Your brain isn't just seeing a bitmap your eyes are presenting - what your conscious mind sees has gone through a tremendous amount of image processing first. If you concentrate hard, you will notice your vision is really only a very tiny point of sharp, focused vision - barely big enough to fit a word on a page (that's why you have to scan the page with your eyes). That is your fovea. The rest of your eyes are very low resolution. However, the image processing part of the brain fills in all the gaps, and turns most of your vision into a sharp coherent picture (rather than a tiny area of sharp vision surrounded by fuzzy blurred colours). It also fills in shapes that are uncertain. Suggestions from others can help to fill those shapes. This is why people see ghosts. It can be extremely convincing. Just the other night I was walking to my dad's and I was convinced I could see a man ahead, bent down putting a collar on a small dog. When I got closer, it turned out to just be the combination of poor light from a distant streetlamp and the juxtaposition of a wheelie bin and some railings. Had I been going into a house on that road instead of past that area, and someone the next day had asked me if I'd seen anybody in the street that night, I'd have told them about a man and his dog - who didn't exist - because the visual processing part of my brain simply filled in the blanks from a dimly lit scene.
Tadpoles? Never head them called that (I assume you are talking about the class 207 DEMUs). We called them 'Thumpers'. We called standard mechanical DMUs 'bog units'.
On a point of pedantry, the Intercity 125 (HST) does *not* have a DVT - it has an actual locomotive at each end. A DVT is a driving van trailer; by definition unpowered. Both ends of an HST are powered.
The Intercity 225 has a DVT, however. But by then, DVTs were already in use (most notably on the Edinburgh to Glasgow route).
Every railway suffers from leaves on the line; in the BR case it was more of a PR problem (they told the truth, where other railway companies may have just said 'operational problems' or some other nondescript reason) and the dolts who didn't understand laughed.
The problem is this. Wet leaves can accumulate during heavy leaf falls. When a train rolls over these, it turns the leaves into an incredibly good lubricant. The moment the driver applies the brakes, hundreds of wheels all lock up. This leaf lube isn't all that good though - quickly wearing off, and when it does, metal to metal contact with the rail head is restored. Except now the wheels are stopped even though the train is still going. The friction burns a flat spot in the wheel - and the rolling stock has to be immediately taken out of service to have the wheel repaired.
BR (or more accurately, Network SouthEast) made a similar gaffe when they told the truth about the snow (the infamous 'wrong kind of snow'). British snow is typically heavy and wet. This snow was like the finest powder in Utah which people love to ski on. It got sucked into traction motors, shorting them out. If they had just lied and said the track was blocked by snow, everyone would have forgotten about it by now.
Well, you did reply 'the cost benefit is mostly crap', which is hardly an enlightening reply. It'd have been much better discussion-wise had you replied as you did just now.
It also depends how big your organization is. If you're the only network bod and there's 15 locations, then you can make the cost benefit analysis and maybe paying for Cisco kit isn't paying through the nose. However, most organizations just aren't that big - and for my money, OpenBSD + CARP (i.e. automatic failover) is a much better value proposition than anything that Cisco can sell me.
The Google prospectus said beforehand they wouldn't be doing this. The investors themselves bought knowing this. It's now the analysts who are kvetching. Google isn't the only company that does this either.
The investors who matter most in Google are the majority shareholders...who also happen to be Google's executives. Google is profitable at the moment and doesn't actually require a huge injection of cash (they already have it in the bank). Google doesn't care.
I may be reading you wrong, but you are providing a false dilemma. Wind alone cannot provide the full solution but that doesn't necessarily mean that it's not worthwhile to do. Really, any energy policy is going to be a mix of sources (and will depend on where you are). For example, Britain won't really have any significant solar power because for 6 months of the year, the sun is hardly out - but it has shallow coastal waters with near continuous wind. So Britain may generate, say, 25% of its power from wind. It also has a lot of coastline and a lot of potential for wave and tidal power. So it may generate some more off tidal/wave (if the Severn Barrage was built, that alone would make 7% of the entire UK's electricity). The rest may be nuclear.
On the other hand, a small town in Arizona could probably make 50% of its power from local solar plants.
In my opinion, the more kinds of power generation the merrier, because it's more likely that all the gaps can be filled. Nuclear is a proven and viable technology which can last (with reprocessing). All power generation has drawbacks and tradeoffs and most of the drawbacks are unpleasant. Unfortunately, we are just going to have to suck it up - either that, or move back into caves.
Hydrogen may actually be the key to viable, reliable renewable energy (sorry for the alliteration).
For instance, if you have a 5MW wind turbine, when it can produce more energy than is being demanded, the excess electrolyses water into H2 and O which is stored in storage tanks at the base of the turbine. When the wind drops, you run the H2 and O back through a fuel cell.
There are of course a number of technical issues that must be addressed (for example, with an offshore wind turbine it would be logical to use seawater for the electrolysis, but the trouble is you're then going to also make chlorine and sodium hydroxide which isn't exactly environmentally friendly).
What, like my 12 inch PowerBook? I guess that 6 pin Firewire port must be something else then. Seems to convince Firewire hard disks and my video camera though.
I find my 12inch PowerBook a suitable desktop replacement. If I want to use it at home, I plug in a USB keyboard and mouse and a 21 inch monitor. At the same time it's extremely portable.
And I do use all the ports - Firewire for capturing video off my camcorder (I wouldn't ever have a notepad computer without this), both USB ports, mini DVI port (for connecting to a TV or a monitor) and microphone and headphone jack (for use with Skype, or just the headphone jack for listening to music). Ethernet for plugging in where there's no wireless.
A desktop replacement doesn't necessarily mean a gigantic slab - it really depends on your needs.
Vint Cerf was on Radio 4's Today programme yesterday morning. It was interesting listening to him trying to justify Google's censorship in China. At least he practically said, "Well, we're in it purely for the money, do no evil be damned" (but in a more round about weaselly way).
They are? As a British citizen, this is the extent of what I need to do to enter the US:
Fill out a green form on the plane - I-94W 'Visa Waiver'. You fill out the flight number, your name, date of birth, passport number and the address of the first place you're staying in the US when you arrive. Fill out a white customs declaration (one per family).
You fill these out on the plane. It takes approximately 3 minutes.
It does get more complex if you need a visa, but that's true for pretty much anywhere in the world.
Different airports seem to have different immigration rules - I find Houston always very fast and courteous (even the time I had to do the full customs check), but the last time I went through Dallas Ft.Worth I vowed I'd never go through there again (they were surly and uncooperative).
Well, in the case of 240v 50Hz, it is better - at least I can power an electric kettle off a normal wall socket without having to wait forever for it to boil. 240v is MUCH more practical than 110. I don't need special supplies to run a tumble dryer - that just runs off a normal wall socket too.
Real Man's electricity, is 240v. If it ain't strong enough to electrocute, what's the use?:-)
If the router is 1/5th of the equivalent Cisco router, you'd need FOUR spares per router to equal cost parity with Cisco. Realistically, you're probably not going to have that many, so yes - you are going to spend less money AND have a faster replacement (minutes probably) than Cisco service. Even if you had two hot swap spares per router, you're still way ahead.
If it's 1/5th of the cost of Cisco as the summary states, then you have two or three spares which you preload with your configuration. If one dies, just plug in the spare. Much faster than waiting for Cisco to show up. That's what we do with OpenBSD firewalls - it's SO MUCH cheaper than Checkpoint, instead of having one Checkpoint firewall and an expensive support contract, we have hot spares we can just plug in.
Because people just don't talk to each other. I bet he never approached a neighbour who wasn't in the church's signal shadow to ask to put a repeater on their house for the exchange of perhaps setting up their internet access or similar. Even before I saw the replies by real engineers on this topic, I was wondering where his engineering study was and how those bolts are awfully skinny when he gets the next strong storm come past.
This is why when I hear about our various governments wanting to sniff everyone's email as a pointless waste of time. A spam run is even better than a numbers station (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numbers_station) because it's a lot more subtle (unlike a numbers station which you can tell where it is and when a new one pops up, it's obvious, and just like a numbers station there's no way to tell from a message hidden in spam who the intended recipient is).
Any terrorist worth his salt who wants to signal terror cells over the internet can easily just use a spam run to do the job, and have the message hidden in the spam's "hash busters" (which are routine these days) and a one time pad to decrypt the message at the other end.
The real question is - why is it only in the US that these odd technology hacks are being used - the rest of the world is using DAB for digital broacast radio. It seems like the US is the only place that WON'T be using DAB.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, MS manage to sell Axapta, which sounds a bit like the noise a toy gun makes.
Actually, seeing is not believing.
Your brain isn't just seeing a bitmap your eyes are presenting - what your conscious mind sees has gone through a tremendous amount of image processing first. If you concentrate hard, you will notice your vision is really only a very tiny point of sharp, focused vision - barely big enough to fit a word on a page (that's why you have to scan the page with your eyes). That is your fovea. The rest of your eyes are very low resolution. However, the image processing part of the brain fills in all the gaps, and turns most of your vision into a sharp coherent picture (rather than a tiny area of sharp vision surrounded by fuzzy blurred colours). It also fills in shapes that are uncertain. Suggestions from others can help to fill those shapes. This is why people see ghosts. It can be extremely convincing. Just the other night I was walking to my dad's and I was convinced I could see a man ahead, bent down putting a collar on a small dog. When I got closer, it turned out to just be the combination of poor light from a distant streetlamp and the juxtaposition of a wheelie bin and some railings. Had I been going into a house on that road instead of past that area, and someone the next day had asked me if I'd seen anybody in the street that night, I'd have told them about a man and his dog - who didn't exist - because the visual processing part of my brain simply filled in the blanks from a dimly lit scene.
Tadpoles? Never head them called that (I assume you are talking about the class 207 DEMUs). We called them 'Thumpers'. We called standard mechanical DMUs 'bog units'.
On a point of pedantry, the Intercity 125 (HST) does *not* have a DVT - it has an actual locomotive at each end. A DVT is a driving van trailer; by definition unpowered. Both ends of an HST are powered.
The Intercity 225 has a DVT, however. But by then, DVTs were already in use (most notably on the Edinburgh to Glasgow route).
Every railway suffers from leaves on the line; in the BR case it was more of a PR problem (they told the truth, where other railway companies may have just said 'operational problems' or some other nondescript reason) and the dolts who didn't understand laughed.
The problem is this. Wet leaves can accumulate during heavy leaf falls. When a train rolls over these, it turns the leaves into an incredibly good lubricant. The moment the driver applies the brakes, hundreds of wheels all lock up. This leaf lube isn't all that good though - quickly wearing off, and when it does, metal to metal contact with the rail head is restored. Except now the wheels are stopped even though the train is still going. The friction burns a flat spot in the wheel - and the rolling stock has to be immediately taken out of service to have the wheel repaired.
BR (or more accurately, Network SouthEast) made a similar gaffe when they told the truth about the snow (the infamous 'wrong kind of snow'). British snow is typically heavy and wet. This snow was like the finest powder in Utah which people love to ski on. It got sucked into traction motors, shorting them out. If they had just lied and said the track was blocked by snow, everyone would have forgotten about it by now.
Well, you did reply 'the cost benefit is mostly crap', which is hardly an enlightening reply. It'd have been much better discussion-wise had you replied as you did just now.
It also depends how big your organization is. If you're the only network bod and there's 15 locations, then you can make the cost benefit analysis and maybe paying for Cisco kit isn't paying through the nose. However, most organizations just aren't that big - and for my money, OpenBSD + CARP (i.e. automatic failover) is a much better value proposition than anything that Cisco can sell me.
Just tell them 'Even Linux can do it ffs' and they will jump to it before you can say 'jump'.
The Google prospectus said beforehand they wouldn't be doing this. The investors themselves bought knowing this. It's now the analysts who are kvetching. Google isn't the only company that does this either.
The investors who matter most in Google are the majority shareholders...who also happen to be Google's executives. Google is profitable at the moment and doesn't actually require a huge injection of cash (they already have it in the bank). Google doesn't care.
Who cares? This is about as significant as Microsoft not releasing a PowerPC version of Vista.
RTFA. They aren't being silent to investors, they are being silent to analysts who are too lazy to do their own groundwork.
I may be reading you wrong, but you are providing a false dilemma. Wind alone cannot provide the full solution but that doesn't necessarily mean that it's not worthwhile to do. Really, any energy policy is going to be a mix of sources (and will depend on where you are). For example, Britain won't really have any significant solar power because for 6 months of the year, the sun is hardly out - but it has shallow coastal waters with near continuous wind. So Britain may generate, say, 25% of its power from wind. It also has a lot of coastline and a lot of potential for wave and tidal power. So it may generate some more off tidal/wave (if the Severn Barrage was built, that alone would make 7% of the entire UK's electricity). The rest may be nuclear.
On the other hand, a small town in Arizona could probably make 50% of its power from local solar plants.
In my opinion, the more kinds of power generation the merrier, because it's more likely that all the gaps can be filled. Nuclear is a proven and viable technology which can last (with reprocessing). All power generation has drawbacks and tradeoffs and most of the drawbacks are unpleasant. Unfortunately, we are just going to have to suck it up - either that, or move back into caves.
Hydrogen may actually be the key to viable, reliable renewable energy (sorry for the alliteration).
For instance, if you have a 5MW wind turbine, when it can produce more energy than is being demanded, the excess electrolyses water into H2 and O which is stored in storage tanks at the base of the turbine. When the wind drops, you run the H2 and O back through a fuel cell.
There are of course a number of technical issues that must be addressed (for example, with an offshore wind turbine it would be logical to use seawater for the electrolysis, but the trouble is you're then going to also make chlorine and sodium hydroxide which isn't exactly environmentally friendly).
What, like my 12 inch PowerBook? I guess that 6 pin Firewire port must be something else then. Seems to convince Firewire hard disks and my video camera though.
I find my 12inch PowerBook a suitable desktop replacement. If I want to use it at home, I plug in a USB keyboard and mouse and a 21 inch monitor. At the same time it's extremely portable.
And I do use all the ports - Firewire for capturing video off my camcorder (I wouldn't ever have a notepad computer without this), both USB ports, mini DVI port (for connecting to a TV or a monitor) and microphone and headphone jack (for use with Skype, or just the headphone jack for listening to music). Ethernet for plugging in where there's no wireless.
A desktop replacement doesn't necessarily mean a gigantic slab - it really depends on your needs.
Vint Cerf was on Radio 4's Today programme yesterday morning. It was interesting listening to him trying to justify Google's censorship in China. At least he practically said, "Well, we're in it purely for the money, do no evil be damned" (but in a more round about weaselly way).
They are? As a British citizen, this is the extent of what I need to do to enter the US:
Fill out a green form on the plane - I-94W 'Visa Waiver'. You fill out the flight number, your name, date of birth, passport number and the address of the first place you're staying in the US when you arrive.
Fill out a white customs declaration (one per family).
You fill these out on the plane. It takes approximately 3 minutes.
It does get more complex if you need a visa, but that's true for pretty much anywhere in the world.
Different airports seem to have different immigration rules - I find Houston always very fast and courteous (even the time I had to do the full customs check), but the last time I went through Dallas Ft.Worth I vowed I'd never go through there again (they were surly and uncooperative).
Well, in the case of 240v 50Hz, it is better - at least I can power an electric kettle off a normal wall socket without having to wait forever for it to boil. 240v is MUCH more practical than 110. I don't need special supplies to run a tumble dryer - that just runs off a normal wall socket too.
:-)
Real Man's electricity, is 240v. If it ain't strong enough to electrocute, what's the use?
Really? Let's do the maths.
If the router is 1/5th of the equivalent Cisco router, you'd need FOUR spares per router to equal cost parity with Cisco. Realistically, you're probably not going to have that many, so yes - you are going to spend less money AND have a faster replacement (minutes probably) than Cisco service. Even if you had two hot swap spares per router, you're still way ahead.
If it's 1/5th of the cost of Cisco as the summary states, then you have two or three spares which you preload with your configuration. If one dies, just plug in the spare. Much faster than waiting for Cisco to show up. That's what we do with OpenBSD firewalls - it's SO MUCH cheaper than Checkpoint, instead of having one Checkpoint firewall and an expensive support contract, we have hot spares we can just plug in.
Nuclear energy is one of the solutions to that, too. But only in a prompt critical manner.
When the electricity is off for 10 hours a day, every day, then people will stop complaining about nuclear power and will welcome it with open arms.
Because people just don't talk to each other. I bet he never approached a neighbour who wasn't in the church's signal shadow to ask to put a repeater on their house for the exchange of perhaps setting up their internet access or similar. Even before I saw the replies by real engineers on this topic, I was wondering where his engineering study was and how those bolts are awfully skinny when he gets the next strong storm come past.
This is why when I hear about our various governments wanting to sniff everyone's email as a pointless waste of time. A spam run is even better than a numbers station (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numbers_station) because it's a lot more subtle (unlike a numbers station which you can tell where it is and when a new one pops up, it's obvious, and just like a numbers station there's no way to tell from a message hidden in spam who the intended recipient is).
Any terrorist worth his salt who wants to signal terror cells over the internet can easily just use a spam run to do the job, and have the message hidden in the spam's "hash busters" (which are routine these days) and a one time pad to decrypt the message at the other end.
If you want to do it more subtly, tell them to do Alt-Space then C. Even works with GNOME!
The real question is - why is it only in the US that these odd technology hacks are being used - the rest of the world is using DAB for digital broacast radio. It seems like the US is the only place that WON'T be using DAB.