I once scored over 4,000 on the Atari 2600 game Circus. (Anybody remember that one? You were a clown, bouncing around and popping balloons. Sweet. Eat your heart out, Quake 3 Arena!) I imagine that's some kind of record, considering only 9 people ever even played that game...
The system that Metricom sold to power companies is called Utilinet (now licensed to Schlumberger), and is a completely different network from Ricochet. Utilinet radios talk at 9600 baud (RF) in the 900MHz frequency range only, and Ricochet and Utilinet radios are completely unaware of eachother.
We all know that the moves that are put on the mat in WWF are scripted and mostly stunts (still dangerous, but definitely not skill)...
How is the scripting of the WWF different from the scripting of figure skating or gymnastics? Yes, the result of each WWF match is predetermined, but the real judges are the fans, who know that the ref is just part of the show.
And besides, anyone who has ever watched an international ice skating competition or a Las Vegas/Don King fight has seen a fixed sporting event anywhoo.
IMHO, the Most Ridiculous Patent Award goes to BT for their claim to own the rights to the Hyperlink. They also get the nod for Most Ridiculous Attempt To Make Money Off Of A Ridiculous Patent by suing ISPs. Rat bastards!!:-)
This was debated by Linus Torvalds (Linux and the Monolithic Kernel) and Andrew Tannenbaum (Minix and the Microkernel) back in 1992. You can read their debate here.
Nothing is more mysterious in politics than why some issues capture the imagination of idealistic people like college students -- sweatshops in Latin America, for example -- and some don't, like the enormous gap in computer use and Net access between poor and rich kids.
Let's see... Basic civil liberties vs. the ability to download pr0n and watch your stock ticker stream by...
Remember the movie Wargames? That came out in 1980, well before the Internet as we know it came to be. I believe that's the kind of hacking Katz was referring to.
The utilities (PG&E, SCE, and SDG&E) were prohibited by the CPUC from entering into long term power contracts with the generators. The idea here was that they wanted to make sure that CalISO and the PX had enough business to remain viable.
This would make for an interesting study. If most people are like me, their desktop sits at home turned off until they get home from work, when it gets turned on for a couple of hours, then back off again. Servers, on the other hand, are on 24x7.
There are other factors to take into consideration as well. Silicon Valley uses far more than its fair share of electricity, between server farms and fab plants. For every new link in the World Wide Web, Cisco had to fabricate a half dozen routers. This would represent industrial use, but it's still Internet driven.
Either way, CA's in a mess. Remind me of Scotty, from the original Star Trek series: 'I no can do it, Captain! I doon have the power!':-)
At *some* point, deregulation or no, the SoCal power companies made the decision that upgrading infrastructure would not look good on the bottom line.
You need to differentiate between the SoCal utilities and the power generation companies. Per state order, SCE, PG&E, and SDG&E had to sell off most of their generation plants. The state did not want the same companies controlling generation and transmission/distribution (would sort of invalidate the whole 'breaking of the monopoly' thing). The utilities are now acting as middlemen (in a jacked-up sort of way, considering they have to pay massive wholesale prices, but can't pass those costs along to the consumers). The companies now responsible for generation (mostly out of state) did not want to invest in new plants until they were sure they would make money. The high wholesale prices didn't arrive until last year.
And never underestimate NIMBYism. Every Californian wants the lights to go on when they flip the switch, but they'll fight tooth & nail to keep that new generation plant from going up in their neighborhood...
As far as power consumption growing is concerned, it's not the desktops. It's the servers. They consume far more power than a truckload of desktops, and they run much closer to capacity than a desktop, most of the time.
To me, it seems simple: people want to buy power off the companies. Companies want to sell power to make money. Why the heck can't they sort it out properly?
Part of the problem here is that CA was only partially deregulated. The wholesalers can charge pretty much whatever they want. However, the utilities can't pass those costs along to the customers--the price they're allowed to charge is frozen. The utilities would love to buy & sell electricity, provided that they didn't lose money on the deal (even if they just sold it at cost). But you can only buy at 30 cents/unit and sell at 7 cents/unit for so long, even when the state makes you.
How about self-cleaning textiles that are covered in nano-machines that eject dirt?
Self-cleaning clothes? Where do I sign up? Then all I need are some nano-bots with little nano-irons to get all the wrinkles out. They could call them... nano-moms?
Over the years, The Simpsons tv show has had a number of geek related t-shirt gags. My favorite involved Lisa joining a geek club. One of the geeks was wearing a shirt that read:
C:\
C:\DOS
C:\DOS\RUN - RUN DOS RUN
Lisa laughed at this and remarked "Only one person in a million would find that funny!"
To which another of the geeks replied, "Yes, we call that the Dennis Miller ratio."
Go figure: two competing companies working together to develop exciting new products. Go get 'em AMD and Transmeta!
This is an example that should be followed more widely. The strength of each company is being utilized here, and the end result is better for everyone: AMD, Transmeta, and the consumer.
This is also an example of why most of the people reading this site despise Microsoft so much. When was the last time MS worked together with another company to make a better product? It's so much easier for them to simply buy the competitor, or crush them with their own product, haphazardly cooked up with a flurry of resources. MS is unfortunately in the position where they can ignore QA and true innovation due to their almost gauranteed market share for any product they introduce.
May more companies follow the lead of AMD and Transmeta! Oh, and Happy New Year!!
How many open source encoders are there for DVDs? None, that I am aware of. Yet an open source decoder was on the scene relatively quickly.
Which way would you rather have it? A Winblows only, proprietary, guarded by 6 million attack dog lawyers format, or a format where the open source community already has half of the equation?
Yeah, it would be nice to have it both ways, but lets not get pissed off when stuff is handed to us!
No doubt this thread will be filled with Xenophobic "Hahaha, the Russians are crap and have no money, and the US is better, hahaha" comments when in actual fact, since Chernobyl, the US has easily been able to compete on the "incidents" front with any other country...
Actually, "they were asking for it" is a better way to describe the Russians actions at Chernobyl:
1) No containment shield. One thing about the US's fear of nuclear power--there's no way any nuclear power plant would be built without a containment shield. At the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station in California, you could crash a 747 into the thing, and the containment wall would hold. It's also designed to withstand an 8.0 earthquake. 3" rebar used in construction--strong stuff.
2) Did you research what the idiot plant operators were doing at the time of the incident? They were running an experiment where they turned off all the safety equipment, then lowered the unit's output to a level that was known to be unstable. I'm guessing this would be an OSHA violation in the US.
Yeah, maybe smaller incidents happen at every nuclear power plant, but you've got to give those Russians a hand for giving a clinic on exactly what not to do while building and operating a nuclear power plant.
They already do. It's called product placement, and companies pay big bucks to have their products seen during shows.
There was a great scene in the movie Wayne's World where they mocked this practice, shamefully promoting several products within their movie. But it works--I remember the products were Pepsi and Pizza Hut.
As a previous poster noted, you have your head very firmly entrenched in your butt.
The very reason that so many plants are off line right now for maintenance is that they were used and abused so heavily this summer. Many plants set records for consecutive days running, and this kind of use takes its toll.
Also, during this time of year, we can normally count on about 3,000 MW of power to be imported from the Midwest. However, this power is not currently available because of the very cold weather that part of the country is experiencing.
It's a shame that/. seems to support such obvious karma whoring.
The parent post appears to be karma whoring, IMHO. There was obviously no research done before .
As an employee of one of California's electric utilities, let me fill you in on a few facts:
1) The government has little or nothing to do with providing the citizens of CA with electricity. Yes, the industry was recently deregulated, but even before that the electric utilities were publicly owned companies. The government simply regulated the prices that the utilities were allowed to charge, due to the implicit monopoly power that a utility normally has.
2) There are many reasons for the current power shortage, among them: a cold snap in the Midwest has limited the amount of power that can be imported from that region; many power plants are undergoing maintenance, since we beat the hell out of them this summer; still other power plants are out of service because they have exceeded their allowed amount of noxious emmissions.
3) Have you ever filed to build a power plant? This process takes years. CA's population growth in recent years has exceeded all estimates, and is growing at a much faster rate than the power supply.
4) Deregulation took place just a couple of years ago. During the transition period, companies were reluctant to commit to building power plants due to market uncertainty. There are several plants in various stages of development, but most won't come on line until 2002 at the earliest.
5) A previous poster noted that the large customers that have been asked to shut down did indeed sign up for this, although nobody expected them to have to do this almost 30 times this year. However, they do receive reduced rates throughout the year as compensation.
6) The utilities own a very small fraction of the power production. As part of deregulation, the utilities were required by state law to divest themselves of their production capability (with a few exceptions, such as nuclear generation). CA has little control over the actions of the companies that are currently responsible for running the plants, and we are in the midst of discovering that this is a bad thing. Your precious capitalists are screwing over the rest of CA by withholding generation in order to drive up prices.
I'm disappointed in the/. moderators for moding up the parent post. I hope I've shed some light on what's really happening here.
Soon after the results were posted, Netscape officials quickly filed a contest with the Court of Public Opinion. However, while the Court agreed to hear the case, it is doubtful that their decision will affect the outcome in any way.
When Microsoft was asked for a statement, they replied that they were too busy finishing their transition to browser/world dominance to be bothered with ancient history...
It only makes sense in a society that does not place any value on the freedom of speech.
Yes, child pornography is banned in the US. However, this is due to the fact that this represents the exploitation of minors (the fact that it's sick and degenerative tends to help people come up with legal rationalizations as to why it should be banned). Adult pornography is alive and well, despite the efforts of many who oppose it in moral grounds.
A closer analogy here in the US would be the Confederate flag. Any US citizen can fly this flag over their house if they so choose, as a demonstration of free speech. You could fly a Nazi flag, too, if you wanted (legally), but your neighbors might take the law into their own hands...
And before anybody starts yelling about South Carolina and the mess over them flying the Confederate flag, just remember that that represented a state institution sponsoring the promotion of Confederate ideals. Just like seperation of church and state, government bodies are held to a different standard than you or me. As a private citizen, I can fly any damn flag I want!
Ok, so this guy has 'proven' that dinosaurs could not have held their heads high. This begs the question: why the hell did those dinosaurs have long necks in the first place?
Evolutionary theory tells us that environmental pressures lead to some trait shift in a population. I'm guessing that since they could not use their long necks to reach high foilage, then the logical answer to why the long necks is to give the carnovaurs a bigger target. Or maybe it was to counter balance their enourmous tails?
Without a living animal to ask, how do these scientists 'prove' anything with a straight face?
Slashdot Mirror
I once scored over 4,000 on the Atari 2600 game Circus. (Anybody remember that one? You were a clown, bouncing around and popping balloons. Sweet. Eat your heart out, Quake 3 Arena!) I imagine that's some kind of record, considering only 9 people ever even played that game...
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Other than that, great comment!
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Don't forget 'toothpaste out of the tube.' Couldn't agree more.
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How is the scripting of the WWF different from the scripting of figure skating or gymnastics? Yes, the result of each WWF match is predetermined, but the real judges are the fans, who know that the ref is just part of the show.
And besides, anyone who has ever watched an international ice skating competition or a Las Vegas/Don King fight has seen a fixed sporting event anywhoo.
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IMHO, the Most Ridiculous Patent Award goes to BT for their claim to own the rights to the Hyperlink. They also get the nod for Most Ridiculous Attempt To Make Money Off Of A Ridiculous Patent by suing ISPs. Rat bastards!! :-)
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This was debated by Linus Torvalds (Linux and the Monolithic Kernel) and Andrew Tannenbaum (Minix and the Microkernel) back in 1992. You can read their debate here.
---
Let's see... Basic civil liberties vs. the ability to download pr0n and watch your stock ticker stream by...
You tell me.
---
Remember the movie Wargames? That came out in 1980, well before the Internet as we know it came to be. I believe that's the kind of hacking Katz was referring to.
---
The utilities (PG&E, SCE, and SDG&E) were prohibited by the CPUC from entering into long term power contracts with the generators. The idea here was that they wanted to make sure that CalISO and the PX had enough business to remain viable.
---
There are other factors to take into consideration as well. Silicon Valley uses far more than its fair share of electricity, between server farms and fab plants. For every new link in the World Wide Web, Cisco had to fabricate a half dozen routers. This would represent industrial use, but it's still Internet driven.
Either way, CA's in a mess. Remind me of Scotty, from the original Star Trek series: 'I no can do it, Captain! I doon have the power!' :-)
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It's so refreshing to read a comment from someone who actually understands the issue. You ought to drop Harvey Rosenfield a line and clue him in...
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You need to differentiate between the SoCal utilities and the power generation companies. Per state order, SCE, PG&E, and SDG&E had to sell off most of their generation plants. The state did not want the same companies controlling generation and transmission/distribution (would sort of invalidate the whole 'breaking of the monopoly' thing). The utilities are now acting as middlemen (in a jacked-up sort of way, considering they have to pay massive wholesale prices, but can't pass those costs along to the consumers). The companies now responsible for generation (mostly out of state) did not want to invest in new plants until they were sure they would make money. The high wholesale prices didn't arrive until last year.
And never underestimate NIMBYism. Every Californian wants the lights to go on when they flip the switch, but they'll fight tooth & nail to keep that new generation plant from going up in their neighborhood...
---
To me, it seems simple: people want to buy power off the companies. Companies want to sell power to make money. Why the heck can't they sort it out properly?
Part of the problem here is that CA was only partially deregulated. The wholesalers can charge pretty much whatever they want. However, the utilities can't pass those costs along to the customers--the price they're allowed to charge is frozen. The utilities would love to buy & sell electricity, provided that they didn't lose money on the deal (even if they just sold it at cost). But you can only buy at 30 cents/unit and sell at 7 cents/unit for so long, even when the state makes you.
---
Self-cleaning clothes? Where do I sign up? Then all I need are some nano-bots with little nano-irons to get all the wrinkles out. They could call them... nano-moms?
---
C:\
C:\DOS
C:\DOS\RUN - RUN DOS RUN
Lisa laughed at this and remarked "Only one person in a million would find that funny!"
To which another of the geeks replied, "Yes, we call that the Dennis Miller ratio."
Long live The Simpsons!!
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This is an example that should be followed more widely. The strength of each company is being utilized here, and the end result is better for everyone: AMD, Transmeta, and the consumer.
This is also an example of why most of the people reading this site despise Microsoft so much. When was the last time MS worked together with another company to make a better product? It's so much easier for them to simply buy the competitor, or crush them with their own product, haphazardly cooked up with a flurry of resources. MS is unfortunately in the position where they can ignore QA and true innovation due to their almost gauranteed market share for any product they introduce.
May more companies follow the lead of AMD and Transmeta! Oh, and Happy New Year!!
---
Which way would you rather have it? A Winblows only, proprietary, guarded by 6 million attack dog lawyers format, or a format where the open source community already has half of the equation?
Yeah, it would be nice to have it both ways, but lets not get pissed off when stuff is handed to us!
---
Actually, "they were asking for it" is a better way to describe the Russians actions at Chernobyl:
1) No containment shield. One thing about the US's fear of nuclear power--there's no way any nuclear power plant would be built without a containment shield. At the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station in California, you could crash a 747 into the thing, and the containment wall would hold. It's also designed to withstand an 8.0 earthquake. 3" rebar used in construction--strong stuff.
2) Did you research what the idiot plant operators were doing at the time of the incident? They were running an experiment where they turned off all the safety equipment, then lowered the unit's output to a level that was known to be unstable. I'm guessing this would be an OSHA violation in the US.
Yeah, maybe smaller incidents happen at every nuclear power plant, but you've got to give those Russians a hand for giving a clinic on exactly what not to do while building and operating a nuclear power plant.
---
There was a great scene in the movie Wayne's World where they mocked this practice, shamefully promoting several products within their movie. But it works--I remember the products were Pepsi and Pizza Hut.
---
You are the previous poster I was referring to as being correct. I never disagreed with you.
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The very reason that so many plants are off line right now for maintenance is that they were used and abused so heavily this summer. Many plants set records for consecutive days running, and this kind of use takes its toll.
Also, during this time of year, we can normally count on about 3,000 MW of power to be imported from the Midwest. However, this power is not currently available because of the very cold weather that part of the country is experiencing.
It's a shame that /. seems to support such obvious karma whoring.
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As an employee of one of California's electric utilities, let me fill you in on a few facts:
1) The government has little or nothing to do with providing the citizens of CA with electricity. Yes, the industry was recently deregulated, but even before that the electric utilities were publicly owned companies. The government simply regulated the prices that the utilities were allowed to charge, due to the implicit monopoly power that a utility normally has.
2) There are many reasons for the current power shortage, among them: a cold snap in the Midwest has limited the amount of power that can be imported from that region; many power plants are undergoing maintenance, since we beat the hell out of them this summer; still other power plants are out of service because they have exceeded their allowed amount of noxious emmissions.
3) Have you ever filed to build a power plant? This process takes years. CA's population growth in recent years has exceeded all estimates, and is growing at a much faster rate than the power supply.
4) Deregulation took place just a couple of years ago. During the transition period, companies were reluctant to commit to building power plants due to market uncertainty. There are several plants in various stages of development, but most won't come on line until 2002 at the earliest.
5) A previous poster noted that the large customers that have been asked to shut down did indeed sign up for this, although nobody expected them to have to do this almost 30 times this year. However, they do receive reduced rates throughout the year as compensation.
6) The utilities own a very small fraction of the power production. As part of deregulation, the utilities were required by state law to divest themselves of their production capability (with a few exceptions, such as nuclear generation). CA has little control over the actions of the companies that are currently responsible for running the plants, and we are in the midst of discovering that this is a bad thing. Your precious capitalists are screwing over the rest of CA by withholding generation in order to drive up prices.
I'm disappointed in the /. moderators for moding up the parent post. I hope I've shed some light on what's really happening here.
---
When Microsoft was asked for a statement, they replied that they were too busy finishing their transition to browser/world dominance to be bothered with ancient history...
---
Yes, child pornography is banned in the US. However, this is due to the fact that this represents the exploitation of minors (the fact that it's sick and degenerative tends to help people come up with legal rationalizations as to why it should be banned). Adult pornography is alive and well, despite the efforts of many who oppose it in moral grounds.
A closer analogy here in the US would be the Confederate flag. Any US citizen can fly this flag over their house if they so choose, as a demonstration of free speech. You could fly a Nazi flag, too, if you wanted (legally), but your neighbors might take the law into their own hands...
And before anybody starts yelling about South Carolina and the mess over them flying the Confederate flag, just remember that that represented a state institution sponsoring the promotion of Confederate ideals. Just like seperation of church and state, government bodies are held to a different standard than you or me. As a private citizen, I can fly any damn flag I want!
---
Evolutionary theory tells us that environmental pressures lead to some trait shift in a population. I'm guessing that since they could not use their long necks to reach high foilage, then the logical answer to why the long necks is to give the carnovaurs a bigger target. Or maybe it was to counter balance their enourmous tails?
Without a living animal to ask, how do these scientists 'prove' anything with a straight face?
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