I can't remember the original source for the quote, but it comes to mind:
Character is when you are willing to finish the task once the sparkle of new is gone.
It seems to apply, and I would think this is true for American's or non-Americans. It is not that 95% of Americans are not willing to finish a task, it is that 95% of all people are not willing to finish a task.
I am old enough to remember how the Japanese were going to make all US auto makers obsolete, and how we could not compete in the 70s and 80s, yet we have done more than fine, even improving BECAUSE of the competition. We can't sit idle and wish for more success (wishing is, afterall, passivity) but I would be hard pressed to believe that America is going to hell in a hand basket due to our "underacheiving kids". We have been there, we have done that, and many more people are wanting to move here than move away. As someone who was once one of those kids who was "lazy, underacheiving and a C- student" I can attest that many get over it.
I, for one, do not fear any new outsourced overlords, nor believe they are coming.
for the record, the air pressure in a typical plane at 30k feet is about the same as normal air pressure at 8k feet, which you would think is still out of spec. This is one reason my knees hurt like hell after a 4 or 5+ hour flight: they swell, even if I move around alot.
Boeing is working on composites for the 787 to get the internal air pressure the same as at 6k above sea level in the near future. Read about it in last month's Popular Mechanics.
However, if you have a heat pump, the energy savings aren't 1:1 because the heat pump puts more heat energy in to your home than the grid puts in to the heat pump.
In short, the market will keep things in balance -- capitalism may have its issues, but this is exactly the kind of thing it excels at.
I agree with your idea that capitalism is a self correcting economic system, but not sure that energy efficiency is very relevent outside the server room. Within the server room, the benefits are obvious in both power reduction and reduced A/C needs, but my mom isn't going to buy a new computer to get lower power usage. Hell, she drives a truck that gets 12mpg anyway.
Now, if the technology is put into a laptop and it will run longer, THEN it will create sales outside of the server room, because of usability, not efficiency. Maybe.
It is a good thing for the companies that use massive amounts of computers, but I am not so sure that this will really make a significant environmental impact. It is still a nice step (and the right step), but it won't save any whales in the near future.
What are the options for installing about 150 or 200 watts of constant solar power?
My guess is about 4 acres of land in southern california to have enough solar panel to power 4 servers;) Don't forget, you still have to have power for the hard drives, fans, lights, a/c, video card, and the rest of the motherboard.
As to "constant" solar power, I am not aware of this concept. It gets cloudy everywhere at least some of the time, even southern california. Maybe a wind powered generator hooked to the power grid to sell back excess power during peak production would be an option if you just really into green. I bet it would be less expensive as well, and just as eco-friendly, assuming you had decent winds where you live.
Um no? Your CPU isn't a Heater, it's just a byproduct and since 100% of the energy going into your CPU isn't being put off as energy, it's nowhere near 100% efficient.
Where is the other energy going then? Disneyland?
I think the 2nd law of thermaldynamics may apply here. It doesn't just disappear.
You actually raise a very good point, in winter, that is. In summer, you need more AC to offset the heat gain. It is probably a net gain of about zero for many areas (more if you heat in winter more than cool in summer, for example) if you consider all actual costs.
The only actual power loss is by the photons emitted by your monitor when its in use, which is likely less than 1% of the energy used, so yes 99%-100% efficient is pretty accurate. I hear lots of people complaining about "wasting" energy with doing distributed that can't seem to do the math.
Now, I run Seti@home on some dual cpu web servers I have and have done so for many years. They have to be on 24 hours anyway, although they would be using less power if not cranking for seti. It is not so efficient for them, since they have to be cooled (big window A/C unit sticking through wall, I'm so high tech...). So the cranking isn't totally free for those boxes, but worth it because I get to be cool and ranked in the top 99.725% (top 15k of 5.4m) of Seti contributors;)
You are thinking Pre-2000. AMD has run cooler than Intel, cycle per cycle, for a while now. This is in addition to getting more work done per cycle. The days of AMD being used to toast marshmellows was a loooong time ago. I have both in servers. My dual Xeon server is a fine example of a great system that requires 6000btu of AC to keep a room at 72F. Great box, great cpu, unreal heat.
Wow, I wish I had a mod point or three. Your link came as a total surprise. I have to give El Reg credit, tho. All press is for sale, they are just open about it and post a menu for you to choose from. That DOES clarify alot of stuff, however. One has to wonder if the original article WAS a paid one...
wtf does that have to do with anything? Are you saying that if they had been using Adobe software on OS X, then they would not have made this same mistake? I think not. This is taking "fanboy" to an all new level.
I welcome any opportunity to point out the flaws in Windows (which are plenty), but this is a case of the user being stupid, not the operating system. Get your facts straight before just stupidly blaming software that had no impact. Be it Linux, MS or OS X doesn't matter: The person that "hid" the text was simply a moron.
I was in Moldova last fall, (between Ukraine and Romania) and driving down the road it was like that: beautiful women after beautiful women. Was almost distrubing. Was at least distracting;)
She is not skinny or pretty. She is flat chested, boney, and rather homely. The world is awash in people that look like that.
She IS rich, however, which by itself, I don't find attractive. Inheriting millions from daddy doesn't qualify as "talent" in my book. Besides, I wouldn't care if she was broke, she still is not pretty.
Skinny, pretty girls are great. She just isn't one of them.
All true. But she's still better looking than anybody I've met in the flesh this week.
You must not get out much;) There are prettier girls where I work. Hell, there are prettier girls working the register at the supermarket.
Regarding "unrealistic standards", I don't find her standards as unrealistic: Average looking and boney. You can find that in any developing country. Last time I was in eastern Europe, I saw plenty of girls that were just as slim and much better looking. You can find millions of them in the former Soviet countries.
I don't see the attraction either. Plain face, boney body, bad attitude. I mean, its not like there is a shortage of little rich girls with no morals. She is far from the prettiest of the bunch.
Its not like she is talented either. Her biggest assets are just being rich and being a celebrity. WHY she is a celebrity is beyond me.
That is not so ironic to me. I play a little with Perl on Apache, and do most of my programming (IANAP) on Windows XP, using Putty to SSH in. In a similar shell only mode. I always felt more productive in DOS. Even though some individual tasks take longer in a shell, most take less time, and less overall. When I do need the mouse, gotta love the ease of just selecting any text automatically COPYs it in Putty.
I don't use DOS much anymore because of the internet capability, and it sucks compared to Cygwin on if you are running it as a task on XP.
Once you start using BASH and can background all the task you want, its hard to switch back.
Actually, in defense to the Free spirit above, I have to keep track of over 2 dozen computers, and it sucks to have to mess with MS for this. If a motherboard with built in NIC dies and I replace it, I have to call to get permission from MS to run the same software it was running.
I can't just clone the OS from machine to machine unless I give up MORE rights and get a site license. Its not worth the pain.
Try testing software on a fresh install of MS. Since I have to buy the software, update it, register it, etc. before testing the software, it makes it slow to test ANY software on a clean isolated machine.
With Linux, I use a kickstart file pointed to an FTP machine (with updated RPMS) and I have a freshly installed and updated OS in a matter of a few minutes. Most of those minutes, I can go and do something else, like read Slashdot.
I can't do a simple backup and restore (or dump and restore) like I can with Linux. Even MS tells you to reinstall the OS and all the apps, then restore the DATA files only. This is rediculously slow compared to slapping in a Knoppix disk and restoring via FTP.
I don't like buying licenses for my desktops, then licenses for my servers, then EXTRA licenses so they can talk to each other. Its not even about the money, its the hassle. This is why we have a Samba server for our Windows Pro boxes. It was fast, easy and runs on our hotswap Raid 5 nicely.
I am not a freak about Free software myself, as far as the politics are concerned. It just so happens that free software is Free as in Speech, and it is easier to use as a small network admin. It cuts the time by half or more for the most common tasks I do. I have no problem with proprietary apps on Linux either. You wrote the code? Fine. Charge what you want. If it's worth it, I will buy it.
I DO understand what he means when he says that he feels like he is being treated like a criminal for using legitimately purchased software. Windows 9x and 2k were not this way, and I wasn't thinking about switching all the desktops then. I still used Linux for servers, but that was because of the ease of use, not $$. I paid more for RedHat updates and support than I would have for Windows software.
Screw free. I like Free. I will gladly continue to pay for Free software, and gladly pay twice the price. My time is worth more than any of the software anyway.
The penguin never makes me feel like I did something illegal when I haven't, and never requires me to PROVE it.
A better question would be, how did the article get posted in the first place?
It would appear that it got posted because Taco took the bait hook line and sinker without researching it. I guess that can happen if he wanted Slashdot to get the "First Post" on it and he couldn't find any other reference to this on any other news site. It sounded pretty fishy to me when I say the article, and have trouble believing it didn't sound fishy to him.
Thusly, someone needs to mod Taco down for his "First Post" lame submission.;)
I run it every night and have it autoquarantine everything, and have NEVER had it touch my wanted programs, on a VERY loaded and capable box. (multiple BT clients, USENET clients, etc.) It doesn't claim Firefox is anything (using now as always). Doesn't seem to care one way or the other.
I installed MS Antispy a month ago, and haven't had any problems with it. While I am not a fan of MS's tactics and use Linux on most of my boxes (this is a media center hooked to the TV, easier for Windows, to me) I find the program pretty good. Beat out Spybot Search and Destroy, which I have used for over a year before installing MS's app.
Because I run the scan every night, I have scanned with all the definitions, so my guess is that the article is FUD against MS, which is rather ironic if you think about it.
That works fine, except the default for most windows computers is to not show extensions, so renaming kinda sucks. Easier in a cmd window but most people are not familiar enough to do that.
Me, I have windows where it protects no system files and doesn't hide extensions for known file types, but I'm kinda funny that way, liking to actually see the full name of my files, even if they require stupid extension names.
You would think by now Bill and Co. could figure out how to make a FS that didn't require extensions to the file name.
A linux virus running as a user could store data, open network connections, run portscans, read email, email passwords, IM logs and SSH keys, read and modify personal documents -- what more does it need to do?
A user can't email passwords on port 25 on any box I own, including the windows boxes, since they run through a Linux firewall that blocks all traffice coming and going on port 25. I only allow webmail. Can't read IM since I don't use or allow it on my network. But that is an exception.
The others, yes, a virus can do that. The point is, that is about ALL you can do. On Windows, you can do a lot more, including infect an entire network, destroy system files (requiring a reinstall) and destroy the files of other users. This is much harder to do on Linux unless you get root through an exploit. All things considered, it is still harder to do that on Linux. Not impossible, but harder.
One major difference is that at least on MY boxes (any anyone elses with very little effort) is you can easily disable root access via ssh, so someone has to first gain access as a user, THEN as root, or gain as a user and install a root kit. Of course, not every distro of Linux is the same, and not every installation of the same distro is the same either. With windows, it is. Again, beating a dead horse, but I work with both equally, and I promise you that Linux CAN be owned, but Windows is much easier to do so. Much.
Let the fanboys argue it out I guess, I use both, so I'm not a fanboy for either camp. I'm just a realist who runs an IT dept. and deals with these issues every day.
You can block those other activities using either OS if you use a good firewall. BSD or Linux does quite well for those tasks on any old Pentium box. Easy to install and its free.
Slashdot Mirror
I can't remember the original source for the quote, but it comes to mind:
Character is when you are willing to finish the task once the sparkle of new is gone.
It seems to apply, and I would think this is true for American's or non-Americans. It is not that 95% of Americans are not willing to finish a task, it is that 95% of all people are not willing to finish a task.
I am old enough to remember how the Japanese were going to make all US auto makers obsolete, and how we could not compete in the 70s and 80s, yet we have done more than fine, even improving BECAUSE of the competition. We can't sit idle and wish for more success (wishing is, afterall, passivity) but I would be hard pressed to believe that America is going to hell in a hand basket due to our "underacheiving kids". We have been there, we have done that, and many more people are wanting to move here than move away. As someone who was once one of those kids who was "lazy, underacheiving and a C- student" I can attest that many get over it.
I, for one, do not fear any new outsourced overlords, nor believe they are coming.
for the record, the air pressure in a typical plane at 30k feet is about the same as normal air pressure at 8k feet, which you would think is still out of spec. This is one reason my knees hurt like hell after a 4 or 5+ hour flight: they swell, even if I move around alot.
Boeing is working on composites for the 787 to get the internal air pressure the same as at 6k above sea level in the near future. Read about it in last month's Popular Mechanics.
wow, i totally suck today. Thank you for pointing that out :p You are correct sir. As for the rest of my comments:
my $comments =~ s/2nd/1st/eg;
However, if you have a heat pump, the energy savings aren't 1:1 because the heat pump puts more heat energy in to your home than the grid puts in to the heat pump.
;)
Please see 2nd law of thermal dynamics above
In short, the market will keep things in balance -- capitalism may have its issues, but this is exactly the kind of thing it excels at.
I agree with your idea that capitalism is a self correcting economic system, but not sure that energy efficiency is very relevent outside the server room. Within the server room, the benefits are obvious in both power reduction and reduced A/C needs, but my mom isn't going to buy a new computer to get lower power usage. Hell, she drives a truck that gets 12mpg anyway.
Now, if the technology is put into a laptop and it will run longer, THEN it will create sales outside of the server room, because of usability, not efficiency. Maybe.
It is a good thing for the companies that use massive amounts of computers, but I am not so sure that this will really make a significant environmental impact. It is still a nice step (and the right step), but it won't save any whales in the near future.
And obviously in the bottom of my class in math comprehension, huh? My bad.
What are the options for installing about 150 or 200 watts of constant solar power?
;) Don't forget, you still have to have power for the hard drives, fans, lights, a/c, video card, and the rest of the motherboard.
My guess is about 4 acres of land in southern california to have enough solar panel to power 4 servers
As to "constant" solar power, I am not aware of this concept. It gets cloudy everywhere at least some of the time, even southern california. Maybe a wind powered generator hooked to the power grid to sell back excess power during peak production would be an option if you just really into green. I bet it would be less expensive as well, and just as eco-friendly, assuming you had decent winds where you live.
CDW has several for sale from different manufacturers. So does Walmart. And TigerDirect.
Um no? Your CPU isn't a Heater, it's just a byproduct and since 100% of the energy going into your CPU isn't being put off as energy, it's nowhere near 100% efficient.
Where is the other energy going then? Disneyland?
I think the 2nd law of thermaldynamics may apply here. It doesn't just disappear.
You actually raise a very good point, in winter, that is. In summer, you need more AC to offset the heat gain. It is probably a net gain of about zero for many areas (more if you heat in winter more than cool in summer, for example) if you consider all actual costs.
;)
The only actual power loss is by the photons emitted by your monitor when its in use, which is likely less than 1% of the energy used, so yes 99%-100% efficient is pretty accurate. I hear lots of people complaining about "wasting" energy with doing distributed that can't seem to do the math.
Now, I run Seti@home on some dual cpu web servers I have and have done so for many years. They have to be on 24 hours anyway, although they would be using less power if not cranking for seti. It is not so efficient for them, since they have to be cooled (big window A/C unit sticking through wall, I'm so high tech...). So the cranking isn't totally free for those boxes, but worth it because I get to be cool and ranked in the top 99.725% (top 15k of 5.4m) of Seti contributors
You are thinking Pre-2000. AMD has run cooler than Intel, cycle per cycle, for a while now. This is in addition to getting more work done per cycle. The days of AMD being used to toast marshmellows was a loooong time ago. I have both in servers. My dual Xeon server is a fine example of a great system that requires 6000btu of AC to keep a room at 72F. Great box, great cpu, unreal heat.
Wow, I wish I had a mod point or three. Your link came as a total surprise. I have to give El Reg credit, tho. All press is for sale, they are just open about it and post a menu for you to choose from. That DOES clarify alot of stuff, however. One has to wonder if the original article WAS a paid one...
What platform was the adobe software running on?
wtf does that have to do with anything? Are you saying that if they had been using Adobe software on OS X, then they would not have made this same mistake? I think not. This is taking "fanboy" to an all new level.
I welcome any opportunity to point out the flaws in Windows (which are plenty), but this is a case of the user being stupid, not the operating system. Get your facts straight before just stupidly blaming software that had no impact. Be it Linux, MS or OS X doesn't matter: The person that "hid" the text was simply a moron.
I don't care who you are, THAT was funny.
I was in Moldova last fall, (between Ukraine and Romania) and driving down the road it was like that: beautiful women after beautiful women. Was almost distrubing. Was at least distracting ;)
She is not skinny or pretty. She is flat chested, boney, and rather homely. The world is awash in people that look like that.
She IS rich, however, which by itself, I don't find attractive. Inheriting millions from daddy doesn't qualify as "talent" in my book. Besides, I wouldn't care if she was broke, she still is not pretty.
Skinny, pretty girls are great. She just isn't one of them.
All true. But she's still better looking than anybody I've met in the flesh this week.
;) There are prettier girls where I work. Hell, there are prettier girls working the register at the supermarket.
You must not get out much
Regarding "unrealistic standards", I don't find her standards as unrealistic: Average looking and boney. You can find that in any developing country. Last time I was in eastern Europe, I saw plenty of girls that were just as slim and much better looking. You can find millions of them in the former Soviet countries.
I don't see the attraction either. Plain face, boney body, bad attitude. I mean, its not like there is a shortage of little rich girls with no morals. She is far from the prettiest of the bunch.
Its not like she is talented either. Her biggest assets are just being rich and being a celebrity. WHY she is a celebrity is beyond me.
That is not so ironic to me. I play a little with Perl on Apache, and do most of my programming (IANAP) on Windows XP, using Putty to SSH in. In a similar shell only mode. I always felt more productive in DOS. Even though some individual tasks take longer in a shell, most take less time, and less overall. When I do need the mouse, gotta love the ease of just selecting any text automatically COPYs it in Putty.
I don't use DOS much anymore because of the internet capability, and it sucks compared to Cygwin on if you are running it as a task on XP.
Once you start using BASH and can background all the task you want, its hard to switch back.
Actually, in defense to the Free spirit above, I have to keep track of over 2 dozen computers, and it sucks to have to mess with MS for this. If a motherboard with built in NIC dies and I replace it, I have to call to get permission from MS to run the same software it was running.
I can't just clone the OS from machine to machine unless I give up MORE rights and get a site license. Its not worth the pain.
Try testing software on a fresh install of MS. Since I have to buy the software, update it, register it, etc. before testing the software, it makes it slow to test ANY software on a clean isolated machine.
With Linux, I use a kickstart file pointed to an FTP machine (with updated RPMS) and I have a freshly installed and updated OS in a matter of a few minutes. Most of those minutes, I can go and do something else, like read Slashdot.
I can't do a simple backup and restore (or dump and restore) like I can with Linux. Even MS tells you to reinstall the OS and all the apps, then restore the DATA files only. This is rediculously slow compared to slapping in a Knoppix disk and restoring via FTP.
I don't like buying licenses for my desktops, then licenses for my servers, then EXTRA licenses so they can talk to each other. Its not even about the money, its the hassle. This is why we have a Samba server for our Windows Pro boxes. It was fast, easy and runs on our hotswap Raid 5 nicely.
I am not a freak about Free software myself, as far as the politics are concerned. It just so happens that free software is Free as in Speech, and it is easier to use as a small network admin. It cuts the time by half or more for the most common tasks I do. I have no problem with proprietary apps on Linux either. You wrote the code? Fine. Charge what you want. If it's worth it, I will buy it.
I DO understand what he means when he says that he feels like he is being treated like a criminal for using legitimately purchased software. Windows 9x and 2k were not this way, and I wasn't thinking about switching all the desktops then. I still used Linux for servers, but that was because of the ease of use, not $$. I paid more for RedHat updates and support than I would have for Windows software.
Screw free. I like Free. I will gladly continue to pay for Free software, and gladly pay twice the price. My time is worth more than any of the software anyway.
The penguin never makes me feel like I did something illegal when I haven't, and never requires me to PROVE it.
In other words, someone has found a way to mass produce cheap but not very efficient solar cells
Good point. So now I only need about 30 acres of this solar film to power my house?
A better question would be, how did the article get posted in the first place?
;)
It would appear that it got posted because Taco took the bait hook line and sinker without researching it. I guess that can happen if he wanted Slashdot to get the "First Post" on it and he couldn't find any other reference to this on any other news site. It sounded pretty fishy to me when I say the article, and have trouble believing it didn't sound fishy to him.
Thusly, someone needs to mod Taco down for his "First Post" lame submission.
I run it every night and have it autoquarantine everything, and have NEVER had it touch my wanted programs, on a VERY loaded and capable box. (multiple BT clients, USENET clients, etc.) It doesn't claim Firefox is anything (using now as always). Doesn't seem to care one way or the other.
I installed MS Antispy a month ago, and haven't had any problems with it. While I am not a fan of MS's tactics and use Linux on most of my boxes (this is a media center hooked to the TV, easier for Windows, to me) I find the program pretty good. Beat out Spybot Search and Destroy, which I have used for over a year before installing MS's app.
Because I run the scan every night, I have scanned with all the definitions, so my guess is that the article is FUD against MS, which is rather ironic if you think about it.
That works fine, except the default for most windows computers is to not show extensions, so renaming kinda sucks. Easier in a cmd window but most people are not familiar enough to do that.
Me, I have windows where it protects no system files and doesn't hide extensions for known file types, but I'm kinda funny that way, liking to actually see the full name of my files, even if they require stupid extension names.
You would think by now Bill and Co. could figure out how to make a FS that didn't require extensions to the file name.
A linux virus running as a user could store data, open network connections, run portscans, read email, email passwords, IM logs and SSH keys, read and modify personal documents -- what more does it need to do?
A user can't email passwords on port 25 on any box I own, including the windows boxes, since they run through a Linux firewall that blocks all traffice coming and going on port 25. I only allow webmail. Can't read IM since I don't use or allow it on my network. But that is an exception.
The others, yes, a virus can do that. The point is, that is about ALL you can do. On Windows, you can do a lot more, including infect an entire network, destroy system files (requiring a reinstall) and destroy the files of other users. This is much harder to do on Linux unless you get root through an exploit. All things considered, it is still harder to do that on Linux. Not impossible, but harder.
One major difference is that at least on MY boxes (any anyone elses with very little effort) is you can easily disable root access via ssh, so someone has to first gain access as a user, THEN as root, or gain as a user and install a root kit. Of course, not every distro of Linux is the same, and not every installation of the same distro is the same either. With windows, it is. Again, beating a dead horse, but I work with both equally, and I promise you that Linux CAN be owned, but Windows is much easier to do so. Much.
Let the fanboys argue it out I guess, I use both, so I'm not a fanboy for either camp. I'm just a realist who runs an IT dept. and deals with these issues every day.
You can block those other activities using either OS if you use a good firewall. BSD or Linux does quite well for those tasks on any old Pentium box. Easy to install and its free.