"I'm hoping (and frankly, expecting) some pretty strong negative reaction from the French citizenry. They have a bad history with ID cards (for reasons I shall respectfully not mention) and I dare say that the French are more alarmed by ID cards than citizens in anglo countries. They have a more intense concept of anonymity vis a vis the state."
Not the case, at all. Completely the reverse in fact. It's common law countries like the UK where ID cards are controversial.
The French already have an ID card. It just isn't compulsory (though most have them) and other than a photo, isn't currently biometric. And while you may not be required to carry an ID card, you are required to carry identification of some sort at all times.
Simply automating a group based transport system doesn't really solve the *fundamental* problems that they have. I suppose it's a small step in the right direction though.
There are some fundamental problems with group based mass transit systems which have come to light since the automobile was introduced. Simply put, group based vehicles have to stop at every station to let people on and off. That means their average speed is abysmal. It doesn't matter what top speed they are capable of because they spend much of their time accelerating and decelerating to and from the stations. You can partially get round this by denying access to the vehicle i.e. express vehicles which don't stop at every station. Not much use if you live near a station that the express doesn't stop.
The second fundamental problem with group based mass transit systems is that they rarely go where you want to go, in fact it's impossible due to the group based nature. They inevitably become hub and spoke systems with the hub in a town or city and you either go where the mass transit system wants you to or you have to change vehicles mid journey, possibly making several changes of vehicle with all of the additional delays that entails.
These guys have an analysis document that is worth reading (Sorry, word format):
http://www.atsltd.co.uk/ultra_pdfs/service_effec ti veness.doc
The result is that compared to an individual vehicle like a car, conventional group based mass transit systems have excruciatingly poor performance and simply can not compete. The result being that 90% of journeys are made by other means, typically the car.
The car obviously has it's own problems of cost, congestion and poor performance. The solution then is a fully automated mass transit system which makes use of *individual vehicles* rather than group vehicles...
Saying that "A recent report concludes few midsize enterprises have an interest in Linux." is an interesting spin on the 27% figure. Is that 27% larger or smaller than previous reports?
Hmm... "It also tends to confirm what Microsoft has been saying, slaps down some zealots". Well, no bias there then.
OK, so there are these cars called Ferraris. You can see that they are fast, powerful and sexy. One day someone wearing an "I love Ferrari" T-shirt walks up to you screaming that Ferrari are the only cars which should exist then smacks you in the mouth. How does that damage the reputation of Ferrari?
There are Ferraris and there are nuts. They are not the same thing, and having a Ferrari doesn't make you a Ferrari nut.
Therefore the bandwidth is almost unlimited, by definition. You could almost think of it as sending data in parallel rather than serially. It promises very high bandwidth, which you might think is great, free and easy with no consequences. But there's no such thing as a free lunch.
OK, so what they're really doing is swapping from the time domain to the frequency domain to transmit data. What this does is add noise to all of the frequencies it operates over, and with a name like Ultra Wide Band as you might suspect will operate over a lot of frequencies... Which is why the more traditional operators are pissed, it's very likely to start spewing random crap all over the frequencies they use.
There you go. You can tell your overclocker pals why they should be spending loads of money on getting hold of silver, diamond encrusted heatsinks, and why they are loser pussys if they don't. Hey, then you'd have a reason for those perspex panels and lights.
BTW. Diamonds feel cold to the touch because of their very high thermal conductivity. Air has a thermal conductivity of about 0.026, glass is around 1 hence double glazing. Water is around 0.6 and snow (depending on density) around 0.15 hence igloos. Copper bottomed pots etc etc.
Want to calculate how much heat you're losing through your walls and windows?
Wattage = (k x A x (T(hot) - T(cold))) / Length (m)
k = coefficient A = surface area (sq metres) T(hot) = Temperature at the hot bit. T(cold) = Temperature at the cold bit. Length = The thickness of the material in metres.
My parents house had 2 rooms which were always cold, even with central heating on full blast. Big single glazed bay windows, losing somewhere around 10kW on cold days. Now fixed with very cheap DIY acrylic (perspex) sheet secondary glazing.
Linux is free... How can anyone compete with that? How can a competitor eat it's lunch? There is no lunch!
Linux, PostgreSQL, MySQL etc etc etc don't have to compete with anything, they are going to consume the market landscape because they are free and their "competitors" are not. It's a mathematical certainty, the only thing which can stop it is legislation.
The question asked is "A million bells, whistles and the cost of a dollar or good enough and free".
Good enough and free wins, becomes the defacto standard. I've been in this business for, well, decades now and I've seen this over and over again. The people who think they are competing against Linux and other Free and Open Source software are deluding themselves and their shareholders. They are going to end up selling some expensive, niche products.
Whether you like him or not, Richard Stallman is a very clever man.
The exchange rate is set by the govt in China. They only appear not to have money. It's set to flood business into the country, and out of the rest of the world. Just you wait till it's allowed to float on the market...
It's the cost. At the moment, decomissioning a nuclear reactor when you're done with it adds a truly huge cost. It's a cost which is generally swept under the carpet in the name of profit.
I don't have a problem spending money on the NHS IT system. But FFS! £30 billion!!!! This is largely due to the large consultancies, EDS, AA, CSC, IBM etc. There doesn't seem to be much thought on value for money. Now, I'm not a Conservative supporter but they have a point when this kind of money is being spent.
Don't worry, this is just a small part of the estimated £30 billion ($54b) that the NHS is going to blow on IT over the next few years. Money is no object when it comes to IT spending it seems.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/ ne ws/2004/10/12/nnhs12.xml
The fact that most of the bible was written hundreds of years ago by psychotic nuts who were often high on drugs or hallucinating due to weeks of fasting and self flagellation doesn't seem to bother them.
Slashdot Mirror
"I'm hoping (and frankly, expecting) some pretty strong negative reaction from the French citizenry. They have a bad history with ID cards (for reasons I shall respectfully not mention) and I dare say that the French are more alarmed by ID cards than citizens in anglo countries. They have a more intense concept of anonymity vis a vis the state."
Not the case, at all. Completely the reverse in fact. It's common law countries like the UK where ID cards are controversial.
The French already have an ID card. It just isn't compulsory (though most have them) and other than a photo, isn't currently biometric. And while you may not be required to carry an ID card, you are required to carry identification of some sort at all times.
They'll be switched fairly painlessly.
Simply automating a group based transport system doesn't really solve the *fundamental* problems that they have. I suppose it's a small step in the right direction though.
c ti veness.doc
There are some fundamental problems with group based mass transit systems which have come to light since the automobile was introduced. Simply put, group based vehicles have to stop at every station to let people on and off. That means their average speed is abysmal. It doesn't matter what top speed they are capable of because they spend much of their time accelerating and decelerating to and from the stations. You can partially get round this by denying access to the vehicle i.e. express vehicles which don't stop at every station. Not much use if you live near a station that the express doesn't stop.
The second fundamental problem with group based mass transit systems is that they rarely go where you want to go, in fact it's impossible due to the group based nature. They inevitably become hub and spoke systems with the hub in a town or city and you either go where the mass transit system wants you to or you have to change vehicles mid journey, possibly making several changes of vehicle with all of the additional delays that entails.
These guys have an analysis document that is worth reading (Sorry, word format):
http://www.atsltd.co.uk/ultra_pdfs/service_effe
The result is that compared to an individual vehicle like a car, conventional group based mass transit systems have excruciatingly poor performance and simply can not compete. The result being that 90% of journeys are made by other means, typically the car.
The car obviously has it's own problems of cost, congestion and poor performance. The solution then is a fully automated mass transit system which makes use of *individual vehicles* rather than group vehicles...
e.g.
http://www.atsltd.co.uk/
or
http://www.skywebexpress.com/
27% have Linux installed somewhere.
Saying that "A recent report concludes few midsize enterprises have an interest in Linux." is an interesting spin on the 27% figure. Is that 27% larger or smaller than previous reports?
Hmm... "It also tends to confirm what Microsoft has been saying, slaps down some zealots". Well, no bias there then.
Move along, nothing to see here.
I don't get it.
OK, so there are these cars called Ferraris. You can see that they are fast, powerful and sexy. One day someone wearing an "I love Ferrari" T-shirt walks up to you screaming that Ferrari are the only cars which should exist then smacks you in the mouth. How does that damage the reputation of Ferrari?
There are Ferraris and there are nuts. They are not the same thing, and having a Ferrari doesn't make you a Ferrari nut.
Therefore the bandwidth is almost unlimited, by definition. You could almost think of it as sending data in parallel rather than serially. It promises very high bandwidth, which you might think is great, free and easy with no consequences. But there's no such thing as a free lunch.
OK, so what they're really doing is swapping from the time domain to the frequency domain to transmit data. What this does is add noise to all of the frequencies it operates over, and with a name like Ultra Wide Band as you might suspect will operate over a lot of frequencies... Which is why the more traditional operators are pissed, it's very likely to start spewing random crap all over the frequencies they use.
Well, in terms of thermal conductivity (W/m K):
t io n/
(approx)
Diamond: 2500
Silver: 430
Gold: 320
There you go. You can tell your overclocker pals why they should be spending loads of money on getting hold of silver, diamond encrusted heatsinks, and why they are loser pussys if they don't. Hey, then you'd have a reason for those perspex panels and lights.
BTW. Diamonds feel cold to the touch because of their very high thermal conductivity. Air has a thermal conductivity of about 0.026, glass is around 1 hence double glazing. Water is around 0.6 and snow (depending on density) around 0.15 hence igloos. Copper bottomed pots etc etc.
Want to calculate how much heat you're losing through your walls and windows?
http://hypertextbook.com/physics/thermal/conduc
Wattage = (k x A x (T(hot) - T(cold))) / Length (m)
k = coefficient
A = surface area (sq metres)
T(hot) = Temperature at the hot bit.
T(cold) = Temperature at the cold bit.
Length = The thickness of the material in metres.
My parents house had 2 rooms which were always cold, even with central heating on full blast. Big single glazed bay windows, losing somewhere around 10kW on cold days. Now fixed with very cheap DIY acrylic (perspex) sheet secondary glazing.
Once you move out and have to pay for the stuff yourself, 1p/min and free VOIP->VOIP calls starts to become attractive.
Recommendations?
I'm going to be making a *lot* of phonecalls in the near future and would like to keep my costs down.
Hmm?
Linux is free... How can anyone compete with that? How can a competitor eat it's lunch? There is no lunch!
Linux, PostgreSQL, MySQL etc etc etc don't have to compete with anything, they are going to consume the market landscape because they are free and their "competitors" are not. It's a mathematical certainty, the only thing which can stop it is legislation.
The question asked is "A million bells, whistles and the cost of a dollar or good enough and free".
Good enough and free wins, becomes the defacto standard. I've been in this business for, well, decades now and I've seen this over and over again. The people who think they are competing against Linux and other Free and Open Source software are deluding themselves and their shareholders. They are going to end up selling some expensive, niche products.
Whether you like him or not, Richard Stallman is a very clever man.
The exchange rate is set by the govt in China. They only appear not to have money. It's set to flood business into the country, and out of the rest of the world. Just you wait till it's allowed to float on the market...
"Also, I don't see China being much of a leader in alternative fuels"
http://www.thunder-sky.com/en/index.htm
An innovative technology and an order of magnitude cheaper lithium ion batteries than you're likely to be able to get your hands on.
http://www.sunmachine.de/
In the prototype stage at the moment. The production systems should compete very favourably in cost terms with photovoltaic cells.
It's the cost. At the moment, decomissioning a nuclear reactor when you're done with it adds a truly huge cost. It's a cost which is generally swept under the carpet in the name of profit.
I don't have a problem spending money on the NHS IT system. But FFS! £30 billion!!!! This is largely due to the large consultancies, EDS, AA, CSC, IBM etc. There doesn't seem to be much thought on value for money. Now, I'm not a Conservative supporter but they have a point when this kind of money is being spent.
Don't worry, this is just a small part of the estimated £30 billion ($54b) that the NHS is going to blow on IT over the next few years. Money is no object when it comes to IT spending it seems.
/ ne ws/2004/10/12/nnhs12.xml
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=
The biggest irony it seems that they voted on something which doesn't really exist at all...
0 901.stm
e.g.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/397
It was supposed to be funny. Getting modded as insightful is ironic.
We had a few extra years on that one. America came out of the oven under done.
Cos he knows Bush couldn't catch a cold.
Or rather, Bush has an agenda which is served by not catching Osama Bin Laden.
A sobering thought as the electoral process becomes more and more opaque.
It's not the literal word of the bible.
The fact that most of the bible was written hundreds of years ago by psychotic nuts who were often high on drugs or hallucinating due to weeks of fasting and self flagellation doesn't seem to bother them.
I don't get it. I can feel heat provided by infra-red, how is it a big leap from something like that to an eye?
"He's a US citizen living abroad"
Ah. Chalk one more up for "It must be something in the water".
Hard disks, fans and the medium quality audio components they stick on most PC boards these days.
Of course it's much more difficult than it appears to be... Ehm, look... Don't tell anyone, OK.