash support as good? My kids request YouTube funny cats videos on a regular basis)
Email - Linux works fine, using Outlook Web Access is much better with IE
Watching movies while travelling - Linux works ok, with some issues with sound & volume levels
Importing AVCHD files from camcorder while traveling - Could be done with Linux but more awkward
Dreamweaver - I haven't found a WYSIWYG editor for Linux that is as easy to use as even a very old version of Dreamweaver.
So I bought an XP EEE, and have Ubuntu on an SD card for when I want it. For most of what I want to do, XP is easier or the same; nothing I want to do regularly is actually easier in Linux. And most of the shell scripting stuff I ever do in Linux, I can do with Cygwin.