I think I'd rather remap my phone's keypad to have 7-8-9 on the top. Especially since so many phones now have the keypad on a touchscreen, where it all can be done in software.
Actually, that's a good question... Assuming no time constraints, at what point does it make sense to buy hardware rather than use the cloud? Take that budget above (roughly US$6K) and the best hardware you can get for that price: How many months would you need to run it, flat out, to equal the number of floating-point ops EC2 would give you for that cost?
It's not just money for CAT5; the DSL hardware is more expensive than the wire. The problem is that you can easily go beyond the maximum network diameter for Ethernet in a large hotel. DSL is good for thousands of meters, not hundreds.
A while ago I bought this neat little toy from a wholesale shopping club, supposed to show the current and forecast local weather. The device was wireless, and came with a wireless broadcast device that plugged into your internet connection. While setting up the device it became clear that the wireless link was bidirectional, with information about the wireless device showing up on the controlling web page. While the company was based in the US, the device was manufactured in China.
This is exactly the sort of toy many executives would put on their desks at work, potentially providing wireless access behind their firewalls. Did the device have such functionality? No idea. Just in case, however, it is now plugged in to an uplink with nothing worth compromising.
Except copper-nickel-tarnish---tarnish-nickel-copper is significantly worse than copper-nickel-gold---gold-nickel-copper. Gold electroplating doesn't add a whole lot to the cost, although it's often used as an excuse to jack up the prices.
Bleh. I really didn't want to get into an argument, but...
When you design something, you typically design it based on even numbers for convenience. If you're working on the initial design of a new thingammy, and working in metric, you typically won't make it 30.48 cm long unless you have a specific reason; instead, you'll make it 30cm, or at worst 30.5. It is at this point where the ability to divide it up more easily helps.
Base 2 is a bit more useful than base 10 because it is also effectively base 4, 8 and 16, allowing more opportunity for even division, although base 12 is IMO marginally superior.
As for fluid measure being based on distances (and weight being based on fluid measure), yes, that is a definite benefit of the metric system - with caveats. Once you are past basic estimation you need to start taking a lot of other factors into account, for instance that water expands as it gets warmer, and ml and cc are only nominally equivalent.
Base 10 is a convenient scale to use mathematically, it eases calculation. It is not, however, necessarily the best base to use for representing the real world. For instance, A decimeter is 10 centimeters, and you can easily split it in half at 5 centimeters each or into fifths at 2 centimeters each. A foot with 12 inches can be split in half, thirds, quarters and sixths while using whole numbers. For fractions of an inch, the measure seems a bit inconvenient but at its root is base 2 and presents some very convenient division. Fluid measure is also mostly base 2, with a gallon being 4 quarts, 8 pints, 16 cups or 128 fluid ounces.
Although Groklaw was founded because of SCO's actions, it, or a site like it, is badly needed. We all need to grok law. I hope the site will be spun off to other writers, or another site will take its place.
The title should be "Crack In Fukushima Structure May Be Leaking Radioactive Materials". When I hear "leaking radiation" I think of a neutron beam shooting out the crack.:-P
Wireless-N is nice and all, but I'm still using G and my WRT-54GL, and don't feel a need to upgrade to N. My hardware should be expiring right when AC goes into general distribution. Maybe that's the reason for the prediction, that a lot of people are happy (for now) with G and N isn't that big of a step up.
1) windmills don't explode. Certainly not in a fashion that cause people's shadows to be burned into concrete like the atomic bombs dropped on Japan.
Nuclear reactors don't explode, unless they're made of graphite and mismanaged to the point where hydrogen gas builds up and goes poof. They've never caused people's shadows to be burned into concrete, and never will; you can't make 'em go supercritical.
2) and 3): I do agree with you there, but windmills are a really expensive way to generate power, and those generators are difficult enough to keep operating without exposing them to salt water spray.
Why not stick a nuclear reactor out there instead of a windmill? It wouldn't be visible from shore, wouldn't even need a cooling tower since you could use the sea water as a heat sink, and would be far enough out to reduce any chance of radiation leakage hitting the short to a minimum.
Yup. Might be time for ruggedized e-readers to enter the market; I'm sure lots of parents will want to buy them for their kids. (Especially if it's the kids' SECOND e-reader, after the first experienced a misfortune.)
Further, why risk information being retrieved from an e-reader before a remote wipe could be performed when the reader can access the information from a server live?
If the ethics are bothering you, perhaps you should look at practicality instead; what you see may eliminate your ethical quandary. Offshore support desks may be less expensive per call received, but the total expense difference is a smaller gap, as people have to call back when they don't receive proper care, or have to be transferred to 2nd and 3rd level techs in the US. You also have to worry about losing customers who get angry at having to deal with foreign techs. Overseas tech support quality is a long-standing joke, and the joke is firmly based on reality. I recommend you do some more due-diligence before considering this move.
There are a lot of positions out there where workers only have to hit a dedicated system on an internal web server, and occasionally hit other web pages. For this, thin clients are low maintenance, secure, awesome.
For any job that needs more flexibility, this breaks down badly.
Slashdot Mirror
IMO the best new name for the array is Leon.
I think I'd rather remap my phone's keypad to have 7-8-9 on the top. Especially since so many phones now have the keypad on a touchscreen, where it all can be done in software.
Actually, that's a good question... Assuming no time constraints, at what point does it make sense to buy hardware rather than use the cloud? Take that budget above (roughly US$6K) and the best hardware you can get for that price: How many months would you need to run it, flat out, to equal the number of floating-point ops EC2 would give you for that cost?
Well, he did promise to have us "twirling, twirling towards the future"...
It's not just money for CAT5; the DSL hardware is more expensive than the wire. The problem is that you can easily go beyond the maximum network diameter for Ethernet in a large hotel. DSL is good for thousands of meters, not hundreds.
The Java engine was supposed to be open-source, too.
RRAH!
A while ago I bought this neat little toy from a wholesale shopping club, supposed to show the current and forecast local weather. The device was wireless, and came with a wireless broadcast device that plugged into your internet connection. While setting up the device it became clear that the wireless link was bidirectional, with information about the wireless device showing up on the controlling web page. While the company was based in the US, the device was manufactured in China.
This is exactly the sort of toy many executives would put on their desks at work, potentially providing wireless access behind their firewalls. Did the device have such functionality? No idea. Just in case, however, it is now plugged in to an uplink with nothing worth compromising.
Mmmph! *gasp*
20 megawatts peak output? But how many megawatt hours?
Except copper-nickel-tarnish---tarnish-nickel-copper is significantly worse than copper-nickel-gold---gold-nickel-copper. Gold electroplating doesn't add a whole lot to the cost, although it's often used as an excuse to jack up the prices.
Bleh. I really didn't want to get into an argument, but...
When you design something, you typically design it based on even numbers for convenience. If you're working on the initial design of a new thingammy, and working in metric, you typically won't make it 30.48 cm long unless you have a specific reason; instead, you'll make it 30cm, or at worst 30.5. It is at this point where the ability to divide it up more easily helps.
Base 2 is a bit more useful than base 10 because it is also effectively base 4, 8 and 16, allowing more opportunity for even division, although base 12 is IMO marginally superior.
As for fluid measure being based on distances (and weight being based on fluid measure), yes, that is a definite benefit of the metric system - with caveats. Once you are past basic estimation you need to start taking a lot of other factors into account, for instance that water expands as it gets warmer, and ml and cc are only nominally equivalent.
Base 10 is a convenient scale to use mathematically, it eases calculation. It is not, however, necessarily the best base to use for representing the real world. For instance, A decimeter is 10 centimeters, and you can easily split it in half at 5 centimeters each or into fifths at 2 centimeters each. A foot with 12 inches can be split in half, thirds, quarters and sixths while using whole numbers. For fractions of an inch, the measure seems a bit inconvenient but at its root is base 2 and presents some very convenient division. Fluid measure is also mostly base 2, with a gallon being 4 quarts, 8 pints, 16 cups or 128 fluid ounces.
Although Groklaw was founded because of SCO's actions, it, or a site like it, is badly needed. We all need to grok law. I hope the site will be spun off to other writers, or another site will take its place.
The title should be "Crack In Fukushima Structure May Be Leaking Radioactive Materials". When I hear "leaking radiation" I think of a neutron beam shooting out the crack. :-P
This is going to make phishing fraud worse, when people don't realize they aren't on the website they think they are.
Wireless-N is nice and all, but I'm still using G and my WRT-54GL, and don't feel a need to upgrade to N. My hardware should be expiring right when AC goes into general distribution. Maybe that's the reason for the prediction, that a lot of people are happy (for now) with G and N isn't that big of a step up.
That's the key information for the console, not the program to actually jailbreak it.
Anyone have a link for GeoHot's jailbreak.zip?
1) windmills don't explode. Certainly not in a fashion that cause people's shadows to be burned into concrete like the atomic bombs dropped on Japan.
Nuclear reactors don't explode, unless they're made of graphite and mismanaged to the point where hydrogen gas builds up and goes poof. They've never caused people's shadows to be burned into concrete, and never will; you can't make 'em go supercritical.
2) and 3): I do agree with you there, but windmills are a really expensive way to generate power, and those generators are difficult enough to keep operating without exposing them to salt water spray.
Why not stick a nuclear reactor out there instead of a windmill? It wouldn't be visible from shore, wouldn't even need a cooling tower since you could use the sea water as a heat sink, and would be far enough out to reduce any chance of radiation leakage hitting the short to a minimum.
Yup. Might be time for ruggedized e-readers to enter the market; I'm sure lots of parents will want to buy them for their kids. (Especially if it's the kids' SECOND e-reader, after the first experienced a misfortune.)
Further, why risk information being retrieved from an e-reader before a remote wipe could be performed when the reader can access the information from a server live?
If the ethics are bothering you, perhaps you should look at practicality instead; what you see may eliminate your ethical quandary. Offshore support desks may be less expensive per call received, but the total expense difference is a smaller gap, as people have to call back when they don't receive proper care, or have to be transferred to 2nd and 3rd level techs in the US. You also have to worry about losing customers who get angry at having to deal with foreign techs. Overseas tech support quality is a long-standing joke, and the joke is firmly based on reality. I recommend you do some more due-diligence before considering this move.
They patched this probably more to reduce server load than to field customer complaints. Stupid idea in the first place, of course.
There are a lot of positions out there where workers only have to hit a dedicated system on an internal web server, and occasionally hit other web pages. For this, thin clients are low maintenance, secure, awesome.
For any job that needs more flexibility, this breaks down badly.
No, the protocol is splitting, with one fork preferential towards pirates and the other honoring the original aim, the legitimate publisher.
42base13 = 54, the number of cards in a deck with 2 jokers.
It also happens to be what you get when you multiply six by nine...