Ice displaces a volume of water equal to it's weight. So (discounting the whole mass vs weight thingy) a chunk of ice weighing a kilogram will displace a volume of water weighing a kilogram.
This is true for ice that is displacing it's weight in water volume by floating. Melting ice on land will then add to the volume of water without removing it's volume displacement while ice.
Melting floating ice does nothing to the level of water when it melts. It does not add mass as it melts. Melting glaciers on the mountain valleys add mass to the water below.
when it comes time to upgrade, i will be looking towards the lixux distros again. i would have done it by now but my copy of xp is legit and vista isn't worth the bandwidth.
My dad went to OSX and I have migrated to Ubuntu. My employer has finaly officialy stated they are skipping Vista and will wait for the next version. My new dual core machine isn't bothering with dual boot like the old PIII machine. It's all Linux.
The most interesting is getting sued. It would contain; Child porn, Copyrighted images, dog fighting, DECSS, classified military photos, unpublished UFO photos, bomb plans, tradmarked company logos, this slashdot post, etc.
"the average iTunes user spends only $12 per year at the store"
Not every iPod owner is an iTunes user. How many songs are on a typical kid's iPod? Only an average of 12 songs/year and only for those who use iTunes.
iTunes is a niche boutique next to the freeway where most don't bother to even look.
From your link; For the music industry, there is a dark side to Apple's ascension to the top of the charts. Buying patterns for digital downloads are different, as customers are far more likely to cherry pick a favorite track or two from an album than purchase the whole thing. In contrast, brick-and-mortar sales are predominantly high-margin CDs. For 2007, that translated into a 10 percent decline in overall music spending according to the NPD Group, and it's a trend that's expected to continue for the foreseeable future.
The iTunes Store leads the pack with 19 percent,
This dollar amount is part of the overall market shrink even though the capacity and quanity of personal players have exploded. The market expanded, the sales shrank. Where is all the music on these devices from? More important, why can't the industry meet the market to sell into it instead of being bypassed by the new freeway?
There are more players in the hands of more people able to contain entiere libraries of music, but sales are down 10% even though the market expanded several times as those who used to carry no music and only had a stereo at home shared by the family now have personal players. Neither Apple nor any other retailer has been able to sell into the expanded market. DRM, High prices, and the ease of piracy all contribute to the undisputed fact that the great vast majority of music on iPods is NOT from the iTunes store or from the owner's personal CD collection. iTunes sales is only a small niche of the overall music out there.
Again, on a typical 30 or 60 Gig iPod sold, how many songs on average are from iTunes? I'll wager money this is less than 1%. Having 20% sales of the less than 1% purchased music out there is niche in my book.
If you see someone with an iPod, start an informal survey. How many songs are on it? How many are from iTunes, How many are from your CD's you ripped yourself, and how many are from "other sources" trading, sneakernet and P-P. Be sure to ask kids as this is the largest demographic. I know the ratio on my 2 kids players. I backed one up befor sending it in for repair. Of the 20+ Gigs, none were from an online store, several hundred were ripped from borrowed CD's and the rest traded with friends. Only about 3 CD's were from ones they own. This is typical of middle school kids. No credit cards, no accounts, limited spending money better spent on concerts and parties, and lots of friends to swap with. By the time they reach college, the pattern is already set.
My legal collection is larger as I already have a CD and LP collection. However, none is from P-P, none from online stores, and some is from sneakernet. My player is only 1 Gig. It plays MP3's and unprotected WMA files only, thus almost all online stores sell incompatible formats.
MP3's work. They are everywhere, most places don't sell them. Any questions?
the current tech darling Apple would be tumbling from their throne instead of seated securely in place with their foot on the throats of their iPhone/iTouch/iPod customers.
The current tech darling Apple has a big hole in their DRM making it mostly useless. On another note, look up the number of 30 or 60 Gig players sold and then note the nubmer of DRM song sales average per player. The price and the DRM is keeping Itunes a nich market. This is especially true for those without an iPod. My MP3 player is 100% incompatable with iTunes, so my purchases have been zero. There were a few songs I would have considered, but I lack compatible hardware (actualy Apple has incompatible songs).
There are reasons why people implement copy protection on their products, and it's surprisingly not simply because they are a-holes who like to piss people off. I don't know if you were alive/remember the old days of floppy games, but I started on tape cassettes. Piracy isn't a theory for me; I know for a fact that a good portion of the tech knowledgeable world would copy for free rather than pay, because they did when there weren't any impediments at all.
This is frequently thrown out there as piracy cuts into sales. The overall effect is the poisoning of the PC game industry where most people won't even bother to buy any title for a PC, because it probably won't work. This is why console games have dominated the field. PC games are broken and unreliable as a whole. I stopped buying PC games long ago for this very reason. I stick with free games (Not pirated, free, mostly flash) as they simply work.
You may reduce some piracy with copy protection, but for many these are broken, opened, un-returnable, and unrepairable. A couple $30 broken games quickly sour the market. I do not plan on re-configuring permissions, drivers, and installing modules that break the CD drive or other low level essential to play a copy protected game. Simple knowledge that a game breaks CD ripping is enough to list PC games as malware to be avoided. A console is a reboot fix. A PC is not a reboot fix.
How much game shelf space is dedicated to console games? Why? Is it because demand is low for PC games because they are pirated, or is demand low because they are generaly broken? The answer lies somewhere in the middle as piracy for the version that works (No CD crack, no phone home, etc) is the norm instead of retail sales.
I have some of the legal copy protected software you speak of. Kings Quest and others quickly gave way to other games that didn't require a file cabinet and simply launched off the hard drive. Nothing spoils a game quicker than finding someone didn't return the CD, booklet, or floppy to the case.
Why do you think Minesweeper and Solitare are the top PC games for time played? They are installed and work. Copy Protection breaks installed games.
If, on the other hand, a store began requiring pat downs or strip searches every time I entered or left, I would stop patronizing them.
If the lawn mower I bought simply refused to work when out of sight of the store for authentication, I would hasitate to shop at the store because the product is defective and and is of lower value than the alternatives.
Phone home DRM lowers the product value.
It may reduce piracy, or increase it a the DRM is taken as a challange.
It will hurt sales. Just look to MS for declining sales as alternatives errode their market for the OS and office suite. Remember Plays for Sure? Seen Zune music sales figures lately? There are better alternatives and they do well.
(AC inverters that shut off are becoming available, but can be a pain)
Inverters with low standby (full voltage output) are also common. My 1KW inverter has a 4 Watt idle. In a day it wastes 42 Watt hours, or 0.042 KWH. Since I collect about 1.5 KWH/day, I leave the thing on 24/7 and don't worry about resetting clocks, starting the inverter to turn on lights, etc. For a loss of.35% is isn't worth saving.
Look for inverters with less than 50 mA no load current. (not the sine wave units). Most stuff runs fine on modified sine wave inverters. Some stuff runs better as the peak currents on power supply recifiers is greatly reduced. Computers, monitors, and printers fall into this catagory, and these items are the first salesmen try to sell sine wave inverters to. Other items to run off sine wave include induction motors and lighg dimmers. Refrigerators run more effeciently off sine waves. I haven't yet bought a sine wave unit to run the freezer as most of the time it runs off the utility and the inverter is just back-up power for outages. For extended outages, I plug into the hybrid car.
Stuff that works fine on modified sine wave is basicaly anything that has a switching power supply.
Save the sine wave stuff for high end audio where a little buzz is a problem. For the rest of the stuff, a quality stepped modified sine wave is very effecient.
Converting from DC to AC wastes power, stay DC and use LED lights because some have life spans and power usage that is lower any other kind.
This is a common trap by newbies to solar power who have not bothered to do the math. For the shed, the math works. For my home, it doesn't.
The assumption is wire will transport power from one place to another effeciently regardless of the source voltage. Low voltage is OK for very low power applications and very short runs, such as in an automobile and less than 100 watts.
For the shed, 12 volts may be OK as all the runs are very short and the application is for low power and short durations. The power miser looks at an inverter with 90% effeciency and go Oh! No!, that power waster has to go!
Let's make the shed a little larger, like a small shop. In the shed you want to work on the lawnmower and the LEDs are not bright enough and you would like to use the drill press. A single solar panel is about 60 watts. figure an average production of about 5-8 hours/day depending on location. In a week, you will have collected 60 Watts X 5 to 8 X 7 or about 2-3 KWH. For the weekend, you can run 2 42 Watt CF lamps for 4 hours each evening and still use the drill press on an inverter. The cost of converting the drill press and using 12 volt CF lamps would far exceed the cost of a 1KW inverter. 2 evenings of light is 42 X 2 X 4 = 2/3 KWH. Running a 500 Watt 1/2 hp Drill press for an hour won't kill the battery as it uses another 1/4 KWH. If we lost 10% of our power to the inverter, so what?
With the inverter we can run more than basic stumble in the dark flashlight brightness and get work done.
Now the math. The drill press uses 3X it's full run power for start-up. For grins try it on 12 volts. 1500 Watts at 12 volts draws 125 Amps. How long is your power cord? At 120 volts the draw is 12.5 Amps. Now for power loss. 10% of 1500 watts is 150 Watts to the inverter. How about a power cord to the battery 30 feet long?
1 It must handle 125 Amps safely 2 It must not drop the voltage to the motor by more than 1%.
For 120 volts the permitted drop is 1.2 volts. 1.2 Volts X 12.5 Amps is 15 Watts lost in the cord. (why vac cords get warm) At 10X the wire size permitted for 120 Volts (think 10 power cords in parallel) the 1.2 volt drop from 12 volts would be a very serious brown-out of 10%. Even worse is the power lost in the 10X larger cord. Instead of 15 watts, you now lost 150 Watts in the cord. You need someting much bigger than 10 X the wire size you needed for 120 Volts. Care to hit the wire tables to calculate the wire size needed to start the drill press with only a 1% voltage drop from the 12 volt system? Don't forget, a 30 foot power cord has 2 condutors, it's a 60 foot total length.
So what is the better way to get power to the drill press and lights? Mine runs fine on a 12AWG extension cord. The Xantrex pro-watt inverter was on sale at Costco for under $50. A 30 foot cord and 1/2 HP 12 volt motor would cost way more than that. On sunny days, I lug out the drill press and use it outside. A standard extension cord works fine.
In short, an inverter permits the use of high power short runtime tools at distances more than 5 feet from the battery. Without it, these uses are impractical.
The above is not based on a shed installation, but a motorhome with 8 panels and a pair of deep cycle batteries. The fridge, microwave, computer, monitor, and printer are all solar powered. Electric power tools are used from time to time and are the basis for the calculations.
Do you want just a few lights, or do you want to do more?
But it is not an excuse. Women who repeatedly get used in these types of relationships and then go cry to their geek friends deserve no sympathy.
It's simple, Good boys are committed and monogamous. Bad boys keep trawling for quantity over quality, often winding up with other dregs of society. I have a gem from my first and only marriage.
Bad boys are the ones in the who's the daddy daytime TV paternity games where the bad girls and bad boys try to figure out who pays for which kid.
You can often buy a USB2.0 card for semi-modern laptop. That T21 has CardBus, doesn't it?
It does have the pcmcia slots. Many adaptors try to include either a jack or other item in the card which prevents using both slots at the same time. So my choice becomes, WiFi or USB. With the Wireless card and it's fat end, it won't fit a second card with a fat end. This severyl limits your choices as most USB cards have USB jacks on the fat end of the card. With Linux, the list of wireless cards that work is limited. I have one that works and am not looking to find one without a fat end.
It's a damned poor state of affairs that so many people put in that situation of trust betray it.
Let me guess, you never check unknown files before deleting them?
Instead of a car example, I'll use the Photocopier example.
In clearing the photocopier, it's no business of yours that the thing has a jammed copy another employee's payrole, medical record, drug screen result, employee evaluation, or of a centerfold, but you see it. Is this an ethics violation?
Snooping and being exposed to data outside your job role may be what the survey is all about.
I have worked with highly classified stuff. Access is on a need to know basis. I have been exposed to other classified material that I had no need to know, and wasn't cleard for, but, I wasn't snooping. I saw just enough to identify it. With my security clearance, I treated the matter properly.
Have you ever opened an unidentified file to identify it? Was it snooping, or system maitenance?
I'd say the screen quality would be the limiting factor. Dead pixels eventually add up.
For me that is nothing I have had problems with. Dead batteries and limitations on maximum RAM or the lack of USB ports is tht biggie ones for me.
I have an old, very old, Toshiba Sattelite laptop with Windows 3.1 and a monocorome screen. Dead pixels isn't a problem. Small hard drive, small memory, and no USB is the problem. The external monitor is color.
Next oldest is a CTX 400 laptop. Again the screen is fine. The limitations again is it is maxxed out at full capacity of 72 Meg of EDO memory and no USB. It is running it's original Windows 95 due to the lack of RAM. I use it with MIDI and my keyboard and GPS due to the built in MPU-401 port and RS-232 port. It makes a great GPS topo map display as 2D graphics isn't memory intensive.
My newest laptop is also fairly ancient a Thinkpad T21. It is maxxed out again in the memory department at 512 Meg. It only has 1 USB port. I run Ubuntu Dapper Drake as an upgrade from Windows 2K professional on it and am quite happy, but I expect to outgrow it soon. Again Pixel death is not a problem. I have replaced the cold cathode lamp. They are only $20, but you need some serious soldering skill before attempting it. The lamp is fragile, toothpick thin, and the leads need trimmed to fit. Lamp replacement is not for the faint of heart.
Max memory capacity, dead batteries, lack of modern USB, and a dying lamp on older laptops are the problems faced by me, not dead pixels.
Is there a manufacture that had a problem with pixels that die?
Nuclear is the best option. Equating it with perpetual motion shows YOUR ignorance. Hate makes you stupid.
I know I am preaching to the choir here, but in regards to the US not building more refineries, the question was raised recently. The answer was presented in a question, why build refineries when there is not more oil to refine?
The NIBY is only a small part of the total answer. New DEQ, air quality standards, safety regulations, and taxes are all minor reasons new refineries are not being built. The present refineries are meeting full source capacity and there is no sign of greater source capacity in the future.
For the no nukes guys, your choices is shortages and outages as solar, wind, tidal, etc. sources don't always meet demand.
For the food for fuel guys with all the answers, Switchgrass instead of corn for example, Farmers follow the money. Food used for fuel will cause food shortages. As corn is grown for fuel, wheat, rye, berries, and other food crops switch to corn or switchgrass as the demand grows. The result is less food in all cases. Expect the high food prices to directly follow fuel prices as food and farmland is used to grow fuel instead of food.
Toyota has the right idea. I heard the announcement of the new EV/Hybrid car. It's an electric vehicle with a hybrid backup. Short trips and commutes are electric with gas backup for the extended trip. Running the cars on nuclear electric power leaves the farms for food. I imaging they will have a steep price tag as the demand will be strong for a car with little need for gas stations.
Nuclear with wind, solar, tidal, geothermal, etc is a good idea. These solutions without nuclear is a power shortage requiring coal, gas, oil, or other limited resource to be consumed.
there are more people willing to buy a game, and thus, in effect, have their vote counted then there are people who, by pirating the game, don't.
The number that is hard for the bean counters to measure, is not the pirates that don't pirate the game due to DRM, it's the folks who quit buying PC games simply because they often don't work and are not returnable or repairable in warranty.
I am in this group. I don't buy PC games anymore. The game should be playable. Too many are simply trying to get the game to run. I've played that game too many times. I don't need yet another game who's function is to see if you can run it and what software upgrades, hardware upgrades, changes to permissions, downgrades, etc is required to just launch the game. Loading stuff for local LAN play that won't because it doesn't have free access to the internet is broken.
Even hardware has caught the control freak bug. The early Microsoft Optical Mouse driver displayed an error dialog because it couldn't find my Internet connection. WTF??? this was on a new home built box on the coffee table for assembly. There was no internet connection fo the initial startup and configuration. This phone home function wasn't mentioned in the documentation. The fix was giving away the brand new mouse and using a Logitech Optical instead. To this day, I don't buy MS mice.
Many console players are console players simply because a console and matching software work, unlike PC and PC games. Consoles is the fix for DRM encumbered PC games. Without consoles, many game developers would have no market. Games that don't load and play get the same treatment as that MS mouse. The wide spread use of DRM has pretty much wiped out PC games except flash games. They still load and play with no hastles.
But they won't give you your money back because it's open and you may have copied it...
This is the number 1 reason consoles do so well in a world that once was dominated by PC games. PC games are not reliable with DRM and other variables tossed in.
Burnt once = twice shy. Nobody buys a bunch of games at $40 to $80 a pop when they have a high failure rate and no warranty beyond a replacement with the same coding defect. A broken DRM is not repairable under warranty.
I've been forced to cracking games I've legally purchased just to get around their DRM lockouts.
And in buying the game, you voted with your wallet for copy protection. If a game or other software uses copy protection and I know about it, I vote against it. Viral marketing and word of mouth support all die with the purchase not made.
I don't pirate it. I just don't use it. There are alternatives.
I actually agree with CD check protection... It is a slight inconvenience for the user, but not so inconvenient that I would really mind. It also offers a reasonable protection against casual (i.e. not-so-computer-literate) piracy, which is really the best any copy protection scheme can ever hope for.
For someone who travels frequently and having been bitten by having the CD case without the CD in it on arrival, A CD check copy protection is the number 2 reason on my list for not buying a program. It's right behind the dongle and right above online phone home checks. No dongle, no CD, or no internet are 3 modes if inexcusable failure. Packing light without all the baggage is required. Anything less devalues the software greatly. My laptop has a failing CD drive. It does somewhat OK with commercial CDs, but CDR playback is quite unreliable. CD read copy protection is unreliable for the laptop.
which is really the best any copy protection scheme can ever hope for
No it isn't. A one time registration providing a key with your registration detail is all that is required. I fill out and send in a registration form either online or snail mail and they send back a key. The key then when used with the software, unlocks it and proudly displays "Registered to Technician" (real contact information). I can re-install it as many times as needed from hardware upgrades, dead hard drives, etc. I'm not posting my key online. Piracy is not an issue. Phone home, CD access problems, etc are eliminated. It is about the only type of DRM I even consider. Anything else breaks the software when the hardware glitches. Broken software is useless. Any broken software priced above useless isn't purchased.
The CD key is why after purchase of the Voyetra "Teach me Piano" tutorial, it was the end of buying any Voyetra software. I use an older tutor called Piano Discovery System even though it was made for Windows 95. It is simply not a hastle to run.
Voyetra was dropped, while PDS got the expansion pack. DRM by CD check cost Voyetra several sales.
Due to the DRM in new versions of Windows with all the Anti-Piracy difficulties, I have since moved onto Linux. Stuff installs, and works the way it is supposed to. Rebuilds, upgrades and re-installs don't break everyting requiring tech support to "Get Genuine".
Tami always bitches about my "road rage" even though it has no effect except to let me let off steam. Is this road rage, or do you have to do something like zoom around someone and cut them off, flip them the bird, or otherwise let them know that they have annoyed you for it to be road rage?
The question becomes how to fight and win without raising the danger level and letting the obnoxious one know he is out of place.
I have two effective methods.
For severe tailgaters, I turn on the 4 way and slow down. It's a dangerous situation and reducing speed to compensate for the hazard on the road is proper. A slow speed crash is better than a high speed crash. Witnesses notice the flashers and pay attention to the danger, often resulting in a change in driving for the better.
Sometimes the tailgater doesn't get it and tries to press the issue by driving in a threatining manner. The response is deploying the video camera and leave it on to record any dammage caused by the dangerous driving. Get the face, plate and license plate. Getting these shots is easy as they are often way too close to be safe. Keep it as evidence if things get worse. They seldom do. If they do, post it on youtube like this;
I would be supprised if silver grew tin. Technicaly you are correct, Silver doesn't grow Tin whiskers.
Silver whiskers is a real problem in industrial locations where Florene is present. The circuit breakers, buss bars and other industrial power components are prone to growing Silver whiskers. Failures are the result of increased contact reistance causing failure from overheating and arc flash failures from arcs initiated from the short. Both are serious failures.
You don't have to. The lead leaches from the city dump and is deliverd to your Mountain Dew bottler and delivers it.
For non slashdotters, your pure spring bottled water. Most bottled water has fewer safety checks than tap water. Heavy metal contamination often discovered by municipal water systems where bottlers don't check.
Could you please make sure it says nothing against robbing banks? 17$ a month - cool!
Pre-paid legal only covers litigation costs (lawyers) an does nothing to cover any jail time or other fines and fees associated to losing you case. Your lawyer gets paid, but they will want the money back and jail time for the crime. You may still be on the hook for their lawyer.
Slashdot Mirror
Ice displaces a volume of water equal to it's weight. So (discounting the whole mass vs weight thingy) a chunk of ice weighing a kilogram will displace a volume of water weighing a kilogram.
This is true for ice that is displacing it's weight in water volume by floating. Melting ice on land will then add to the volume of water without removing it's volume displacement while ice.
Melting floating ice does nothing to the level of water when it melts. It does not add mass as it melts. Melting glaciers on the mountain valleys add mass to the water below.
when it comes time to upgrade, i will be looking towards the lixux distros again. i would have done it by now but my copy of xp is legit and vista isn't worth the bandwidth.
My dad went to OSX and I have migrated to Ubuntu. My employer has finaly officialy stated they are skipping Vista and will wait for the next version. My new dual core machine isn't bothering with dual boot like the old PIII machine. It's all Linux.
Interesting ramifications:
The most interesting is getting sued.
It would contain;
Child porn, Copyrighted images, dog fighting, DECSS, classified military photos, unpublished UFO photos, bomb plans, tradmarked company logos, this slashdot post, etc.
I think that would be an ideal setup to run Vista on.
Vista is licensed for a limited number of processors. Vista would still be a slug on it as it couldn't use it to it's potential. )-:
From here;
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070508-indie-labels-revolting-against-emusics-low-prices-hardly.html?rel
"the average iTunes user spends only $12 per year at the store"
Not every iPod owner is an iTunes user. How many songs are on a typical kid's iPod? Only an average of 12 songs/year and only for those who use iTunes.
iTunes is a niche boutique next to the freeway where most don't bother to even look.
From your link;
For the music industry, there is a dark side to Apple's ascension to the top of the charts. Buying patterns for digital downloads are different, as customers are far more likely to cherry pick a favorite track or two from an album than purchase the whole thing. In contrast, brick-and-mortar sales are predominantly high-margin CDs. For 2007, that translated into a 10 percent decline in overall music spending according to the NPD Group, and it's a trend that's expected to continue for the foreseeable future.
The iTunes Store leads the pack with 19 percent,
This dollar amount is part of the overall market shrink even though the capacity and quanity of personal players have exploded. The market expanded, the sales shrank. Where is all the music on these devices from? More important, why can't the industry meet the market to sell into it instead of being bypassed by the new freeway?
There are more players in the hands of more people able to contain entiere libraries of music, but sales are down 10% even though the market expanded several times as those who used to carry no music and only had a stereo at home shared by the family now have personal players. Neither Apple nor any other retailer has been able to sell into the expanded market. DRM, High prices, and the ease of piracy all contribute to the undisputed fact that the great vast majority of music on iPods is NOT from the iTunes store or from the owner's personal CD collection. iTunes sales is only a small niche of the overall music out there.
Again, on a typical 30 or 60 Gig iPod sold, how many songs on average are from iTunes? I'll wager money this is less than 1%. Having 20% sales of the less than 1% purchased music out there is niche in my book.
If you see someone with an iPod, start an informal survey. How many songs are on it? How many are from iTunes, How many are from your CD's you ripped yourself, and how many are from "other sources" trading, sneakernet and P-P. Be sure to ask kids as this is the largest demographic. I know the ratio on my 2 kids players. I backed one up befor sending it in for repair. Of the 20+ Gigs, none were from an online store, several hundred were ripped from borrowed CD's and the rest traded with friends. Only about 3 CD's were from ones they own. This is typical of middle school kids. No credit cards, no accounts, limited spending money better spent on concerts and parties, and lots of friends to swap with. By the time they reach college, the pattern is already set.
My legal collection is larger as I already have a CD and LP collection. However, none is from P-P, none from online stores, and some is from sneakernet. My player is only 1 Gig. It plays MP3's and unprotected WMA files only, thus almost all online stores sell incompatible formats.
MP3's work. They are everywhere, most places don't sell them. Any questions?
the current tech darling Apple would be tumbling from their throne instead of seated securely in place with their foot on the throats of their iPhone/iTouch/iPod customers.
The current tech darling Apple has a big hole in their DRM making it mostly useless. On another note, look up the number of 30 or 60 Gig players sold and then note the nubmer of DRM song sales average per player. The price and the DRM is keeping Itunes a nich market. This is especially true for those without an iPod. My MP3 player is 100% incompatable with iTunes, so my purchases have been zero. There were a few songs I would have considered, but I lack compatible hardware (actualy Apple has incompatible songs).
There are reasons why people implement copy protection on their products, and it's surprisingly not simply because they are a-holes who like to piss people off. I don't know if you were alive/remember the old days of floppy games, but I started on tape cassettes. Piracy isn't a theory for me; I know for a fact that a good portion of the tech knowledgeable world would copy for free rather than pay, because they did when there weren't any impediments at all.
This is frequently thrown out there as piracy cuts into sales. The overall effect is the poisoning of the PC game industry where most people won't even bother to buy any title for a PC, because it probably won't work. This is why console games have dominated the field. PC games are broken and unreliable as a whole. I stopped buying PC games long ago for this very reason. I stick with free games (Not pirated, free, mostly flash) as they simply work.
You may reduce some piracy with copy protection, but for many these are broken, opened, un-returnable, and unrepairable. A couple $30 broken games quickly sour the market. I do not plan on re-configuring permissions, drivers, and installing modules that break the CD drive or other low level essential to play a copy protected game. Simple knowledge that a game breaks CD ripping is enough to list PC games as malware to be avoided. A console is a reboot fix. A PC is not a reboot fix.
How much game shelf space is dedicated to console games? Why? Is it because demand is low for PC games because they are pirated, or is demand low because they are generaly broken? The answer lies somewhere in the middle as piracy for the version that works (No CD crack, no phone home, etc) is the norm instead of retail sales.
I have some of the legal copy protected software you speak of. Kings Quest and others quickly gave way to other games that didn't require a file cabinet and simply launched off the hard drive. Nothing spoils a game quicker than finding someone didn't return the CD, booklet, or floppy to the case.
Why do you think Minesweeper and Solitare are the top PC games for time played? They are installed and work. Copy Protection breaks installed games.
If, on the other hand, a store began requiring pat downs or strip searches every time I entered or left, I would stop patronizing them.
If the lawn mower I bought simply refused to work when out of sight of the store for authentication, I would hasitate to shop at the store because the product is defective and and is of lower value than the alternatives.
Phone home DRM lowers the product value.
It may reduce piracy, or increase it a the DRM is taken as a challange.
It will hurt sales.
Just look to MS for declining sales as alternatives errode their market for the OS and office suite. Remember Plays for Sure? Seen Zune music sales figures lately? There are better alternatives and they do well.
(AC inverters that shut off are becoming available, but can be a pain)
Inverters with low standby (full voltage output) are also common. My 1KW inverter has a 4 Watt idle. In a day it wastes 42 Watt hours, or 0.042 KWH. Since I collect about 1.5 KWH/day, I leave the thing on 24/7 and don't worry about resetting clocks, starting the inverter to turn on lights, etc. For a loss of .35% is isn't worth saving.
Look for inverters with less than 50 mA no load current. (not the sine wave units). Most stuff runs fine on modified sine wave inverters. Some stuff runs better as the peak currents on power supply recifiers is greatly reduced. Computers, monitors, and printers fall into this catagory, and these items are the first salesmen try to sell sine wave inverters to. Other items to run off sine wave include induction motors and lighg dimmers. Refrigerators run more effeciently off sine waves. I haven't yet bought a sine wave unit to run the freezer as most of the time it runs off the utility and the inverter is just back-up power for outages. For extended outages, I plug into the hybrid car.
Stuff that works fine on modified sine wave is basicaly anything that has a switching power supply.
Save the sine wave stuff for high end audio where a little buzz is a problem. For the rest of the stuff, a quality stepped modified sine wave is very effecient.
Converting from DC to AC wastes power, stay DC and use LED
lights because some have life spans and power usage that is
lower any other kind.
This is a common trap by newbies to solar power who have not bothered to do the math. For the shed, the math works. For my home, it doesn't.
The assumption is wire will transport power from one place to another effeciently regardless of the source voltage. Low voltage is OK for very low power applications and very short runs, such as in an automobile and less than 100 watts.
For the shed, 12 volts may be OK as all the runs are very short and the application is for low power and short durations. The power miser looks at an inverter with 90% effeciency and go Oh! No!, that power waster has to go!
Let's make the shed a little larger, like a small shop. In the shed you want to work on the lawnmower and the LEDs are not bright enough and you would like to use the drill press. A single solar panel is about 60 watts. figure an average production of about 5-8 hours/day depending on location. In a week, you will have collected 60 Watts X 5 to 8 X 7 or about 2-3 KWH. For the weekend, you can run 2 42 Watt CF lamps for 4 hours each evening and still use the drill press on an inverter. The cost of converting the drill press and using 12 volt CF lamps would far exceed the cost of a 1KW inverter. 2 evenings of light is 42 X 2 X 4 = 2/3 KWH. Running a 500 Watt 1/2 hp Drill press for an hour won't kill the battery as it uses another 1/4 KWH. If we lost 10% of our power to the inverter, so what?
With the inverter we can run more than basic stumble in the dark flashlight brightness and get work done.
Now the math. The drill press uses 3X it's full run power for start-up. For grins try it on 12 volts. 1500 Watts at 12 volts draws 125 Amps. How long is your power cord? At 120 volts the draw is 12.5 Amps. Now for power loss. 10% of 1500 watts is 150 Watts to the inverter. How about a power cord to the battery 30 feet long?
1 It must handle 125 Amps safely
2 It must not drop the voltage to the motor by more than 1%.
For 120 volts the permitted drop is 1.2 volts. 1.2 Volts X 12.5 Amps is 15 Watts lost in the cord. (why vac cords get warm) At 10X the wire size permitted for 120 Volts (think 10 power cords in parallel) the 1.2 volt drop from 12 volts would be a very serious brown-out of 10%. Even worse is the power lost in the 10X larger cord. Instead of 15 watts, you now lost 150 Watts in the cord. You need someting much bigger than 10 X the wire size you needed for 120 Volts. Care to hit the wire tables to calculate the wire size needed to start the drill press with only a 1% voltage drop from the 12 volt system? Don't forget, a 30 foot power cord has 2 condutors, it's a 60 foot total length.
So what is the better way to get power to the drill press and lights? Mine runs fine on a 12AWG extension cord. The Xantrex pro-watt inverter was on sale at Costco for under $50. A 30 foot cord and 1/2 HP 12 volt motor would cost way more than that. On sunny days, I lug out the drill press and use it outside. A standard extension cord works fine.
In short, an inverter permits the use of high power short runtime tools at distances more than 5 feet from the battery. Without it, these uses are impractical.
The above is not based on a shed installation, but a motorhome with 8 panels and a pair of deep cycle batteries. The fridge, microwave, computer, monitor, and printer are all solar powered. Electric power tools are used from time to time and are the basis for the calculations.
Do you want just a few lights, or do you want to do more?
But it is not an excuse. Women who repeatedly get used in these types of relationships and then go cry to their geek friends deserve no sympathy.
It's simple, Good boys are committed and monogamous. Bad boys keep trawling for quantity over quality, often winding up with other dregs of society. I have a gem from my first and only marriage.
Bad boys are the ones in the who's the daddy daytime TV paternity games where the bad girls and bad boys try to figure out who pays for which kid.
In short, bad boys engage in bad behavior.
You can often buy a USB2.0 card for semi-modern laptop. That T21 has CardBus, doesn't it?
It does have the pcmcia slots. Many adaptors try to include either a jack or other item in the card which prevents using both slots at the same time. So my choice becomes, WiFi or USB. With the Wireless card and it's fat end, it won't fit a second card with a fat end. This severyl limits your choices as most USB cards have USB jacks on the fat end of the card. With Linux, the list of wireless cards that work is limited. I have one that works and am not looking to find one without a fat end.
Here is a typical shopping page result. Quick, pick one that will fit with a wireless card;
http://www.google.com/products?hl=en&q=pcmcia+USB+card&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=X&oi=product_result_group&resnum=1&ct=title
It's a damned poor state of affairs that so many people put in that situation of trust betray it.
Let me guess, you never check unknown files before deleting them?
Instead of a car example, I'll use the Photocopier example.
In clearing the photocopier, it's no business of yours that the thing has a jammed copy another employee's payrole, medical record, drug screen result, employee evaluation, or of a centerfold, but you see it. Is this an ethics violation?
Snooping and being exposed to data outside your job role may be what the survey is all about.
I have worked with highly classified stuff. Access is on a need to know basis. I have been exposed to other classified material that I had no need to know, and wasn't cleard for, but, I wasn't snooping. I saw just enough to identify it. With my security clearance, I treated the matter properly.
Have you ever opened an unidentified file to identify it? Was it snooping, or system maitenance?
I'd say the screen quality would be the limiting factor. Dead pixels eventually add up.
For me that is nothing I have had problems with. Dead batteries and limitations on maximum RAM or the lack of USB ports is tht biggie ones for me.
I have an old, very old, Toshiba Sattelite laptop with Windows 3.1 and a monocorome screen. Dead pixels isn't a problem. Small hard drive, small memory, and no USB is the problem. The external monitor is color.
Next oldest is a CTX 400 laptop. Again the screen is fine. The limitations again is it is maxxed out at full capacity of 72 Meg of EDO memory and no USB. It is running it's original Windows 95 due to the lack of RAM. I use it with MIDI and my keyboard and GPS due to the built in MPU-401 port and RS-232 port. It makes a great GPS topo map display as 2D graphics isn't memory intensive.
My newest laptop is also fairly ancient a Thinkpad T21. It is maxxed out again in the memory department at 512 Meg. It only has 1 USB port. I run Ubuntu Dapper Drake as an upgrade from Windows 2K professional on it and am quite happy, but I expect to outgrow it soon. Again Pixel death is not a problem. I have replaced the cold cathode lamp. They are only $20, but you need some serious soldering skill before attempting it. The lamp is fragile, toothpick thin, and the leads need trimmed to fit. Lamp replacement is not for the faint of heart.
Max memory capacity, dead batteries, lack of modern USB, and a dying lamp on older laptops are the problems faced by me, not dead pixels.
Is there a manufacture that had a problem with pixels that die?
Tailgaters don't bother me; people running red lights and stop signs bother me.
Well spoken by someone who hasn't yet been rear ended by the tailgater when the bicycle pulled in front of you.
I now slow to allow for the longer stopping distance when I have tailgaters.
I find it easier to miss the kid on the bike when I am not pushed further by the tailgater pushing my tailights into my trunk.
Nuclear is the best option. Equating it with perpetual motion shows YOUR ignorance. Hate makes you stupid.
I know I am preaching to the choir here, but in regards to the US not building more refineries, the question was raised recently. The answer was presented in a question, why build refineries when there is not more oil to refine?
The NIBY is only a small part of the total answer. New DEQ, air quality standards, safety regulations, and taxes are all minor reasons new refineries are not being built. The present refineries are meeting full source capacity and there is no sign of greater source capacity in the future.
For the no nukes guys, your choices is shortages and outages as solar, wind, tidal, etc. sources don't always meet demand.
For the food for fuel guys with all the answers, Switchgrass instead of corn for example, Farmers follow the money. Food used for fuel will cause food shortages. As corn is grown for fuel, wheat, rye, berries, and other food crops switch to corn or switchgrass as the demand grows. The result is less food in all cases. Expect the high food prices to directly follow fuel prices as food and farmland is used to grow fuel instead of food.
Toyota has the right idea. I heard the announcement of the new EV/Hybrid car. It's an electric vehicle with a hybrid backup. Short trips and commutes are electric with gas backup for the extended trip. Running the cars on nuclear electric power leaves the farms for food. I imaging they will have a steep price tag as the demand will be strong for a car with little need for gas stations.
Nuclear with wind, solar, tidal, geothermal, etc is a good idea. These solutions without nuclear is a power shortage requiring coal, gas, oil, or other limited resource to be consumed.
there are more people willing to buy a game, and thus, in effect, have their vote counted then there are people who, by pirating the game, don't.
The number that is hard for the bean counters to measure, is not the pirates that don't pirate the game due to DRM, it's the folks who quit buying PC games simply because they often don't work and are not returnable or repairable in warranty.
I am in this group. I don't buy PC games anymore. The game should be playable. Too many are simply trying to get the game to run. I've played that game too many times. I don't need yet another game who's function is to see if you can run it and what software upgrades, hardware upgrades, changes to permissions, downgrades, etc is required to just launch the game. Loading stuff for local LAN play that won't because it doesn't have free access to the internet is broken.
Even hardware has caught the control freak bug. The early Microsoft Optical Mouse driver displayed an error dialog because it couldn't find my Internet connection. WTF??? this was on a new home built box on the coffee table for assembly. There was no internet connection fo the initial startup and configuration.
This phone home function wasn't mentioned in the documentation. The fix was giving away the brand new mouse and using a Logitech Optical instead. To this day, I don't buy MS mice.
Many console players are console players simply because a console and matching software work, unlike PC and PC games. Consoles is the fix for DRM encumbered PC games. Without consoles, many game developers would have no market. Games that don't load and play get the same treatment as that MS mouse. The wide spread use of DRM has pretty much wiped out PC games except flash games. They still load and play with no hastles.
But they won't give you your money back because it's open and you may have copied it...
This is the number 1 reason consoles do so well in a world that once was dominated by PC games. PC games are not reliable with DRM and other variables tossed in.
Burnt once = twice shy. Nobody buys a bunch of games at $40 to $80 a pop when they have a high failure rate and no warranty beyond a replacement with the same coding defect. A broken DRM is not repairable under warranty.
I've been forced to cracking games I've legally purchased just to get around their DRM lockouts.
And in buying the game, you voted with your wallet for copy protection. If a game or other software uses copy protection and I know about it, I vote against it. Viral marketing and word of mouth support all die with the purchase not made.
I don't pirate it. I just don't use it. There are alternatives.
I actually agree with CD check protection... It is a slight inconvenience for the user, but not so inconvenient that I would really mind. It also offers a reasonable protection against casual (i.e. not-so-computer-literate) piracy, which is really the best any copy protection scheme can ever hope for.
For someone who travels frequently and having been bitten by having the CD case without the CD in it on arrival, A CD check copy protection is the number 2 reason on my list for not buying a program. It's right behind the dongle and right above online phone home checks. No dongle, no CD, or no internet are 3 modes if inexcusable failure. Packing light without all the baggage is required. Anything less devalues the software greatly. My laptop has a failing CD drive. It does somewhat OK with commercial CDs, but CDR playback is quite unreliable. CD read copy protection is unreliable for the laptop.
which is really the best any copy protection scheme can ever hope for
No it isn't. A one time registration providing a key with your registration detail is all that is required. I fill out and send in a registration form either online or snail mail and they send back a key. The key then when used with the software, unlocks it and proudly displays "Registered to Technician" (real contact information). I can re-install it as many times as needed from hardware upgrades, dead hard drives, etc. I'm not posting my key online. Piracy is not an issue. Phone home, CD access problems, etc are eliminated. It is about the only type of DRM I even consider. Anything else breaks the software when the hardware glitches. Broken software is useless. Any broken software priced above useless isn't purchased.
The CD key is why after purchase of the Voyetra "Teach me Piano" tutorial, it was the end of buying any Voyetra software. I use an older tutor called Piano Discovery System even though it was made for Windows 95. It is simply not a hastle to run.
Voyetra was dropped, while PDS got the expansion pack. DRM by CD check cost Voyetra several sales.
Due to the DRM in new versions of Windows with all the Anti-Piracy difficulties, I have since moved onto Linux. Stuff installs, and works the way it is supposed to. Rebuilds, upgrades and re-installs don't break everyting requiring tech support to "Get Genuine".
Tami always bitches about my "road rage" even though it has no effect except to let me let off steam. Is this road rage, or do you have to do something like zoom around someone and cut them off, flip them the bird, or otherwise let them know that they have annoyed you for it to be road rage?
The question becomes how to fight and win without raising the danger level and letting the obnoxious one know he is out of place.
I have two effective methods.
For severe tailgaters, I turn on the 4 way and slow down. It's a dangerous situation and reducing speed to compensate for the hazard on the road is proper. A slow speed crash is better than a high speed crash. Witnesses notice the flashers and pay attention to the danger, often resulting in a change in driving for the better.
Sometimes the tailgater doesn't get it and tries to press the issue by driving in a threatining manner. The response is deploying the video camera and leave it on to record any dammage caused by the dangerous driving. Get the face, plate and license plate. Getting these shots is easy as they are often way too close to be safe. Keep it as evidence if things get worse. They seldom do. If they do, post it on youtube like this;
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4696538634559226736&q=redneck+road+rage+revenge&ei=JNRXSJyhD5Hk4ALRg_ysDw&hl=en
Disclaimer, it's not how I got my video camera. It's also not my video.
These are completely immune to tin whiskers.
I would be supprised if silver grew tin. Technicaly you are correct, Silver doesn't grow Tin whiskers.
Silver whiskers is a real problem in industrial locations where Florene is present. The circuit breakers, buss bars and other industrial power components are prone to growing Silver whiskers. Failures are the result of increased contact reistance causing failure from overheating and arc flash failures from arcs initiated from the short. Both are serious failures.
Refrence with photos, Of course:
http://nepp.nasa.gov/WHISKER/other_whisker/silver/index.htm
You don't have to. The lead leaches from the city dump and is deliverd to your Mountain Dew bottler and delivers it.
For non slashdotters, your pure spring bottled water. Most bottled water has fewer safety checks than tap water. Heavy metal contamination often discovered by municipal water systems where bottlers don't check.
Could you please make sure it says nothing against robbing banks? 17$ a month - cool!
Pre-paid legal only covers litigation costs (lawyers) an does nothing to cover any jail time or other fines and fees associated to losing you case. Your lawyer gets paid, but they will want the money back and jail time for the crime. You may still be on the hook for their lawyer.
I'm glad you could see this as a scam. Now buy some cables that make a real impact on your sound, analog speaker cables.
http://ralaudio.com/kimber-4ag-speaker-cable-p-2315.html
They are 14 AWG silver. Low resistance is better. Oh teflon insulation for durability. Bring your checkbook.