This is nothing like legos; it uses ball-joint connections so you can move the pieces relative to one another after they're snapped together. The sensors are updating in real time as you move the different parts, so the computer can display animations that echo the manipulations you perform on the model.
Why do you assume that publications are priced on a cost-plus basis? At any rate, you're only addressing the marginal cost of production; most of their costs are probably in the research and writing of the articles. Since they're selling information, and not paper or pixels, the value to customers is the appropriate basis for pricing. From that perspective, the online version is more valuable, since it's constantly updated, searchable, and organized by category rather than date.
If they were making a higher margin on online subscriptions but pushing people to print subscriptions because there was greater perceived value, they should decrease the price of online subscriptions to increase profits. But the article indicates that there is little overlap between the two audiences, and an individual's choice of print or online is largely based on what medium they're comfortable with. Most likely, the two subscriptions are priced equivalently so that customers *don't* think they are getting scammed: there is one price for the information, and you can have it delivered however you prefer.
If you think they're "sticking it to you" then go do the research on your own for $26/year (or wade through the print subscription if you think it's a better deal), but I am happy to pay for my online subscription even though I only log on every few months to look for a specific piece of information.
I'll skip my "dumb user" stories and chime in with a "dumb support" story. I bought an Epson ink-jet printer and had trouble with it right from the beginning: printing gaps and also horizontal lines extending off the page. After the first hour on the phone with tech support I was instructed to send it to them for service. One week later it comes back having been "tested and cleaned" but still exhibiting the same problem.
Another hour on the phone with tech support passed before I get escalated to second-level support. Working down the same list of troubleshooting steps that all the other techs had followed, she comes to "are you using Epson brand paper?" No, I explain, but I'm using quality ink-jet paper. When she tries to tell me that must be my problem and she can't possibly consider any other action to repair the printer until I've tried using their magic paper I'm finally at the end of my rope. "Are you telling me that your paper would *prevent* it from printing lines that extend off the edge of the paper and onto the roller?" Finally she relented and they sent me a replacement printer.
After several experiences like this I'm convinced that second-level support is often just better at harassing customers until they go away, not better at fixing problems.
Rather than rolling-your-own off-peak pre-chilling system, check out the
Ice Bear
ice-based thermal energy storage system. This system was named a GreenSpec®Top-10 green building product of 2005. It's designed to work with standard central air-conditioning units, in buildings from 2,000 to 50,000 ft^2.
This system can reduce peak cooling load by up to 95%. Not only does it improve your peak load profile, it can reduce the overall cooling cost, since the A/C units run at night, when the ambient temperature is cooler. Condensation is not an issue, since the ice is stored in insulated containers near the A/C units (typically outside, often on the roof.)
Disclosure: I'm not affiliated with Ice Bear, but I do work for BuildingGreen, which published the articles I linked to above.
From TFA: Lie-in
This New Year's Day, we'll have an extra second in bed - an extra leap second will be added to the pips at midnight on the first of January.
Try "Rising Early". You don't get to sleep through the second between 12:00:00 and 12:00:01 twice - you "leap" over it! When clock-time gains a second, we lose it. I definitely notice the loss or gain with daylight savings, but I don't think I'll be going to bed early on 12/31 because of this.
Re:What will it be for early downloaders...
on
Mac OS X 10.4.3 Released
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I am always VERY confident to install Apple updates...
I administer an office of 15 macs, and I mostly share your confidence in installing Apple updates. I do, however, remember setting up a 15" Al p'book, and running software update on it right after I plugged it in. It updated from 10.3.x to 10.3.(x+1) (perhaps it was 10.3.4 or something - i don't recall) and promptly refused to restart.
My local Mac store (where I had just purchased it) informed me that OS version didn't work well on that model, so I re-installed from the system DVD and started again--fortunately there was nothing installed on it yet--and all was fine. This is the exception to hundreds of updates, however, and seems quite different than the experience that some Windows-using friends must have had to believe that one should never update the OS from the one that comes installed, 'cause it's just asking for trouble.
Ad-free magazines simply do not exist anymore. There aren't any. Not one single one. Prove me wrong.
The publisher that I work for, BuildingGreen, Inc., puts out a monthly newsletter with no ads. And yes, we promote our other related publications in a little box on the back page - sheesh. The important thing is that subscribers pay us to report on new products, techniques, etc., not manufacturers and retailers.
I think it's a lot easier to make money from ads, but our audience (professionals) is willing to pay a little more for impartiality.
Because the music publishers do not have any media costs other than bandwidth and royalties.
I'm not going to defend high prices, but it's a straw man argument to say that the marginal cost of delivering songs via the web is just bandwidth. I'm not the only one here who knows first hand how much work goes into building and maintaining web applications.
Yes, you can have amateur musicians upload their songs to a volunteer-created site and download them for free. iTunes, ITMS and the iPod are successful because a lot of design time was invested so that everything works smoothly.
The myth that everything on the web should be free because you're not getting any "stuff" from the content provider is hurting the adoption of high-quality pay-for-service sites. Not everything valuable comes wrapped in plastic.
In response to the many comments whining about this "ad" for Windows software, allow me to offer an argument in favor of this story.
I don't use Windows (OS X, Red Hat server), but I do have to support some Windows machines on my network. One user has been asking me to buy the full version of WinZip so she doesn't have to feel guilty when using it. I have been stalling, for obvious reasons, but now I can give her links to the new free version. Even better, I got 3 free alternatives (and 2 of those are also open source) to offer her.
While the content of the ad/story isn't very interesting, I was glad to see it on/. so that WinZip can be critiqued.
The article explains that the smog-busting coating for buildings will contain titanium dioxide. They note that this compound is already prevalent in paints, but presumably this process requires a higher concentration than that. I searched GreenSpec for any existing paints that use this effect, and instead found this interesting fact:
The production of pigments can be a highly polluting process. When titanium dioxide is extracted from sand, large quantities of by-products are produced that have historically been disposed of by ocean dumping and/or deep-well injection. The process of refining titanium dioxide is also very energy intensive, with significant releases of carbon dioxide and sulfur oxides. The European Community considers these problems associated with titanium dioxide so serious that they have established limits on the amount of white pigment allowed, and limits on allowable emissions from pigment manufacture, for paints under consideration for the European Eco Label.
I did my undergrad thesis in home power metering, and used 2 different models of Brand power meters. They sample current and voltage at 4kHz to accurately measure true power factor (see their description). Single circuit "plug-through" meters are $150-350; the higher-end ones have computer connectivity and datalogging.
Another option for those interested in exploring home power use--and not ignoring power factor--is the Watt's Up? meter (also plug-through, $100-150, with computer connectivity at the high-end). I believe both this and the Brand meter will show you the instantaneous power factor of the load you're metering if you cycle through the display.
While power factor might be irrelevant for simple inductive loads, I agree with the parent that this is an oversight (if it's true that the hardware in question doesn't do more than measure volts * amps), particularly if you want to check usage against your power bill. Power factor is more of issue for commercial electricity customers, who are billed for non-unity power factor and often install huge banks of capacitors to correct it (though i forget exactly how this helps).
Solarhost used to run their datacenter off of their own solar panels... or so they told me. I asked them why they didn't run their DC loads (servers) directly off of their DC generators (PV panels).
This prompted them to get another tech on the phone, who confirmed that they were running the DC power from the solar panels through an inverter (which powered the building), then plugging the computers into a regular AC outlet. The server power supplies promptly converted it right back to DC. Those 2 conversions cost them tons of lost efficiency, all converted into heat.
I realize that this system allowed them to use off-the-shelf systems for power generation, wiring, and servers, It also meant that the IT crew needed no special training. It probably also reduced line losses by running 110 V AC instead of 12 V or even 48 V DC.
Can anyone else comment on the possibility of running a computer directly off of PV? Would it be much more efficient? I realize that it would require some sort of DC power controller; what other considerations are there?
I have been known to jump down from a lofted bed, walk across the room to hit snooze, and jump back up--all without waking up enough to remember the incident!
I wondered if the amount of time I overslept was correlated with the length of time I was trying to sleep for. As part of my senior thesis (Hampshire College Div 3, actually) on behavior modification through quantitative feedback, I started tracking
time I went to bed
time I set the alarm for, and
time I actually woke up.
After about a month of data had accumulated, I plotted the "planned sleep duration" (alarm time - bed time) vs. "snooze duration" (wake time - alarm time) on a
graph with a trend line. Surprisingly enough, it suggested that I tended to sleep about 8 hours, regardless of how optimistic I was feeling when I set the alarm! The average total sleep time (wake time - bed time) was about 8 hrs.
Also, the trend line intersects the X-axis (no snooze time) at about 8 hrs of planned sleep time, suggesting that if I allowed myself a full night of sleep, I wouldn't use the snooze button at all. I was in college, of course, so that was out of the question; note the data point where 2 hrs of planned sleep results in 6 hrs of snooze time!
As for my theory about behavior modification, it was anecdotally supported by a brief modification of my sleep habits, then a reversion to my old ways after I stopped tracking the times. Now I have a 2-year-old who jumps on my head at 7 am and says "It's time to drink your coffee, Daddy!"
Actually, Slashdot already allows you to customize your homepage. Just go to preferences, and under the "homepage" tab you can choose which topics, authors, and slashboxes you want.
The Department of Energy's Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy site's coding standards include a testing suite with the browsers that they test all their pages on (and they have a very non-lenient QA process). This list used to be solid NN/IE, but in the last few months they have changed it:
PCs:
MS Internet Explorer: 5.5
MS Internet Explorer: 6.0
Mozilla
Macs:
Safari 1.0
Funny, last time i set up a site for them I jokingly asked why the test suite didn't include Safari. This time I just got to complain that their browser detection doesn't show any search box to Mac FireFox - I have to spoof the user agent.
I agree that the next step for (savvy) surfers is to blacklist ad servers with the hosts file. I'm going to try the one suggested by MacFixIt, Mikes Ad Blocking Hosts File, but I don't consider this to be a "final solution."
The ad industry could use proxies to make the ads come from the same servers as the content, as you suggest, but this would complicate the setup procedure for including ads on your site, and would not be possible for all sites (I doubt Tripod would help you set up a proxy!) More likely is that ads will be served off of many domains, or only use IP addresses, and the ad-serving code could probably even keep itself updated using some scheme along the lines of Dynamic DNS.
I'm sure that popup ads will be just as easy to quash as email spam.
4. As a follow-on to #2, offer federally-assisted trade-in vouchers with a sliding rule - the older your car * the poorer you are = higher trade-in amount.
I don't think this will have the effect you intend. It might be more desirable to get a car off the road the older it gets, but if the value keeps going up it will encourage people to keep them longer. "It burns a quart of oil per month, but if I can keep it on the road another year the trade-in value will go up $1,000 and I can afford that new Kia SUV!"
You can already get windows (and transparent walls) from Kalwall that provide up to R-20 insulation. They use a form of aerogel called Nanogel , which is manufactured in Germany by Cabot (not like the cheese). The granular aerogel is packed between two translucent panes to form a structural panel.
The newsletter I work for wrote an article about it a couple of years ago. The article explains the insulation properties this way:
Aerogels insulate well for two reasons: first, silica is a poor conductor of heat, and second, the aerogel contains a large number of tiny pores (about 20 nanometers in diameter) which are small enough to retard heat transfer.
Some other fun facts:
In accelerated aging tests, there is no discoloration due to ultraviolet light. Because the material is permanently hydrophobic, there is no risk of it absorbing moisture. Settling is not a problem if the material is packed as panels are filled.
Maybe you should stop complaining about having no time to do all that important worrying you have planned and live a little more mindfully. Take a look at Your Money or Your Life and realize that it's your choice whether to spend your time pursuing money or happiness. And you don't even have to eat dirt!
Seriously, if we're all too busy to consider the ramifications of our actions, what sort of future are we working for? So we'll be wealthy enough to afford clean drinking water?
Cradle-to-cradle means that all the components can be used again (recycled) to make high quality products or composted to make soil.
From the MBDC site: "Instead of designing cradle-to-grave products, dumped in landfills at the end of their 'life,' MBDC transforms industry by creating products for cradle-to-cradle cycles, whose materials are perpetually circulated in closed loops. Maintaining materials in closed loops maximizes material value without damaging ecosystems."
I'm amazed that the Kill-a-watt has been mentioned numerous times in this discussion, but I've seen no reference to the far superior (if a bit more expensive) Brand power meter ($150 - $350) or the Watts Up? meter ($100 - $130). Both are capable of measuring a single 120V AC load both instantaniously and cumulatively over time. They can also show the Voltage and power factor and such (check out individual specs, as I forget which does what).
The high-end Brand meters can also connect to a PC via RS-232 serial (Win 95/98 only) and log data that way, and there is even a model with non-volitile memory and a datalogger onboard, so that you can plug in your fridge and come back in a month and download its power consumption history. I highly recommend these meters, since they don't simply measure Watts as Volts * Amps, but calculate an implicit power factor by sampling instantanious Volts (this is a sine wave in AC, remember) & Amps at 4 kHz in order to measure your power consumption just like your utility does.
For more & larger loads, check out the Brand "One Meter" which can handle 120 or 240 V AC loads, DC loads, and 64 channels simultaniously. Sensors are networked to the datalogger via Cat-5 (not over TCP-IP, though). There is a small LCD for instantanious readout, and it can download data through any com program and a serial cable (I use Win 2k, never got it to work with my Mac).
One of the coolest devices I've seen is the WebDAQ which is a 32-channel datalogger with built-in server; just plug in some sensors and an ethernet network, and you can view data live over the web! A little pricey for me at $1k, but cheaper than putting together the pieces.
It's fine to be hard-nosed like this, and it's worthwhile to safeguard the computers, but you have to find a balance. If you make the lab computers too restricted, you will only be challenging the students to hack your system.
The problem with encumbering students is not that you make them feel 'icky' but that they cannot do what they need to do. No, the lab computers are not their personal computers, but they are there for student use.
If you think of your users as jackasses, you are setting up an adversarial relationship that will just make your job harder.
Why is this lazy and not efficient? Not that I agree with the practice of mass-mailing resumes, but if you're going to do it, why spend all day if an hour will suffice? Automating tedious processes is one of the things that computers do best. I don't see why snail-mailing resumes is "doing it right" unless HR managers are impressed by thick paper.
Slashdot Mirror
This is nothing like legos; it uses ball-joint connections so you can move the pieces relative to one another after they're snapped together. The sensors are updating in real time as you move the different parts, so the computer can display animations that echo the manipulations you perform on the model.
Why do you assume that publications are priced on a cost-plus basis? At any rate, you're only addressing the marginal cost of production; most of their costs are probably in the research and writing of the articles. Since they're selling information, and not paper or pixels, the value to customers is the appropriate basis for pricing. From that perspective, the online version is more valuable, since it's constantly updated, searchable, and organized by category rather than date.
If they were making a higher margin on online subscriptions but pushing people to print subscriptions because there was greater perceived value, they should decrease the price of online subscriptions to increase profits. But the article indicates that there is little overlap between the two audiences, and an individual's choice of print or online is largely based on what medium they're comfortable with. Most likely, the two subscriptions are priced equivalently so that customers *don't* think they are getting scammed: there is one price for the information, and you can have it delivered however you prefer.
If you think they're "sticking it to you" then go do the research on your own for $26/year (or wade through the print subscription if you think it's a better deal), but I am happy to pay for my online subscription even though I only log on every few months to look for a specific piece of information.
I'll skip my "dumb user" stories and chime in with a "dumb support" story. I bought an Epson ink-jet printer and had trouble with it right from the beginning: printing gaps and also horizontal lines extending off the page. After the first hour on the phone with tech support I was instructed to send it to them for service. One week later it comes back having been "tested and cleaned" but still exhibiting the same problem.
Another hour on the phone with tech support passed before I get escalated to second-level support. Working down the same list of troubleshooting steps that all the other techs had followed, she comes to "are you using Epson brand paper?" No, I explain, but I'm using quality ink-jet paper. When she tries to tell me that must be my problem and she can't possibly consider any other action to repair the printer until I've tried using their magic paper I'm finally at the end of my rope. "Are you telling me that your paper would *prevent* it from printing lines that extend off the edge of the paper and onto the roller?" Finally she relented and they sent me a replacement printer.
After several experiences like this I'm convinced that second-level support is often just better at harassing customers until they go away, not better at fixing problems.
Pre chill or heat the building ahead of time.
Rather than rolling-your-own off-peak pre-chilling system, check out the Ice Bear ice-based thermal energy storage system. This system was named a GreenSpec® Top-10 green building product of 2005. It's designed to work with standard central air-conditioning units, in buildings from 2,000 to 50,000 ft^2.
This system can reduce peak cooling load by up to 95%. Not only does it improve your peak load profile, it can reduce the overall cooling cost, since the A/C units run at night, when the ambient temperature is cooler. Condensation is not an issue, since the ice is stored in insulated containers near the A/C units (typically outside, often on the roof.)
Disclosure: I'm not affiliated with Ice Bear, but I do work for BuildingGreen, which published the articles I linked to above.
Not that I'm concerned about over-stressing MS's servers while we all look for the latest version, but in the spirit of karma whoring...
http://www.flip4mac.com/wmv_download.htmFrom TFA:
Lie-in
This New Year's Day, we'll have an extra second in bed - an extra leap second will be added to the pips at midnight on the first of January.
Try "Rising Early". You don't get to sleep through the second between 12:00:00 and 12:00:01 twice - you "leap" over it! When clock-time gains a second, we lose it. I definitely notice the loss or gain with daylight savings, but I don't think I'll be going to bed early on 12/31 because of this.
I administer an office of 15 macs, and I mostly share your confidence in installing Apple updates. I do, however, remember setting up a 15" Al p'book, and running software update on it right after I plugged it in. It updated from 10.3.x to 10.3.(x+1) (perhaps it was 10.3.4 or something - i don't recall) and promptly refused to restart.
My local Mac store (where I had just purchased it) informed me that OS version didn't work well on that model, so I re-installed from the system DVD and started again--fortunately there was nothing installed on it yet--and all was fine. This is the exception to hundreds of updates, however, and seems quite different than the experience that some Windows-using friends must have had to believe that one should never update the OS from the one that comes installed, 'cause it's just asking for trouble.
The publisher that I work for, BuildingGreen, Inc., puts out a monthly newsletter with no ads. And yes, we promote our other related publications in a little box on the back page - sheesh. The important thing is that subscribers pay us to report on new products, techniques, etc., not manufacturers and retailers.
I think it's a lot easier to make money from ads, but our audience (professionals) is willing to pay a little more for impartiality.
Because the music publishers do not have any media costs other than bandwidth and royalties.
I'm not going to defend high prices, but it's a straw man argument to say that the marginal cost of delivering songs via the web is just bandwidth. I'm not the only one here who knows first hand how much work goes into building and maintaining web applications.
Yes, you can have amateur musicians upload their songs to a volunteer-created site and download them for free. iTunes, ITMS and the iPod are successful because a lot of design time was invested so that everything works smoothly.
The myth that everything on the web should be free because you're not getting any "stuff" from the content provider is hurting the adoption of high-quality pay-for-service sites. Not everything valuable comes wrapped in plastic.
I don't use Windows (OS X, Red Hat server), but I do have to support some Windows machines on my network. One user has been asking me to buy the full version of WinZip so she doesn't have to feel guilty when using it. I have been stalling, for obvious reasons, but now I can give her links to the new free version. Even better, I got 3 free alternatives (and 2 of those are also open source) to offer her.
While the content of the ad/story isn't very interesting, I was glad to see it on /. so that WinZip can be critiqued.
I did my undergrad thesis in home power metering, and used 2 different models of Brand power meters. They sample current and voltage at 4kHz to accurately measure true power factor (see their description). Single circuit "plug-through" meters are $150-350; the higher-end ones have computer connectivity and datalogging.
Another option for those interested in exploring home power use--and not ignoring power factor--is the Watt's Up? meter (also plug-through, $100-150, with computer connectivity at the high-end). I believe both this and the Brand meter will show you the instantaneous power factor of the load you're metering if you cycle through the display.
While power factor might be irrelevant for simple inductive loads, I agree with the parent that this is an oversight (if it's true that the hardware in question doesn't do more than measure volts * amps), particularly if you want to check usage against your power bill. Power factor is more of issue for commercial electricity customers, who are billed for non-unity power factor and often install huge banks of capacitors to correct it (though i forget exactly how this helps).
Solarhost used to run their datacenter off of their own solar panels... or so they told me. I asked them why they didn't run their DC loads (servers) directly off of their DC generators (PV panels).
This prompted them to get another tech on the phone, who confirmed that they were running the DC power from the solar panels through an inverter (which powered the building), then plugging the computers into a regular AC outlet. The server power supplies promptly converted it right back to DC. Those 2 conversions cost them tons of lost efficiency, all converted into heat.
I realize that this system allowed them to use off-the-shelf systems for power generation, wiring, and servers, It also meant that the IT crew needed no special training. It probably also reduced line losses by running 110 V AC instead of 12 V or even 48 V DC.
Can anyone else comment on the possibility of running a computer directly off of PV? Would it be much more efficient? I realize that it would require some sort of DC power controller; what other considerations are there?
I wondered if the amount of time I overslept was correlated with the length of time I was trying to sleep for. As part of my senior thesis (Hampshire College Div 3, actually) on behavior modification through quantitative feedback, I started tracking
After about a month of data had accumulated, I plotted the "planned sleep duration" (alarm time - bed time) vs. "snooze duration" (wake time - alarm time) on a graph with a trend line. Surprisingly enough, it suggested that I tended to sleep about 8 hours, regardless of how optimistic I was feeling when I set the alarm! The average total sleep time (wake time - bed time) was about 8 hrs.
Also, the trend line intersects the X-axis (no snooze time) at about 8 hrs of planned sleep time, suggesting that if I allowed myself a full night of sleep, I wouldn't use the snooze button at all. I was in college, of course, so that was out of the question; note the data point where 2 hrs of planned sleep results in 6 hrs of snooze time!
As for my theory about behavior modification, it was anecdotally supported by a brief modification of my sleep habits, then a reversion to my old ways after I stopped tracking the times. Now I have a 2-year-old who jumps on my head at 7 am and says "It's time to drink your coffee, Daddy!"
Actually, Slashdot already allows you to customize your homepage. Just go to preferences, and under the "homepage" tab you can choose which topics, authors, and slashboxes you want.
- Macs:
- Safari 1.0
Funny, last time i set up a site for them I jokingly asked why the test suite didn't include Safari. This time I just got to complain that their browser detection doesn't show any search box to Mac FireFox - I have to spoof the user agent.The ad industry could use proxies to make the ads come from the same servers as the content, as you suggest, but this would complicate the setup procedure for including ads on your site, and would not be possible for all sites (I doubt Tripod would help you set up a proxy!) More likely is that ads will be served off of many domains, or only use IP addresses, and the ad-serving code could probably even keep itself updated using some scheme along the lines of Dynamic DNS.
I'm sure that popup ads will be just as easy to quash as email spam.
4. As a follow-on to #2, offer federally-assisted trade-in vouchers with a sliding rule - the older your car * the poorer you are = higher trade-in amount.
I don't think this will have the effect you intend. It might be more desirable to get a car off the road the older it gets, but if the value keeps going up it will encourage people to keep them longer. "It burns a quart of oil per month, but if I can keep it on the road another year the trade-in value will go up $1,000 and I can afford that new Kia SUV!"
You can already get windows (and transparent walls) from Kalwall that provide up to R-20 insulation. They use a form of aerogel called Nanogel , which is manufactured in Germany by Cabot (not like the cheese). The granular aerogel is packed between two translucent panes to form a structural panel.
The newsletter I work for wrote an article about it a couple of years ago. The article explains the insulation properties this way:
Some other fun facts:Maybe you should stop complaining about having no time to do all that important worrying you have planned and live a little more mindfully. Take a look at Your Money or Your Life and realize that it's your choice whether to spend your time pursuing money or happiness. And you don't even have to eat dirt!
Seriously, if we're all too busy to consider the ramifications of our actions, what sort of future are we working for? So we'll be wealthy enough to afford clean drinking water?
Cradle-to-cradle means that all the components can be used again (recycled) to make high quality products or composted to make soil.
From the MBDC site:
"Instead of designing cradle-to-grave products, dumped in landfills at the end of their 'life,' MBDC transforms industry by creating products for cradle-to-cradle cycles, whose materials are perpetually circulated in closed loops. Maintaining materials in closed loops maximizes material value without damaging ecosystems."
I recommend the Brand meter. See my other post on this topic for more details and other meters to use for the same purpose.
The high-end Brand meters can also connect to a PC via RS-232 serial (Win 95/98 only) and log data that way, and there is even a model with non-volitile memory and a datalogger onboard, so that you can plug in your fridge and come back in a month and download its power consumption history. I highly recommend these meters, since they don't simply measure Watts as Volts * Amps, but calculate an implicit power factor by sampling instantanious Volts (this is a sine wave in AC, remember) & Amps at 4 kHz in order to measure your power consumption just like your utility does.
For more & larger loads, check out the Brand "One Meter" which can handle 120 or 240 V AC loads, DC loads, and 64 channels simultaniously. Sensors are networked to the datalogger via Cat-5 (not over TCP-IP, though). There is a small LCD for instantanious readout, and it can download data through any com program and a serial cable (I use Win 2k, never got it to work with my Mac).
One of the coolest devices I've seen is the WebDAQ which is a 32-channel datalogger with built-in server; just plug in some sensors and an ethernet network, and you can view data live over the web! A little pricey for me at $1k, but cheaper than putting together the pieces.
It's fine to be hard-nosed like this, and it's worthwhile to safeguard the computers, but you have to find a balance. If you make the lab computers too restricted, you will only be challenging the students to hack your system.
The problem with encumbering students is not that you make them feel 'icky' but that they cannot do what they need to do. No, the lab computers are not their personal computers, but they are there for student use.
If you think of your users as jackasses, you are setting up an adversarial relationship that will just make your job harder.
Why is this lazy and not efficient? Not that I agree with the practice of mass-mailing resumes, but if you're going to do it, why spend all day if an hour will suffice? Automating tedious processes is one of the things that computers do best. I don't see why snail-mailing resumes is "doing it right" unless HR managers are impressed by thick paper.